Have the option of learning ALICE in school next year

[rock7dmc]

im really intrested in learning programing as of recently. Ive read a little bit on c++ but i dont know much, i made a program that converts ferinheit to celsius and thats all i ever really did with c++.

My question is because my schools class description is very vague. It kinda makes ALICE sounds like a programming language but when i looked it up it just sounds like animation software. Is ALICE a programming language? if not what is it? Is it worth taking if im intrested in programming? I dont plan on going to college so it doesnt matter if it looks good or not.

Also, im taking a class that has to do with visual basics, or something called something like that. What is that? is that a programming language?

 

[miked8887]

Alice is a learning tool that takes sort of a revolutionary approach to teaching the student programming in a 3D environment. I don't think you really write practically useful applications with it, however, learning experiences are always useful. It is intended for first-time programmers. It wouldn't hurt to learn it in conjunction with your other studies in programming.

Visual Basic is a programming language for programming GUI or window applications. If you want to learn how to program, I would suggest starting out with c++ and buying a college-level introductory text book on programming in c++. Gary J. Bronson is a good text-book author.

Others have recommended Python, but I don't know enough about Python to recommend it. I'm pretty sure people have recommended Python because it is not as complicated as c++ allowing beginners to focus more on concepts rather than syntax. That is fine as long as you learn the important concepts, i.e., the ones that would appear on a college-level syllabus or in the table of contents outline of a college text (data-types, loops, functions, scope/lifetime, arrays, oop, etc).