what kind of programming language would you recommend for a computer engineer thats also a freshmen in high school?
Python is a good start.
C/C++ if you want to understand how computer works.
It really depends on what you want to be doing within this field but the these are the two must haves - especially Python.
If you think you are interested in Computer Science and programming, the quintessential course that you NEED to view lecture materials for is Harvard's CS50. All of the lectures are available for anyone to view for free online (enrolled or not).
Here is the link to the 1st one
There are 12 lectures in total. In order to view them all just replace the 1 at the end with a 2...then 3...then 4 etc. until you reach the number 12.
These are absolutely fantastic videos.
Casey recommends the following next steps:
Sankkara Narayanan’s Answer
The most basic, raw, down to metal high-level language. Most modern languages are built on some flavor of C. So, basically learn C and learn it good.
The programming language eco system is exploding. Some very generic and some provide great way to solve a specific domain of problems. On high level, they are all about syntactic sugar to model problems and how its syntax and constructs help solve. I have gone through low level Assembly level to 4th gen (such as SQL) during school and career. At the end, they all are implemented (under the hood) in C/C++ (or other low level procedural language, that comes close to machine language) to convert to machine specific assembly lang (which uses native "instruction set" of the associated CPU).
Srinivas recommends the following next steps:
Programming is an art. I strongly recommend start reading 'Let us C' book written by Yashwant Kanetkar. Once you get an idea of what magic few lines of code can do, you'll start developing immense interest in C.
After practicing syntax/loops/variables/functions/data structures/few beginner level codes, you can switch to learn Python. I must say - Python is the future. Also, you don't need to invest same time learning Python language as you spent in learning C, because 80% concepts are similar except OOP (Object Oriented Programming).
Trust me, all programming languages are very much similar to each other. Logic remains same, only syntax changes.
Assuming no prior experience in programming, I'd suggest learning with something like Python (e.g. following LearnPythonTheHardWay).
If you have access to someone who knows what they're doing to bounce questions off of, maybe Lisp (scheme) + SICP: https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/index.html
If you have access to ap comp sci course later on, I think they use Java (though I really don't know), so that might work as well.
If you're dead set on comp E instead of just comp sci, then you'll eventually want to knuckle down and learn C, the most trigger happy of all foot-guns available.
The main thing to learn is to have fun solving problems. My advice: start with making a choose your own adventure text game. As you learn more elements of programming you can have this overarching project that you refine and work on. Of course, there are other things you could write, I’m just thinking of what worked for me back in my youth.
Best of luck.
If what you want is to make machines move or hardware talk to each other, you need to get "closer to the machine" by writing code that knows about devices and such. I would learn Python or C in this case. You'll want to dive into two areas:
1) Get to know machines. Like a Raspberry Pi for example. That's a bit of hardware that has a CPU with memory (RAM), networking ports, pins to control servos and other hardware, and pluggable interfaces. Writing code on that machine uses Python.
1b) As you think about memory and how the CPU runs your instructions (compiled from code), you'll get to know that there's some pretty important limitations around space, time, and power. From here you might want to learn C or Java.
1c) C lets you get really close to the inner workings of the computer without worrying about machine code instructions. Java is like a step up from that where the programming language (and its "runtime") handle icky things like memory management and object lifecycles.
2) There's a -completely- different branch of computer engineering that's almost entirely software that deals with writing applications and processing data. This is the realm of like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), web apps, web design, user experience, and mobile apps.
2a) If you go AI/ML and want to crunch data for big problems, find patterns, and do predictive stuff then Python is your friend. Lots of libraries and help there. Python is also fairly easy to read/write.
It's a friendly, open-source based language used by the masses.