Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Peeping Tom]

I've been thinking it might be useful to learn a little computer programing, but the last time I tried any was using QBasic way back in middle school. I'll be going to grad school for linguistics, and I might like to get into computational linguistics at some point. Does anyone have any advice on where I should start (what programing language I should use, good introductory internet sites, etc.) Or does anyone know any online degree programs one could take?

[ChopChaeJoe]

The rising computer paradigm is functional programming. A great place to start is the scheme language, a dialect of the older LISP language, which was (is?) used for artificial intelligence development. It's a lot of fun.

http://www.plt-scheme.org/

An even more "pure" functional language is Haskell. This language takes a bit more patience to learn, but it will open your eyes to what programming "should" be about. You can write very powerful programs in only a little space.

http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell

if you are interested in object-oriented languages, you'll want to learn Java. Here's a simple, free java compiler.

http://www.bluej.org/


If you are interested in the older, iterative, programming paradigm, look into C (not C++) or Pascal.

if you really want to know what programming is all about, spend a few months looking at these lecture notes:

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/ham/UTCS/CS345/Lectures/cs345LectureNotes.html