Friend wants to teach me programming

>friend wants to teach me programming
>first lesson he tells me to learn Chomsky Hierarchy
what the actual fucking fuck fuck is this shit?
i don't even know where to begin breaking this shit down. do i have to take linguistic courses before I can learn this shit?

am i actually a retarded person or is this shit insane?

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wtf I haven't learned much programming, like I know a small amount and I've never even heard the phrase chomsky heirarchy

i'm half convinced he was just being nice in offering, and when i actually accepted he decided to throw me some retardedly-hard shit to encourage me to quit so he didn't have to fuck around with it.

i dunno, maybe i really am just a retarded person... :*(

Uh oh, sounds like you've befriended an autist. Does he talk a lot about these things called "monads" and "functors?"

You friend is a CS major and thus retarded. All he knows how to do is spew buzzwords.

Just get "Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++" by Bjarne Stroustrup and start working through it. It's nothing too difficult that can't be done on your own.

this.

also tell your friend to pick on someone his own size and watch him as he gets eaten alive by academics

lol, this shit is irrelevant. only severe autistics even care about this shit. it has no real use, if you want to learn programming pick up python and a textbook on algos. python syntax keeps the autism to a good enough minimum and is great for learning, plus it's object oriented so it gets you up to speed with things.

i dunno. those are functional language things right?

i'm not sure what he programs in nowadays

he's legit. he reads huge books on assembly and shit for fun

IMHO it's best to not learn from people like this if you're a beginner. Usually people who are wiling to go so deeply into something, in this case programming, as to read books on assembly for fun usually won't be relatable to a noob. I'm not saying he's a bad programmer or a bad person or an autist, I'm just saying he probably won't know how best to convey the simpler things that you will need to learn.

that's exactly how i feel. i already told him he probably shouldn't mentor me.

got a subscription to treehouse. gonna master rails then react. maybe after i've been building some shit for a while i'll develop a strong enough interest that would warrant taking a few college courses in linguistics to learn about this chomsky thing.

If all else I'd recommend doing some online courses (free or otherwise) to see if it suits your interests. If it does, it never hurts to have textbooks on-hand for reference like and suggested. My suggestion is that you learn what you can from them, and ask your buddy for help or challenges if you feel you're at a dead end.

>be me
>be literal grad student in machine learning at standford
>never ever cared about chomsky

Theres a difference between learning the difference between a lamborghini and a shitty van

But if you dedicate your life to manually hand-plucking horse-tail hairs. you have a problem.

>Theres a difference between learning the difference between a lamborghini and a pogo stick
ftfy

>>be literal grad student in machine learning at standford
wtf, care to give a curriculum? i'd love to learn AI. i'm pretty fuggin dank at html/css and alright at js

Learn a real language. Try udacity.
Its sorta cofounded by Stanford and the main guy is an AI researcher

aight thanks

Udacity isn't a language btw...wasn't clear in my first post.
It's a website (a MOOC), that has some basic programming classes up to some decent level AI stuff.

grad student here

your friend isnt smart

hes a pretentious douche with nothing to show for in life
or hes autistic

He's fucking with you, you don't need any discrete math to start programming.

hello /g/tards. how about you leave Veeky Forums ?

If you're a complete noob pick up Python/Perl and lurk >>/g/

>graduate student
>never heard of chomsky hierarchy
wtf that's literally babys first theoretical CS

It's clearly not necessary to know it if you just want to program, since it's only application is theoretical computer science, but not having heard of it at all in a CS related graduate program is software engineering tier bad.

tfw u realize that chomsky hierarchy is actually trivial and boring, arbitrarily chunking apart word problems according to nice rule presentations and corresponding parsing machines, that give little insight into computational structure.

functors/monads/etc. are actually core category theoretic notions and are useful for building and describing traditional mathematical algebraic structures

>that give little insight into computational structure

how? Each level in the hierarchy has a specific machine that can accept the language and the ones below it.

The difference is between computer science (math and philosophy, even) and producing code to do something (hacker space pet project and making money for other people).

What is it you want to do?

I don't know why people show up in this thread just to diss the one they have no passion for.

I never said I "never heard about it"
its just a trivial thing that you learn and go "oh okay cool" while I was in undergrad learning my first compiler course

But Ill be pretty honest that I never really cared about it. Because desu senpai, its god dam fucking useless and its implications are boring and dumb

Your reading comprehension is astounding, my friend. That person said 'never ever cared about chomsky', not that he/she has never heard of it.

That doesn't mean he's legit. I have a friend who learns this shit all day and he dropped out of his CS degree after his 2nd year. It's very easy to sound legit when the other person doesn't know what you're talking about.

lol, these are programming language theory topics as in the type of stuff you learn if you want to develop a programming language, implement a parser/lexer/interpreter/compiler/etc.., or understand computability theory.

It's good to know if you're programming as well because sometimes a programmer will try to write a program to do something impossible and then struggle to figure out why they keep finding bugs no matter what. That said, many programmers out there don't know these topics and, while it is very likely they are to blame for the current state of things (google language theoretic security), there is nothing wrong with you joining their mediocre ranks.

Can someone please link me to where I can find out more about that MATHISON and ALAN things?
>inb4 www.google.com

>Alan Mathison Turing

He is a fucking moron, don't take lessons from him.

Learn Java

>>friend wants to teach me programming
> >first lesson he tells me to learn Chomsky Hierarchy

tldr:

You want to learn PROGRAMMING
He is giving you COMPUTER SCIENCE

Decide which you actually want to study and let him know, or find another resource.

>Java

Fuck off retard

This.

I've been programming professionally for a couple of years, and I've only heard it mentioned. This is stupid, you wont learn how to programme by following his sorry excuse of a tutorial.

>gif related

Why do people seem so eager to put their ignorance on display by shitting on java for being too hard or complicated or whatever dumb reason?

Is it a joke?
Like "ha ha java is sooooo hard. Programmers are so nerdy XD"

It's the equivalent of people saying "look at these nerdy engineers always using calculus. Why don't they just use arithmatic?"

But sure. If you think it's funny, then go ahead.

Don't flatter yourself retard

jesus fucking christ kill yourself
>person who has no experience in tech
>person who has never read all the documentation
>person who has no idea how the java virtual machine parses code
>Doesnt know about its inherent flaws

It's not too hard or complicated, It's just way to restrictive and stupid.
Java was created as an interpreter for printing systems, not systems and applications programming.
Java doesn't support pointers, operator overloading, stack allocation, macros, multiple inheritance, default arguments, destructors, unsigned integers, the list goes on.
It's also compiled to bytecode files that have to be run on a virtual machine.
oh, and it forces you to put functions inside classes which is total bullshit imo.
I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch of things, but you get the point.

Using Java is like using a slide rule. You have to be autistic or retarded to do so.

Java compiles down into bytecode that is then interpreted by the JVM. This makes it an interpreted language, which is why it is so slow.

Literally the only benefit to using Java is that it forces you to program in OOP (so you can use it as a teaching language for OOP) but even that isn't a very good reason for using it.
youtube.com/watch?v=QM1iUe6IofM

If you're going to be using a language that's as fast as an interpreted language then you may as well be using python or another such language.

Java is slow, bloated, has security bugs, and is overall just a horrible mess of a language. You never program something serious in Java unless you're trying to make something really shitty (i.e. Minecraft).

>C++ programmer oblivious to the basics of CS

what a suprise...

Not really, c-sharp is fine when developing non-realtime applications. Forms for example is great when creating tools, etc. But just like java, it's hard to manage your resources as it doesn't even support pointers. The garbage collector is pretty neat, but once again.. if you want to make something that's a bit more dynamic than your average application (such as a game), the GC simply wont cut it.

I dont even know what the fuck you're trying to say here, but C++ being a fucking awful language has nothing to do with how it handles memory and all about how it is a fucking disaster as a language.

t. someone who has never even coded in C++

I wish

Knowing this shit might be useful if you were creating your own programming language. If I wanted to introduce a complete novice to programming, I sure as fuck wouldn't start here, though.

>Java doesn't do x, y, and z, so you're stupid if you use it
>a ballpeen hammer doesn't even have a claw on it, so you're stupid if you use it

Java has good reasons for not allowing x, y, and z (for the most part).

Go write a Lisp function to calm down, user.

first lean c
then c++
now you have access to understanding 80% of all programing languages, and being able to learn them quickly.
Chomsky Hierarchy is usually only ever relevat in nieche parts of theoreical compsci.
If you ever try to learn about assembly code & hardware-only "programming" then it will begin to be relevant.

kek

ml is just a gigantic fucking meme and you fell for it

You clearly don't know what you're talking about.

The guy went off on a rant on how C++ doesnt use a GC as if that is in any way relevant to C++ being a good language or not. There are plenty of non garbage collected languages out there that aren't complete fucking jokes, for instance C.

Oh well,

>dismisses java
>tries to assert that I have no experience in tech

All right, listen boyo.
There is no way you can have experience in the industry without appreciating java as the gold standard of programming.
If you want to get anywhere in the industry, you have to know and love java.

I'm not interested in talking to undergrads who think they know shit about fuck. Go and share your anti-java maymays on /g/ and get your ignorance out of here

>all of these useless legacyy features that have analogous features anyway
>putting javas extreme portability as a negative point

I'm done with arguing. How can anyone look at java and not appreciate how just perfect and practical it is. It's the definition of practical. Just because you can't wrap your head around classes, doesn't mean its a shit language.