<p>ap freak :
i speak french and spanish</p>
<p>tanoev:
if i want to buy a programming book and start this weekend cuz its memorial day weekend, which language is the easiest/most basic? is it Quickbasic or Visualbasic. For now I want to learn basic programming and then like you said it should get easier. any specific books? how about the AP CS A book?</p>
<p>Don't learn QuickBASIC. It's a dead language.</p>
<p>Visual Basic: business oriented. If you liked Flash or other user-friendly development tools, start with Visual Basic. .NET is very different from 6.0, I've been told, so I'm not sure whether .NET is as easy to learn as 6.0 was for me.</p>
<p>Java & C++: more "traditional" programming. If you just like to type out everything and then savor the result, those two are for you.</p>
<p>Deitel & Deitel make some really good books. You can also look for Sams Learn (some language) in 21 Days (or 24 Hours)</p>
<p>If you can work your way through the first few chapters of Deitel & Deitel Java, you're pretty much guaranteed to ace AP CS A. In order to ace AP CS AB, you may need some other sources, since Deitel & Deitel is a practical guide, and AB deals with some theoretical stuff.</p>
<p>This may be obvious, but you also need to have the software running on your PC.</p>
<p>You said that you were interested in CS / engineering. There is something that I don't think people realize about engineering programs. Everyone in engineering takes the same courses during freshman year regardless of their specific major. This curriculum includes Calculus, Physics, Chemistry and Computers (C++/Java) all at the same time. In most majors, the faculty is trying to nurture the freshmen and help them succeed. In engineering, the faculty is trying to thin the herd and move the less motivated students into other majors. It is often easy to be accepted to an engineering school than it is to survive freshman year. Anything you can do to get a leg up on computers will help you a lot.</p>
<p>i agree that quickbasic is pretty much dead. do some C++ programming cuz it will help you in college.</p>
<p>i bought the book "Visual Basic 6 for Dummies" but i dont know where to get the program itself.</p>
<p>where can i download
the program "Visual Basic 6"? what site is it free on?</p>
<p>Visual Basic 6 is not free. You can download it, but in doing so, you will be doing something ILLEGAL <em>cough</em></p>
<p>Since Visual Basic is a Microsoft product, it has to be purchased. While you're at it, you might as well purchase the entire Microsoft Visual Studio.</p>
<p>tanonev:
i know but look at the prices:</p>
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<p>Hmm...do Java lol</p>
<p>Free download from java.sun.com
Then Google for JCreator, which I prefer to NetBeans</p>
<p>but i heard that java is way harder and i should learn visual basic first. plus i already bought the visual basic book</p>
<p>All you need is Visual Basic, not the Enterprise package that Grad'06 suggested. The price for Visual Basic .Net 2003 is about $110. You can look at <a href="http://www.compusa.com%5B/url%5D">www.compusa.com</a>.</p>
<p>However, that is not what I would do. VisualBasic isn't really a programming language in the sense of what an engineering major would be taking during Freshman year. I think you want to do C++ or Java. Actually, I would strongly recommend that you go to a local college (including a community college), and see what they sell the people taking their computer course. You need a book and the matching software for your PC. The easiest way to make sure that the book and software match is to get it from a course being offered somewhere.</p>
<p>If you do this, you can probably take back the Visual Basic book for the time being.</p>
<p>Java is not "way harder" anyway. In fact, if you get used to thinking in Java from the get-go, you may be better off.</p>
<p>VB, Java, and C++ are all OOP languages, so they are very similar. There are some minor syntactical differences, and Java & C++ will start out with the DOS environment, but besides that, they're pretty much the same.</p>
<p>Personally, when I learned Java, I never wanted to go back to VB again. :)</p>