What is it?
If you could pick one language, what would it be, and why?
Would be leaning towards marketability, support, business applications, etc. Don't want "In theory, APPLE II BASIC was the best language ever because of blah blah blah" Need it to be practical today. As in, making a career of it.
Best programming language ever
C# for 3 reasons:
1. MS will support it forever.
2. Plays nice with legacy C/C++ code.
3. It's not java. Fuck java.
If you want "best" to include out-of-the-box functionality and practical application, that is. Under the hood, the techie details are unpleasant.
1. MS will support it forever.
2. Plays nice with legacy C/C++ code.
3. It's not java. Fuck java.
If you want "best" to include out-of-the-box functionality and practical application, that is. Under the hood, the techie details are unpleasant.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Java or PythonCakedaddy wrote:What is it?
If you could pick one language, what would it be, and why?
Would be leaning towards marketability, support, business applications, etc. Don't want "In theory, APPLE II BASIC was the best language ever because of blah blah blah" Need it to be practical today. As in, making a career of it.
It's not me, it's someone else.
I'd pick Java if Sun and Google partner up in a big way. Until then, Sun seems more incompetent than MS.TheCatt wrote:Java or PythonCakedaddy wrote:What is it?
If you could pick one language, what would it be, and why?
Would be leaning towards marketability, support, business applications, etc. Don't want "In theory, APPLE II BASIC was the best language ever because of blah blah blah" Need it to be practical today. As in, making a career of it.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
If you want high pay and job security, then COBOL. Our advisory committee keeps telling us over and over that they can't get enough COBOL programmers to maintain their old systems and we really need to ramp up our teaching of COBOL.
Those old systems are never going away, they're too deeply entrenched in the banking architecture. And the number of people that can maintain them dwindle every year.
Those old systems are never going away, they're too deeply entrenched in the banking architecture. And the number of people that can maintain them dwindle every year.
"ATTENTION: Customers browsing porn must hold magazines with both hands at all times!"
I just know someone that's considering programming as a career choice. I figured .NET anything would be a solid choice. Wasn't sure about Java though. How is that marketable? The only thing I know about it is niche applications (TV remotes and stuff) and android phones. No clue about Python, what is it and what does it do?
Personally, I'm considering writing a business app for myself that should be marketable. I'm a contractor and I use quickbooks, but there is so much that I do outside of quickbooks using other apps and spreadsheets. So much of my day to day that Quickbooks doesn't address. Just too much being done outside of Quickbooks that I have to track separately and then manually enter into QB. None of it is difficult data to keep/process and building import scripts for QB isn't very difficult either. So, I want to write something that takes care of it all. When I'm done and it works for me, it would work for any contractor that does various things and has techs/employees out there. Plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc. We all get jobs and work with them the same way. Wouldn't be hard to customize it for ticket tracking for a corporate help desk, or building maintenance, etc.
Personally, I'm considering writing a business app for myself that should be marketable. I'm a contractor and I use quickbooks, but there is so much that I do outside of quickbooks using other apps and spreadsheets. So much of my day to day that Quickbooks doesn't address. Just too much being done outside of Quickbooks that I have to track separately and then manually enter into QB. None of it is difficult data to keep/process and building import scripts for QB isn't very difficult either. So, I want to write something that takes care of it all. When I'm done and it works for me, it would work for any contractor that does various things and has techs/employees out there. Plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc. We all get jobs and work with them the same way. Wouldn't be hard to customize it for ticket tracking for a corporate help desk, or building maintenance, etc.
Java - most business uses this as their core language. Probably the highest adoption enterprise language. Also used by many startup companies due to rich ecosystem and free.
C# - Used by many companies, but nearly as many. No life outside the MS ecosystem.
Python - Powerful scripting language that has many modules written for it. A heavily used language for modern data analytics.
For example, if you want to do something modern with data (like Hadoop, for instance), C# isn't even a choice. It can interact with Hadoop, but you can't write native distributed modules in C# for Hadoop. But you can with Java/Python.
Language popularity index.
Github popularity ranking
Javascript is another choice, if the person you know wants to do front-end/webgui stuff.
For your app, have you considered making it a web/app platform?
C# - Used by many companies, but nearly as many. No life outside the MS ecosystem.
Python - Powerful scripting language that has many modules written for it. A heavily used language for modern data analytics.
For example, if you want to do something modern with data (like Hadoop, for instance), C# isn't even a choice. It can interact with Hadoop, but you can't write native distributed modules in C# for Hadoop. But you can with Java/Python.
Language popularity index.
Github popularity ranking
Javascript is another choice, if the person you know wants to do front-end/webgui stuff.
For your app, have you considered making it a web/app platform?
It's not me, it's someone else.
Career choice? I've drowned in this shit for goddamn near half my life now. If he wants to be set, he'll be able to speak all 3 of the languages catt mentioned plus Javascript, preferably jQuery. If you throw SQL on top of that, you're golden. A decade ago, I would've said emphasize embedded systems programming (lots of C). Today, I'd say mobile development is a brighter future (fucking Java).
On Java, I've been watching it lose ground to MS over the years in more than a few ways. As MS gives up points in the world of OS, it's starting to focus more resources on developer tools. When Oracle bought up Sun, I gave up hope on Java.
As far as MS v. Oracle/Sun: I've worked at places where we've opened up tickets with both these vendors. MS always figured the problem and issued hot fixes within a couple days if necessary. Half the fucking time, Oracle can't even solve the problem. They're just like, "Yeah, nasty bug you've got there. We got no idea." The more I use .Net and MS-SQL, the more I tolerate them. The more I use Java and Oracle, the more I want to digitally nut-punch them.
Python's the thing that's displacing Perl (thank fucking god), a programming language so painful to read you can only debug for a couple hours at a time before your eyes bleed. I think Amazon runs most of their online site with Python. Ever since Guido Van Rossum stopped being the caretaker, the language has gone a bit ... insane under the hood. Hasn't taken away from the popularity, though. I use it like duct tape. Shreds text, XML, crawls websites quite well, basic file i/o, etc.
On the demand side, have had no troubles finding either Java or .Net/C# gigs. If I had to pick the first language to learn, I'd make it Python, followed by C#, followed by Java, then Javascript. You'll have to throw the SQL in there along the way.
Edited By Malcolm on 1411433179
On Java, I've been watching it lose ground to MS over the years in more than a few ways. As MS gives up points in the world of OS, it's starting to focus more resources on developer tools. When Oracle bought up Sun, I gave up hope on Java.
As far as MS v. Oracle/Sun: I've worked at places where we've opened up tickets with both these vendors. MS always figured the problem and issued hot fixes within a couple days if necessary. Half the fucking time, Oracle can't even solve the problem. They're just like, "Yeah, nasty bug you've got there. We got no idea." The more I use .Net and MS-SQL, the more I tolerate them. The more I use Java and Oracle, the more I want to digitally nut-punch them.
Python's the thing that's displacing Perl (thank fucking god), a programming language so painful to read you can only debug for a couple hours at a time before your eyes bleed. I think Amazon runs most of their online site with Python. Ever since Guido Van Rossum stopped being the caretaker, the language has gone a bit ... insane under the hood. Hasn't taken away from the popularity, though. I use it like duct tape. Shreds text, XML, crawls websites quite well, basic file i/o, etc.
On the demand side, have had no troubles finding either Java or .Net/C# gigs. If I had to pick the first language to learn, I'd make it Python, followed by C#, followed by Java, then Javascript. You'll have to throw the SQL in there along the way.
Edited By Malcolm on 1411433179
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
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thibodeaux
- Posts: 8121
- Joined: Thu May 20, 2004 7:32 pm
"C++ files have a .c++ extension"TheCatt wrote:One take on which language to learn.
Really?
You're shitting me. That's a website? Any reasonably complete language is equivalent to another reasonably complete language. They all do they same things. It's a matter of how painful each makes those things.
Edited By Malcolm on 1418313354
Edited By Malcolm on 1418313354
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Agreed, there's a lot of overlap but they don't all do everything.
I've been lobbying for our IT program to push C - which is the current first language we teach students - to the second term and bring PHP+SQL forward to be the introduction to programming class. It's so much easier to learn, IMO, that it leaves you more time to include more about good habits like commenting your code. And more people are likely to get around to actually using PHP+SQL at some point in their lives than will actually use C some day.
Edited By TPRJones on 1418315019
I've been lobbying for our IT program to push C - which is the current first language we teach students - to the second term and bring PHP+SQL forward to be the introduction to programming class. It's so much easier to learn, IMO, that it leaves you more time to include more about good habits like commenting your code. And more people are likely to get around to actually using PHP+SQL at some point in their lives than will actually use C some day.
Edited By TPRJones on 1418315019
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