Erlang creator on how to get started and learning to program
Yeah, that's a terrible tutorial.<p>a) so much magic going on. He argues against magic (IDE's, build tools), and yet there are about 5 magic commands in 5 lines of code. (module(), compile(), export_all, ->, c()). As a reasonably experienced programmer who's never seen erlang code, I ought to be able to infer most of what those operators/function are doing but I can't.<p>b) Why would a super smart programmer be the right person to tell me the best way to start learning to program? I would like to hear from a highly successful TEACHER of programming.<p>c) I started with IDE's (HyperCard, RealBasic, and Xcode). Yes he is right that there is a lot of magic going on you don't understand, but you can slowly chip away at that all the while making useful things.<p>All that said, I really liked his comment about
"After 30 years you will get the hang of this and be a good programmer." That's a great attitude. You'll be a novice for most of your life. Possibly all of it. That's a big part of why I like programming... there is always more to learn.