What Language Next

[elsiegee40]

Feeling very old...

I did Pascal, Assembler and C (no + or # then!) at University and went on to program in PL/1 (with DB2 and CICS)... the SQL from DB2 is still really useful

As for programming now... I haven't got a clue! :?

Lin

[russdev]

Yes but what happens when .dot goes out of fashion or gets replaced with something else.

Think could of said that last post a lot better

"You should learn two new languages a year so that your skills never go stale as programming languages come and go but skills to learn new ones never dies"

Scott hansleman has quite good post on it...

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Progra...tsTheTits.aspx

As said this is not about job of programmer but 'personality' of programmer more.


Russ

[webman]

I hate Ruby. Especially when you put it on rails. :x

[elsiegee40]

My coding skills may be dated, but then I have no need to code anymore.

However, when it comes to reading other languages to check for logic faults... I know what I'm looking for!

The programmers of my day were taught to optimise their code for maximum speed and efficiency. When you were working with so little memory and slow devices, the code had to be efficient! I think there are a few big software houses nowwho could do with some training in these skills! Their code seems to assume it will be the only thing using machine resources!

[Geoff]

Originally Posted by webman

I hate Ruby. Especially when you put it on rails. :x

Why? I find it quite elegant.

[webman]

It disagrees with me. I've tried for over a year and I just can't get it - I had all intentions of contributing to FreeMIS :? I'll stick to PHP for now

[PiqueABoo]

what happens when .dot goes out of fashion or gets replaced with something else.

Fashion is really something for random bloggers and their peeing contests over who can write the world's smallest implementation of PGP on a pinhead etc.

I was trying to say quite a lot of coding these days is mostly about gluing API calls together so maintaining a good working knowledge of those and gaining it for the updates they release next week is rather important.

Will I hit that deadline because I knew about a class hidden away in system.diagnostics that I've used before, does exactly what I need and will save me days-weeks of frustration?

Or because I know how to write "Hello World" in a really cute but cryptic way using NERD, an exciting new language that isn't the s/w house's mandatory C#?

[russdev]

Originally Posted by PiqueABoo

Fashion is really something for random bloggers and their peeing contests over who can write the world's smallest implementation of PGP on a pinhead etc.

I was trying to say quite a lot of coding these days is mostly about gluing API calls together so maintaining a good working knowledge of those and gaining it for the updates they release next week is rather important.

Will I hit that deadline because I knew about a class hidden away in system.diagnostics that I've used before, does exactly what I need and will save me days-weeks of frustration?

Or because I know how to write "Hello World" in a really cute but cryptic way using NERD, an exciting new language that isn't the s/w house's mandatory C#?

I do agree slightly in fact yes knowing how to programme hello world in 20 languages but not being able to program well in one.

But what I am saying is as 'programmers' never should be lead down path of having one language and not at least having some working knowledge of other languages.

COBOL programmers is good example of that.

Anyway as haven't learnt any new languages since vb (part from basic php) time to update my skills.

Was looking at Windows Presentation Foundation seems interesting..

Russ

[vbsqluser]

Hi,

Already you have got experience in Visual Basic so, better go for .net.

Try this book :

Database programming using Visual basic 2005 and Csharp 2005
http://www.vkinfotek.com

[hoocmee]

I agree, with Visual Basic experience you learn .net more efficiently. Thing is, this is also probably the most profitable language atm...

[localzuk]

Personally, I would say Java. It is in very high demand in industry.

If not Java, c# as most smaller software houses seem to have transitioned to this as it is a very efficient and well structured language. Not to mention its integration with windows and the amount of features it has increases the speed at which complex applications can be written dramatically.

I would stay clear of anything related to vb. It encourages poor programming practices and the old vb has left an entire industry reeling with support being ended for it. C# wouldn't suffer the same issue, as it's implementation has been standardised and Microsoft is not the only producer of a runtime environment for it.

[torledo]

I think piqueaboo, localzuk and srocford are all on the money...

I think for sysadmins perl and vbscript are still the most useful languages.
Powershell is the next-gen for windows scripting so it'd be useful to start getting into that. But there's an awful lot of vbs scripts and skills that aren't going to be abandoned any time soon.

As for general purpose programing i think c sharp becomes more and more significant. It's the language of choice and .net as the platform for microsoft shops and software houses.

I think for most projects, web app development is the best direction for applicaiton portability, with dynamic elements through ajax and presentation seperation with things like css and flash.

For the presentation tier actionscript for flash is useful though not necessary if you're projects don't need that level of flash eye candy.

For the logic again c sharp comes into play for asp.net hosted sites......c sharp/asp.net is the heavyweight challenger to jsp based web projects. It's also essential for serious sharepoint development. And it's being used extensively to build custom CMS's for large in house asp.net web projects. VB.net is really c sharp but with the syntax to make those coming from vb6 feel slightly less uncomfortable with .net. I think it's the case that most coming from vb6 are using c sharp rather than vb.net for their projects.

php i would also recommend for webapp development also.

It'd be interesting to know how those people are getting on with RoR.....things have gone a little bit quiet on the RoR front following the hype during the middle of last year (around the time these posts wre made). Are people getting anywhere with it ? or is it a flash-in-the-pan pita and you've all gone back to php ?;-)

[el8linuxel8]

Depends what you want to learn it for, fun or a specific task?

PHP sucks as a language but being proficient in it is useful if you run a website.

Perl rocks, you can talk all you want about RoR but think about how much time has gone into Perl, its over 20 years old! and with the release of 5.10 its adopted a few things from Ruby, like simple things like say() so you dont have to supply a \n with a print()

Then you have CPAN? (cpan.org)what other language has got such a large module base?
"6569 authors 13454 modules"

i think you'll struggle to find anything that can compete in terms of quality in the modules either. Mightily impressive.

And like i said earlier, if its for fun then do C! drop ++ and #, C will teach you so so much more about memory management and how computers really work!

[witch]

Consulted with the other 'alf who is an enterprise architect and does or tells other people to program - he says Java for def, and then maybe .net or another of the more 'fashionable' ones.

Personally can't help - Basic and Assembler here!

[tmcd35]

I can, and hate, program(ing) in a few languages, and to be honest it all boils down to two things...

1) What it is your trying to code. You wouldn't use C++ to write a website just as you wouldn't use PHP to write an emulator.

2) What you find easiest to use. I use either Pascal or PHP because they are like old friends. I'm happy with them. The coding I do doesn't need to be efficient just functional.

If your happy with VB, why not update your VB skills, .net and all.