Good Starter Language? (was Re: REALBasic and OpenAL)

[Garrett Goebel]

How about starting out with understanding the machine?

Write Great Code: Understanding the Machine
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1593270038/ 

product description:
> If you've asked someone the secret to writing efficient,
> well-written software, the answer that you've probably
> gotten is "learn assembly language programming." By
> learning assembly language programming, you learn how the
> machine really operates and that knowledge will help you
> write better high-level language code. A dirty little
> secret assembly language programmers rarely admit to,
> however, is that what you really need to learn is machine
> organization, not assembly language programming. Write
> Great Code Vol I, the first in a series from assembly
> language expert Randall Hyde, dives right into machine
> organization without the extra overhead of learning assembly
> language programming at the same time. And since Write Great
> Code Vol I concentrates on the machine organization, not
> assembly language, the reader will learn in greater depth
> those subjects that are language-independent and of concern
> to a high level language programmer. Write Great Code Vol I
> will help programmers make wiser choices with respect to
> programming statements and data types when writing software,
> no matter which language they use.

except from a review:
> This is a most interesting book. It's positioned kind of
> halfway between the book on a programming language and the
> data book for the CPU. It contains a lot of information
> that the computer science classes don't bother to include.
> On the whole it is rather machine independent (hard to do
> in today's world where the Pentium class machines are so
> prevalent), so if you are working on a Power PC or an ARM
> chip the material here would still have value. 


--
Garrett Goebel
IS Development Specialist

ScriptPro                   Direct: 913.403.5261
5828 Reeds Road               Main: 913.384.1008
Mission, KS 66202              Fax: 913.384.2180
www.scriptpro.com          garrett at scriptpro.com

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