Re: Programming

[David Heise <dheise () gmail com>]

I don't think the specific language is as important as the type of
language (imperative, functional, visual, OO, etc)  and what you want
to do with it. C is a definite if you want security (simply because so
many programs have been written in C and the buffer overflow attacks
generally come from improper use of input in C). C is an adult
language (i.e. potential to really really screw up your system)
whereas other languages put management restrictions so that you can't
mess yourself up to much (and yes there are other "adult" languages as
well).

The other big consideration (for me at least) is how the language
runs: complied, or interpreted, or a mix. Personally I consider any
language that requires the installation of extra programs (i.e.
framework, virtual machine, etc) as an interpreted language (albeit
complied to an intermediate language) because it requires some other
interpreter to actually run it on the processor in machine code. My
favorites in this area are C# and Java.

As for complied languages I tend to stick with C or C++ or Delphi, but
that's just because I develop for the Windows environment (that's also
something to think about: the environment  you want to develop on).

The other REALLY BIG factor in deciding what language to use/learn is
who you want to write code for. You're going to do things differently
if you're writing code to be used by a corp, or by devs or by your
grandma. Writing code that requires your grandma to download a
10-30Meg runtime environment/framework/virtual machine isn't very
practical.

In the end randomly picking one of the mainstream languages is
probably ok to start, but don't stop there. After you're comfortable
with one language, learn another is different from your first (i.e.
going from Java to C# or vice versa isn't a big switch). I would
suggest trying a functional language like LISP, or Scheme. Also give a
visual language (like Visual Obliq, LabView, or ProGraph) a try, it
will make you think differently.

just my $0.0137


-- 
David B Heise [dheise () gmail com]

On Wed, 09 Feb 2005 09:17:00 +0100, dayz () planet nl <dayz () planet nl> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I want to begin with learning programming to increase my knowledge about
> security, but I don't know where to begin. Can someone tell me which
> programming language is good to start with, and pherhaps what book
> and/or online guides I should take a look at?
> It would be nice that if I learn a programming language that it
> shouldn't be much work to understand another one.
>
> I am on Linux and Windows.
>
> Thanks for the help.
>
> Regards,
>
> Ben