Which coding language should I prioritize for these objectives?...

[Obreh Winfrey]

Javascript is not a language to learn best practice programming. It's missing variable scope, it's is weakly typed, its object mechanism is not classical objects composition/inheritance, it has serious ambiguous parses. syntax is a self-contradictory after thought.
I should not have to point this out to you.
If you think JS is a suitable beginners programming language then you yourself have not been properly trained to program.
Even crockford had to demarcate the useful parts of JS in "JS the good parts" and even then people would be better off using typescript or ECMAscript.
How are you going to learn about encapsulation or objects in a language which doesn't implement either properly?

Powershell is a piece of crap. Do you know how to tail -f in powershell?
Powershell is so bad that microsoft had to add bash to windows.
Using shell to describe powershell is a misnomer because shells on windows are not plug and play and even after you install them the very nature of the underlying system renders them unsuitable for anything complicated. windows importing of -nix concepts leads to contradictions such as links not being first order objects, locks controlling file access and presence, path types being incompatible, commands outputting random space, command output being unstructured and too talkative, no default error stream, inconsistent interpretation of space in scripts

Powershell and Javascript are not good entry points to programming

And with you having said all that, now I need you to go back and look at what was asked and how I responded. OP was looking to write code for personal use, automation, generating reports. As valid as everything you said is, trying to write to best practices doesn't apply when getting off the ground. Yes PowerShell is shyt, but if someone is in an all Windows environment, they could be forced that way. You gotta do what you gotta do to get the job done right?

Similar reasoning to the next person I responded to. We're trying to get a 10 year old into it. Using JavaScript can get them hands on with a language and segue them into a framework so that they can produce something that gives instant feedback. I was 14 trying to self teach. Trying to use SOLID principles and thoroughly understand OOP concepts would have turned me all the way off to the discipline.

We can agree to disagree, we can even disagree to disagreeing, but you ain't gotta come at me sideways.

 

[null]

Yes PowerShell is shyt, but if someone is in an all Windows environment, they could be forced that way. You gotta do what you gotta do to get the job done right?

and OP might be forced to tyoe with his toes for all we know ...

who knows .. until he mentions constraints lets not make them up for him huh?

We can agree to disagree, we can even disagree to disagreeing, but you ain't gotta come at me sideways.

nah you are wrong and this isn't even worth arguing about

yeah that was a bit harsh but the answer is start with Python (on Linux) with Bash to chain his modules together.

this is not a case of "opinion" or "agree to disagree".

it's misplaced and simply bad advice.

JS is an abomination of a language.



*waffle deleted

 

[Duke Wy Lin]

@brehsimilitude if someone picks JS as a first language, will there be a lot of unlearning to do when they try to learn a different language?

 

[null]

@brehsimilitude if someone picks JS as a first language, will there be a lot of unlearning to do when they try to learn a different language?

if you learn to use JS properly (lint, Crockford rules) you will avoid some of the pitfalls. your general programming habits will be formed by learning a better langauge at the same time. so full stack guys might pick Java or Kotlin.

i have only dabbled with JS in the past. i might however use something like Perl or bash to write a small program even though they are in the broader programming sense limited and non-general purpose languages. it is a case of horses for courses.

you need to get the basic rules of concepts like encapsulation, OOP/data types, interoperability, efficiency ingrained on what you do no matter which language you are using. if you learn programming from an JS pov only then you may not achieve this. if you move to JS you will find the lack of certain features frustrating. in the case of large scale projects JS is often unsuitable due to its limitation and the scale of the project alone.