Should beginners learn Python or JavaScript? | Brendan Eich and Lex Fridman

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GUEST BIO:
Brendan Eich is the creator of JavaScript and co-founder of Mozilla and Brave.

PODCAST INFO:

SOCIAL:

[johanfalk]

He answered the question like the people asking are already programmers.

[dariuselijah]

Little Kid: Mr. Brendan they taught us how to print Hello World at school today!

Brendan Eich: Well it depends, kid. Did you run the code in a REPL or did you compile and execute it? It's really important to know. Did you take a look at the bytecode? It must be really easy to read if you were able to print Hello World being just a 5 year old. I mean, it's just a string at the end of the day, i.e. a bunch of characters in an array. How different languages handle strings is really interesting. Take a look at the String.java file and Haskell's [Char] and String when declared in the Hindley-Milner style type declaration.

Little Kid: Down with this wretched industrial-technological system!

[transitpix]

I'm 43 and I just signed up for Python online classes.

[PJM]

I clicked for an answer to the question, and ended up looking like my cat does when I explain my day to it ...

[Xaminn]

I started with HTML and JavaScript. They confused me more than many things lol. Python is the language that I was able to stick with and push through the painful learning curve. (At least for me). But, I would recommend Python. I would also recommend the book “Learn Python the Hard Way”. That book runs you through literally everything by the brute force method. I compare this book’s teaching method to writing your alphabet over and over on the chalkboard to remember your ABCs. It definitely pushed me in the right direction to keep learning.

[lucasg]

Came here to figure out which language to learn and ended up with a PhD in Matrix Programming

[jonathanpritchard]

For really learning how to code, I'd say Python first for an gentle introduction to programming fundamentals (linear execution, loops, conditionals, functions, variables, scope, etc.), and a very powerful and well documented standard library of data structures. JavaScript is very useful but it has some incredibly weird behavior (some of which was touched on), and its asynchronous/event driven paradigm can be much trickier for beginners to understand when just starting out. Though it does depend on what your goal is. If you want to be a web dev, then learning JS inside and out is more beneficial.

[OpenJavaScript]

I may be a little biased as a JavaScript educator, but I'd suggest JavaScript almost every time!
It's the language to learn for frontend web development, can also be used for backend development and other server-side stuff. It's also the most popular programming language so has great community support.
The only reason I'd recommend Python first is if someone wants to do statistics/machine learning.

[kristofgilicze]

I feel like modern JavaScript can be considered a great language, but you have to understand that it came a long way and even then it's evolving in a rather quick fashion year by year. PHP had similar toothing issues, but nowadays it is a decent experience to use PHP as well. The issue is that arguably these languages came a long way, however in the process they became quite bloated. IMO this makes it less ideal for a beginner. I feel like Guido put way more thought into designing Python, it was not something that was just afterthought to sprinkle some interactivity to the webpages.

[improcrastinating]

For anyone seriously wondering: python. Learning another programming language once you understand the fundamentals, is really easy. I learned c++ in a weekend (surface level, up enough to write algos) but I failed high school programming because they taught Java. I got discouraged after spending hours debugging what ended up being a missing semicolon. Start with python, add others as you want/ need. Also the greatest help for me was understanding how programs written end up actually doing things. How files go from being types to doing things on a computer. For that search for Mozilla Developer Network and I started with web development but you can really go anywhere. Lastly, keep at it. We all get stuck, google is your friend, and build kick ass stuff!

[LandausProblem]

import Interview
from Interview import HowToNotAnswerTheQuestion

[svetu]

I just found out that I don't want to be a programmer.

[DimitriNakos]

I started with JavaScript and the instant satisfaction was the best part . I'm starting to learn Python and I absolutely love it. But I still think I made the right choice starting with JS and web-development.

[StevenOBrien]

4:30 "anything in C++ takes 10 years to write, so javascript/python is better to learn" - I'd really love to see you have a conversation with someone like Linus Torvalds or Jonathan Blow. ;)

[lokhtar]

It doesn't matter. It REALLY DOES NOT MATTER. Learn anything. The only thing that would be helpful is if you had some online community you can turn to for help, so a more popular language would be helpful in that regard. But that's essentially it. Pick something and just DO THINGS. Once you learn it well, the second language will take you a fifth of the time, and a third a tenth of the time. Then you'll be able to pick up a language and do pretty complicated things with it within a weekend.

[ndx]

took me 20 years to learn how to code. I tried c, c++, java, etc... but was hard to grasp the concept. python was the easiest language to learn. since I learned python I can go to other languages.

btw I've been in tech since 2010 and I work as a backend eng for big tech company.

[MrHaggyy]

😅 best thing about beeing a beginner: You have soo much to learn you will benefit from every language and you basically cant waste any time at all. Programming is a lot about math and patterns in different style. Once you have 2-3 languages in your belt it's not too hard doing something in a 5th or 6th.

[erichighsmith]

I can code Hello World! And that’s about it 😐

[trader]

A simple answer to Which programming language you should learn is like which language you should learn to speak. Depends on where you’re going.

[AetherXIV]

I'm learning to code and I think I understood 30% of the words out of Brendan's mouth... kind of intimidating