[drorco]

> Hiragana being far more useful to know starting out, if you had to pick one.

Before visiting Japan, I learned to read in both Hiragana and Katakana, but I didn't really know more than a dozen or so words in Japanese. While visiting Japan, I found Katakana to be a lot more useful, because it's commonly used and often is just English words converted to Japanese letters. I think all my Hiragana reading abilities were completely useless as I couldn't tell what I was reading.

[samus]

> I think all my Hiragana reading abilities were completely useless as I couldn't tell what I was reading.

This is what many people don't realize when they wish they wouldn't have to learn Kanji or Hanzi. They make a lot of sense for languages with lots of homophones.

Edit: typo because of autocomplete

[yakubin]

> They make a lot of sense for languages with lots of homophobes.

I think you meant homophones. At least I hope so.

[lloda]

Homophones can be disambiguated in writing the same way they are disambiguated in speech, or they can just fall into disuse and be replaced.