What programming language should EE's learn first?

I'll say it depends on mostly which direction you want to go :

If you are curious about embedded systems and microcontrollers and 'low level' device access, then you should learn C/C++.

If you are curious about making things with rPi like platforms, go for Python.

If you want to do simulations of large systems/mathematical models/machine learning/Computer Vision, Octave/MatLab can be your first choice.

And don't try to learn assembly. In my opinion, it's a waste of time. It will be only useful if your are writing some device drivers/OS modules. 

This is especially true when you consider that pretty much every platform is going to have its own assembly language. Personally, I'd rather learn one language that works on three different platforms than three different languages.

Vishnu Raj wrote:

 

And don't try to learn assembly. In my opinion, it's a waste of time. It will be only useful if your are writing some device drivers/OS modules.

 

Chris Pilcher wrote:

 

This is especially true when you consider that pretty much every platform is going to have its own assembly language. Personally, I'd rather learn one language that works on three different platforms than three different languages.

The beauty of assembly language is that you are understanding what the computer is really doing.  If you don't care how the computer does things, then you don't need ASM.  However, IMO if you want to be a true computer scientist, you should be curious and fascinated by how computers really work.  ASM is the difference between being there and watching over a TV camera.

Some problems are hard to understand and debug without knowing the ASM level.  For example, C lets you use high-level language notations to write your programs, but they execute -- and fail -- at the machine language level.  Sometimes the high-level model is not enough to understand the failure mode.  This is particularly true with embedded systems, where you have less OS and thus less protection.  Also, compilers have bugs sometimes.  If you can't understand the ASM produced by the compiler, you cannot tell if a bug is in your program or the compiler.

And then maybe someday you'd like to write your own compiler.  That's pretty hard to do if you've never been one.

Note: I'm not recommending ASM as a first programming language.  I personally think Pascal makes an excellent first programming language, as I said at the beginning of the comments.

I have to agree with you. If you want to be a computer scientist, learning assembly is a great step. I'm actually taking a class in x86 assembly next semester. Nothing tells you more about what the computer is doing than learning assembly, save, perhaps, learning to build your own CPU.

The thing is, electrical engineers are not computer scientists, and most of them likely never want to be. They need a programming language that works on many different platforms, and they need to learn it in addition to other, non-compute sciencey things. Even embedded engineers are likely not going to be using one specific platform their whole career, thus necessitating learning either a multi-platform language or multiple assembly languages.

As far as compilers go, pretty much every compiler out there has been tested and retested and tweaked and fixed for years, if not decades. Unless you need to compile for an architecture that is brand spanking new, you probably won't get any compiling errors. I will not say that every compiler is entirely bug-free, but I know people who have been programming for longer than I have been alive who have never once had a problem using a compiler.

I have to agree with you. If you want to be a computer scientist, learning assembly is a great step. I'm actually taking a class in x86 assembly next semester. Nothing tells you more about what the computer is doing than learning assembly, save, perhaps, learning to build your own CPU.

The thing is, electrical engineers are not computer scientists, and most of them likely never want to be. They need a programming language that works on many different platforms, and they need to learn it in addition to other, non-compute sciencey things. Even embedded engineers are likely not going to be using one specific platform their whole career, thus necessitating learning either a multi-platform language or multiple assembly languages.

As far as compilers go, pretty much every compiler out there has been tested and retested and tweaked and fixed for years, if not decades. Unless you need to compile for an architecture that is brand spanking new, you probably won't get any compiling errors. I will not say that every compiler is entirely bug-free, but I know people who have been programming for longer than I have been alive who have never once had a problem using a compiler.

Chris Pilcher wrote:

 

The thing is, electrical engineers are not computer scientists, and most of them likely never want to be. They need a programming language that works on many different platforms, and they need to learn it in addition to other, non-compute sciencey things. Even embedded engineers are likely not going to be using one specific platform their whole career, thus necessitating learning either a multi-platform language or multiple assembly languages.

The thing is, the EE is quite likely to be the one designing the hardware. He'll need a way to debug/validate/stress-test his hardware design at a point where OS/compilers/libraries may not be available.  It becomes very tricky to get the software to make the hardware repeatably do something to help with your hardware debug when there's an OS & optimising compiler in the way.

EE's may or may not like the fact, but in todays world they increasingly need to have a foot in both worlds. They're also far more likely to need to know asm as they're involved earlier... While I think you're right that the EE probably doesn't want to be a CS, the CS can't do a thing if the EE hasn't done his job and the hardware doesn't work or is unreliable.

The lines are blurred these days, it's becoming much more difficult for either a CS or EE to function without knowing a lot about the other side.

As far as compilers go, pretty much every compiler out there has been tested and retested and tweaked and fixed for years, if not decades. Unless you need to compile for an architecture that is brand spanking new, you probably won't get any compiling errors. I will not say that every compiler is entirely bug-free, but I know people who have been programming for longer than I have been alive who have never once had a problem using a compiler.

Follow the linux kernel mailing list for a while and you'll come across many issues where compilers have done something dumb. The problems tend to get highlighted much more when you're writing at the OS level and consequently you need to be very aware of what the hardware capabilities/limitations are. This can come down to odd stuff like a compiler packing a structure differently such that it no longer fits in a single cache line and you get an order of magnitude performance degradation in a critical path. There's nothing wrong with the compiler as such, there are no errors in compilation, and a CS working at a higher level may never notice.

Fair enough. I have to admit my experience with programming is decidedly not closely related to EE. The same is also true for most of the programmers I know, and those for whom it is not true probably just don't make a fuss about compilers, so that would certainly explain away my anecdotal evidence. The lowest-level programming that I have personally done has been C-coded GPIO programs for the Raspberry Pi. Thanks for the info, you and johnbeetem have really opened my eyes when it comes to low-level coding.

I would like to note that I still don't think your average electrical engineer is ever going to need assembly, and certainly hobbyists won't. But, it is certainly true that assembly of one kind or another would help any embedded engineer or computer engineer or other similar field.

I agree with all that. Probably for some application developers it applies too, since even during non-embedded application development it is useful knowing how assembler instructions work and computer architecture to a reasonably low level, because when the software crashes and a core file is generated, it can be useful to help decipher what went wrong. It basically ends up becoming an extra tool to help in the troubleshooting process.