Programming Languages

Ok... I have been in the IT field for many years. The capacity being primarily Hardware oriented or Frontend software oriented ( Training/Support ). Currently I am looking to go back to school and looking at expanding my knowledge base by taking some programming classes. The last programming class I took was Basic when it was still considered a viable language to teach. The local community college offers C#, Java, Cobol, and Database Programming ( SQL scripting). I know there are many others outside of those and I am sure I can find books/documentation on those.

Which in your opinion is a good "gateway" language?

I'm no programmer by trade or training, but a networking/operator guy. However, I think the best way to learn programming is a scriptinglanguage like python or ruby to get the concepts of imperative programming.

If you want to become a professional programmer C# or Java will be in high demand in the current corporate environments.

Keep in mind that sql and imperative programming languages are a world apart.

Good luck!

It depends on what you want to achieve. Of these java is the best as a 'generic' object oriented programming language, sql is if you want to learn how to manipulate databases, cobol is a niche language if you're interested in the business world. If you want something abstract and mathematical a functional language like haskell or ocaml is the way to go.

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Originally Posted by Troggie

Ok... I have been in the IT field for many years. The capacity being primarily Hardware oriented or Frontend software oriented ( Training/Support ). Currently I am looking to go back to school and looking at expanding my knowledge base by taking some programming classes. The last programming class I took was Basic when it was still considered a viable language to teach. The local community college offers C#, Java, Cobol, and Database Programming ( SQL scripting). I know there are many others outside of those and I am sure I can find books/documentation on those.

Which in your opinion is a good "gateway" language?

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the most modern languages from that list would be C# and Database Programming.

Java whilst it does have a strong base and is a very widely used language is normally reserved for either big businesses or smaller markets like mobile phone dev etc, dont get me wrong im not java bashing but there are best places for it and i think unless you look at specialist systems you may struggle to use it day to day.

if your primarly based in a windows environment i would suggest C# out of all of them as its based around the .NET Framework that is apart of windows.

hope this helps.

Kris

In my experience, it seems a lot of places around here are looking for C# devs. I think if you know C# then with a little reading you can be a java programmer as well. For the data base stuff you should learn this as well, but it is more of a compliment to the programming language rather than a stand alone piece. Good luck, try playing around with it and find one you enjoy working in.

Thanks all.. I already know a little SQL as I deal with an application that uses Oracle as a back end and will probably continue to work on that here and there.

The application I work with also is based in Java and if I am looking to increase my knowledge for my current employer that would be the way to go.

I found I have a book on for programming with Python I originally bought for my daughter when she was wanting to learn about programming so I may end up using that first and then making a decision on another language later.

If you are going to delve into the web I would suggest a background in HTML also. At least the basics.

An introduction to structured programming would help too. Visual C++ with object oriented programming for example. Depends on where you want to go with all this.

Since you have exposure to sql and java it seems to me natural to get to these, as doing things for real is the best way to learn. Of course, you may not have permissions to change any production code, but usually the employers don't mind getting freebies, so if you can get a little project to work on it'll be really nice. You'll hopefully get people who are good at it supervise your coding and that's better than any book.

The most I've learned about programming has been from working and hanging out with really good programmers. There are usually hundreds of ways to to the exact same thing, but only a couple of them are the right way to do it.

You can also subscribe to the linux kernel mailing lists. It's not going to teach you coding, but it'll teach you design and algorithms, which is the most important part.

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Originally Posted by gugi

You can also subscribe to the linux kernel mailing lists. It's not going to teach you coding, but it'll teach you design and algorithms, which is the most important part.

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I use to subscribe to that way back in the days of Kernel 1.2.. I stopped reading them for some reason and cancelled it. Looks like it is time to re-subscribe to it.

yeah the SQL stuff I have tinkered with more than anything mainly select statements for pulling data out the way I want nothing really over that as doing Inserts and Updates is a BAD thing with the application we have due to the poor design of the database.

I never thought to ask if I could get a piece of code to play with.. guess it is time to walk over to the programmers and start shmoozing.. :gaah:

If you are more on the admin side, learning some of the scripting languages could be very beneficial.

Perl - cross platform
Powershell if you do mostly windows
vbscript might still be useful, dunno. Have not done windows admin work in 2 years.