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I'd like to learn a programming language that will allow me to write my own simulations for all kinds of math/probability problems that interest me. I don't have much of a knowledge or education in the programming field, but am a very fast (self) learner. It isn't meant to serve me on the job market or anything, but more like a fun/challenging thing. What would you recommend?
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There is free poker related code in C available at sourceforge. C has speed advantages. It isn't that difficult to learn. The GNU compiler is free.
Python is interesting and may be easiest for a beginning programmer to learn. It is an interpreted language, which makes it slow, but if you reach a point where this becomes an issue, you can incorporate C or Java to speed things up where needed.
I like Java because it gives me a lot of flexibility, including relatively simple to construct GUIs and the ability to make programs available on the web. There are free IDEs available. There is a lot of information on the web including poker related code.
You can find basic information about any programming language you may be interested in at
http://www.wikipedia.org
I have some simple program examples are on
my poker page, if you're interested. There is a Perl CGI script, a script in Javascript, and a Java applet.
I think any of the languages mentioned in this thread would be fine to start with. Once you learn one language, other languages are easier to learn, so if you find that your first choice isn't working for some task, your efforts aren't wasted.