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  3. Which programming language to learn

Which programming language to learn

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  • L Lost User

    Which is in opinion best to start learn from you? HTML? C++? PERL? C++/VB/C#/F#/PYTHON .NET? Any others and why? Have you learned first which one and salary list please Thanks

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    Advecticity
    wrote on last edited by
    #2

    I'm not sure if it's an easy to learn outside of an academic setting, but here we're learning Scheme as our first year language and I think it's a very good choice. There's little syntactic mess, it can be reasoned about with mathematics (which makes it easier for a number of mathies that don't have prior programming experience) and it's even possible to jump into concepts like interpreters after only 1-2 month. F# is nice but type inference is too complicated for a beginner.

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    • L Lost User

      Which is in opinion best to start learn from you? HTML? C++? PERL? C++/VB/C#/F#/PYTHON .NET? Any others and why? Have you learned first which one and salary list please Thanks

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      Advecticity
      wrote on last edited by
      #3

      I'd go for F#. It teaches you to think in a very different way and can improve your programming habits and style as well as your ability to reason about algorithmic problems.

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      • L Lost User

        Which is in opinion best to start learn from you? HTML? C++? PERL? C++/VB/C#/F#/PYTHON .NET? Any others and why? Have you learned first which one and salary list please Thanks

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        Roger Wright
        wrote on last edited by
        #4

        HTML isn't a programming language; it's a page formatting standard based on SGML but extended somewhat over the years. PERL and Python are scripting languages, and the line between them a programming languages is a bit fuzzy. C++ will always, IMHO, be a necessary evil, as it is an extremely powerful language that is rather useful for writing other languages, not to mention operating systems. VB.Net is a sop to VB programmers to keep them buying Microsoft development tools, and it's very handy for doing small tasks badly. C#.Net is a quite usable language which offers the syntactical simplicity of VB.Net while retaining much of the power of C++, with the advantage of being much easier to learn than C++. F# is a totally new direction in programming, and well worth a look, but career opportunities are probably somewhat limited if that's the only language you know. That being said, most, if not all, of the languages I've mastered are long obsolete, but I got paid well for knowing them. How much is NOTDB, and salary requests are not generally well received here.

        Will Rogers never met me.

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        • L Lost User

          Which is in opinion best to start learn from you? HTML? C++? PERL? C++/VB/C#/F#/PYTHON .NET? Any others and why? Have you learned first which one and salary list please Thanks

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          BillWoodruff
          wrote on last edited by
          #5

          Hi, I think such a broad question is a little bit like asking "what kind of car should I buy ?" But, please don't think I am making "fun" of you by saying that; I take your question seriously. What would be helpful would be for you to add some information on what you'd like to be doing in the future: do you want write games; do you intend to become a formally trained "computer scientist;" or, to be a creator of good-looking, efficient, web-sites that use server-side back-ends, connected to databases, for e-commerce ? Do you see yourself developing software for a particular OS: Apple, Windows, Android, Linux ? Do you see yourself wanting to develop software for a particular smaller form-factor (smart-phones, tablets, phablets, the new Surface from MS)device ? Or software that is "responsive," that could potentially run on all of the above devices, plus desktops: useful, and looking good: no matter what screen-size the end-user has at hand ? So, imho, a lot depends on your goals, and their time-frame. Do you have several years, the intelligence, and the mean$, to become a highly-trained computer scientist ? Do you have a goal of having a product in the "marketplace" within six months ... a year ... or ? We are, now, at kind of a unique nexus, I believe, in software development, where the scripting language misnamed JavaScript (it never had any connection with Java) has become, thanks to "Prince" jQuery, and other extension libraries, a kind of "Cinderella gone to the ball," even embraced by Microsoft. ... edit ... If you "buy" the hypothesis that we are now at some kind of "nexus" of change in software development, and one of your decision factors is making relatively more money in the future ... then you might also consider that today's statistics (from whatever sources) about numbers of jobs, types of programming skills required, and salaries, may well be not reliable as predictors for the future ? ... end edit ... A lot of programmers are shifting towards a combination of HTML5 + CSS3 + JavaScript as a solution to creating software that can run on many OS's and devices. But, this "solution" is still not fully fleshed-out (some complex issues there involving standards bodies, etc.). imho, these technologies are in a state of rapid ferment, and change. Personally, I consider C# to be the best possible language to program in, and it would be my choice if I were ever (saints forbid) to teach computer science again. I think C# offers a clear path to understanding OOP (object

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          • L Lost User

            Which is in opinion best to start learn from you? HTML? C++? PERL? C++/VB/C#/F#/PYTHON .NET? Any others and why? Have you learned first which one and salary list please Thanks

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            AlirezaDehqani
            wrote on last edited by
            #6

            C# first and then languages on the web such as HTML and ASP.NET

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            • R Roger Wright

              HTML isn't a programming language; it's a page formatting standard based on SGML but extended somewhat over the years. PERL and Python are scripting languages, and the line between them a programming languages is a bit fuzzy. C++ will always, IMHO, be a necessary evil, as it is an extremely powerful language that is rather useful for writing other languages, not to mention operating systems. VB.Net is a sop to VB programmers to keep them buying Microsoft development tools, and it's very handy for doing small tasks badly. C#.Net is a quite usable language which offers the syntactical simplicity of VB.Net while retaining much of the power of C++, with the advantage of being much easier to learn than C++. F# is a totally new direction in programming, and well worth a look, but career opportunities are probably somewhat limited if that's the only language you know. That being said, most, if not all, of the languages I've mastered are long obsolete, but I got paid well for knowing them. How much is NOTDB, and salary requests are not generally well received here.

              Will Rogers never met me.

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              Lost User
              wrote on last edited by
              #7

              Roger Wright wrote:

              C++ will always, IMHO, be a necessary evil

              Roger Wright wrote:

              C#.Net is a quite usable language which offers the syntactical simplicity of VB.Net while retaining much of the power of C++, with the advantage of being much easier to learn than C++.

              Why is everybody so scared of pointers? Memory addresses and how to calculate them are the most fundamental things on a computer. It's not that the math is really hard. Just a little (integer) addition or multiplication. And the concept of 'borrowing' the memory from the OS and later returning it, like a book from a library, is also no rocket science. I have written it someplace before: My C++ destructors look very similar to what I do in C#'s finalizers and in Dispose().

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              • L Lost User

                Which is in opinion best to start learn from you? HTML? C++? PERL? C++/VB/C#/F#/PYTHON .NET? Any others and why? Have you learned first which one and salary list please Thanks

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                Lost User
                wrote on last edited by
                #8

                Which I learned first? None of them. I started with writing machine code programs. While you probably will have a hard time getting a job with that today, I still think that everybody should start there. It's a great way to learn the most fundamental concepts. No matter what language you are interested in, it always ends up with the processor executing machine code. Learning and understanding any language is not hard anymore, once you know what your processor is actually doing.

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                • L Lost User

                  Which is in opinion best to start learn from you? HTML? C++? PERL? C++/VB/C#/F#/PYTHON .NET? Any others and why? Have you learned first which one and salary list please Thanks

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                  Andrew Torrance
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #9

                  Dont think of language and money in the same breath . Treat your first language as an introduction to the subject to get a grasp of the fundementals and then after that decide what area you want to work in ( web , enterprise , real time , mobile etc ) and then pick the language based on that .

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                  • L Lost User

                    Which is in opinion best to start learn from you? HTML? C++? PERL? C++/VB/C#/F#/PYTHON .NET? Any others and why? Have you learned first which one and salary list please Thanks

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                    Joan M
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #10

                    Depending on what you want to do and what do you need the answer will differ... Give us more details...

                    [www.tamautomation.com] Robots, CNC and PLC machines for grinding and polishing.

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                    • L Lost User

                      Roger Wright wrote:

                      C++ will always, IMHO, be a necessary evil

                      Roger Wright wrote:

                      C#.Net is a quite usable language which offers the syntactical simplicity of VB.Net while retaining much of the power of C++, with the advantage of being much easier to learn than C++.

                      Why is everybody so scared of pointers? Memory addresses and how to calculate them are the most fundamental things on a computer. It's not that the math is really hard. Just a little (integer) addition or multiplication. And the concept of 'borrowing' the memory from the OS and later returning it, like a book from a library, is also no rocket science. I have written it someplace before: My C++ destructors look very similar to what I do in C#'s finalizers and in Dispose().

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                      Lost User
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #11

                      CDP1802 wrote:

                      Memory addresses and how to calculate them are the most fundamental things on a computer.

                      Yes, but not many people understand the fundamentals any more. Far too many think programming is a question of dragging some tools onto a page, double clicking to generate event handlers, and asking CodeProject for the rest.

                      One of these days I'm going to think of a really clever signature.

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                      • L Lost User

                        Which is in opinion best to start learn from you? HTML? C++? PERL? C++/VB/C#/F#/PYTHON .NET? Any others and why? Have you learned first which one and salary list please Thanks

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                        realJSOP
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #12

                        All languages are pretty much the same (although HTML isn't a language). Learn one, get a job doing it, and the rest will come along as your career develops. Over the last 31 years, I've done the following for money, and learned each one when I needed to learn it: Fortran Cobol CMS-2Y Assembly Pascal Delphi (which is a fancy name for Pascal) Modula-2 dBase2 SQL (Oracle and SQL Server) Ada C C++ C# VB VB.Net PHP HTML It's difficult to specialize AND stay employed. Usually, you can do one or the other, but not both.

                        ".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
                        -----
                        You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
                        -----
                        "Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997

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                        • L Lost User

                          Which is in opinion best to start learn from you? HTML? C++? PERL? C++/VB/C#/F#/PYTHON .NET? Any others and why? Have you learned first which one and salary list please Thanks

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                          Lost User
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #13

                          coveredInTheBlood1 wrote:

                          and salary list please

                          There ain't such a thing. Salaries vary depending on location and experience. Finding a COBOL-programmer is hard nowadays, and as such, they're expensive. Doesn't make it a good career-move, COBOL is hardly used in general business. If you want to get rich, find a different track.

                          Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: if you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]

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                          • L Lost User

                            CDP1802 wrote:

                            Memory addresses and how to calculate them are the most fundamental things on a computer.

                            Yes, but not many people understand the fundamentals any more. Far too many think programming is a question of dragging some tools onto a page, double clicking to generate event handlers, and asking CodeProject for the rest.

                            One of these days I'm going to think of a really clever signature.

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                            L Offline
                            Lost User
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #14

                            Yes, at least some of them are proud that they still can get something done with a simple text editor and some kind of makefile. :) I love the looks on their faces when I suggest that they throw away the text editor and the compiler away as well and then use a hex editor to write that what would be the compiler's output to a file directly.

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                            • L Lost User

                              Which is in opinion best to start learn from you? HTML? C++? PERL? C++/VB/C#/F#/PYTHON .NET? Any others and why? Have you learned first which one and salary list please Thanks

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                              M Offline
                              Mike Hankey
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #15

                              It might be easier you to tell us your salary requirements and we can suggest a language?

                              VS2010/Atmel Studio 6.0 ToDo Manager Extension
                              Version 3.0 now available. There is no place like 127.0.0.1

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                              • L Lost User

                                Roger Wright wrote:

                                C++ will always, IMHO, be a necessary evil

                                Roger Wright wrote:

                                C#.Net is a quite usable language which offers the syntactical simplicity of VB.Net while retaining much of the power of C++, with the advantage of being much easier to learn than C++.

                                Why is everybody so scared of pointers? Memory addresses and how to calculate them are the most fundamental things on a computer. It's not that the math is really hard. Just a little (integer) addition or multiplication. And the concept of 'borrowing' the memory from the OS and later returning it, like a book from a library, is also no rocket science. I have written it someplace before: My C++ destructors look very similar to what I do in C#'s finalizers and in Dispose().

                                R Offline
                                R Offline
                                Roger Wright
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #16

                                I've never been scared of pointers - I started out programming in machine language and assembly. But the notation sucks, and the libraries that were available when I was using it were almost as tedious as writing one's own from scratch (MFC, for instance). I suspect that things are better now, but I'm not interested in looking. :)

                                Will Rogers never met me.

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                                • L Lost User

                                  CDP1802 wrote:

                                  Memory addresses and how to calculate them are the most fundamental things on a computer.

                                  Yes, but not many people understand the fundamentals any more. Far too many think programming is a question of dragging some tools onto a page, double clicking to generate event handlers, and asking CodeProject for the rest.

                                  One of these days I'm going to think of a really clever signature.

                                  R Offline
                                  R Offline
                                  Roger Wright
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #17

                                  Well said, Richard! :-D

                                  Will Rogers never met me.

                                  L 1 Reply Last reply
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                                  • R Roger Wright

                                    Well said, Richard! :-D

                                    Will Rogers never met me.

                                    L Offline
                                    L Offline
                                    Lost User
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #18

                                    :thumbsup:

                                    One of these days I'm going to think of a really clever signature.

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                                    • R Roger Wright

                                      I've never been scared of pointers - I started out programming in machine language and assembly. But the notation sucks, and the libraries that were available when I was using it were almost as tedious as writing one's own from scratch (MFC, for instance). I suspect that things are better now, but I'm not interested in looking. :)

                                      Will Rogers never met me.

                                      L Offline
                                      L Offline
                                      Lost User
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #19

                                      No, things have not gotten much better. Since the arrival of .Net native C++ has been treated like a stepchild in Visual Studio. On the good side, I can dig out ancient code and get it to work again. So, your concern is not with the language itself, but with the lack of a decent IDE support and a modern library of a similar caliber as the .Net framework?

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                                      • L Lost User

                                        No, things have not gotten much better. Since the arrival of .Net native C++ has been treated like a stepchild in Visual Studio. On the good side, I can dig out ancient code and get it to work again. So, your concern is not with the language itself, but with the lack of a decent IDE support and a modern library of a similar caliber as the .Net framework?

                                        R Offline
                                        R Offline
                                        Roger Wright
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #20

                                        Well, those, plus the fact that the notation is unnecessarily cryptic. When I started out, it was during the time that people realized that maintenance cost more than development, primarily because of unstructured programming, and language syntax that was difficult to read and understand. Languages evolved as a result into ever more readable forms, until C++. That was a giant step backward. It helped with the structure problem, but destroyed any hope of humans being able to read it. Added to that - and for me it was a matter of timing, I guess - was the shift from procedural programming to event-driven programming, popularized by Windows. C++ by itself was a challenge, but not insurmountable. Add Windows, and message pumps and handlers and all the crap that comes with it; it was too much for me to assimilate. C# came along, and saved my butt, at least for the small amount of programming I still do. Fortunately, I don't expect ever again to have to program for a living, though I like to take on an app now and then just to keep my fingers nimble. One never knows where the next job will be, nor what skills it might require. :-D

                                        Will Rogers never met me.

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                                        • R Roger Wright

                                          Well, those, plus the fact that the notation is unnecessarily cryptic. When I started out, it was during the time that people realized that maintenance cost more than development, primarily because of unstructured programming, and language syntax that was difficult to read and understand. Languages evolved as a result into ever more readable forms, until C++. That was a giant step backward. It helped with the structure problem, but destroyed any hope of humans being able to read it. Added to that - and for me it was a matter of timing, I guess - was the shift from procedural programming to event-driven programming, popularized by Windows. C++ by itself was a challenge, but not insurmountable. Add Windows, and message pumps and handlers and all the crap that comes with it; it was too much for me to assimilate. C# came along, and saved my butt, at least for the small amount of programming I still do. Fortunately, I don't expect ever again to have to program for a living, though I like to take on an app now and then just to keep my fingers nimble. One never knows where the next job will be, nor what skills it might require. :-D

                                          Will Rogers never met me.

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                                          L Offline
                                          Lost User
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #21

                                          This must have been one of the first programs I entered into my old computers to see if I had not fried anything while soldering it together:

                                          0000 7B
                                          0001 3F 00
                                          0003 7A
                                          0004 30 01

                                          This is just a simple 'Hello World' type of program. It just turns on a LED and turms it off when you press the input key next to the hex keyboard. Barely enough to show that CPU, memory and I/O are alive and well so far. You know what I like so much about it? It's, besides having been formatted by instructions, absolutely free of style or syntax. Just instruction codes, followed by one or two bytes of data if needed. No other representation (besides assembly code perhaps) can give you a more precise or shorter description of what your code does. There is no potential for misunderstanding or any hidden side effect. Every instruction alters the CPU's state in a precisely defined way. The hexadecimal notation does not disturb me one bit. They have become as readable to me as any other language.

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