David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH)

They want to become a programmer.

So you got to use it for something real.

And I actually find that it's easier to learn programming that way too, because it drives your learning process.

You can't just learn the whole thing up front.

You can't just sit down and read the language specification.

Then go like, Ooh, like Neo.

Now I know Kung Fu.

Now I know Ruby.

It doesn't download that way.

You actually have to type it out in anger on a real program.

Yeah, for sure.

So I would start there.

But then number two, I probably would be JavaScript.

Because JavaScript just is the language you need to know if you want to work with the web.

And the web is the greatest application platform of all time.

If you're making business software, collaboration software, all this kind of stuff.

If you're making video games, you should probably go off and learn C++ or C or something else like that.

But if you're in the realm of web applications, you got to learn JavaScript.

Regardless of what else you learn, you got to learn JavaScript.

I don't know if there's any concepts missing, but it doesn't have the speed or the low-level access of memory manipulation that you would need to build a 3D gaming engine, for example.