[Help][Advice]What language should I learn?

[mightychieftain]

Hi all, looking for a little advice on what language I should start working on. Here's a little background: Did Pascal (i know...), C, and Java in high school. Went to college for management of information systems and only learned a little SQL there. I graduated last year and have been working as desktop support at a software company since, but I'm looking to gain some skills to help advance my career.

There are a ton of different positions I could go for being at a software company, and I'm not entirely sure which direction I want to go. I also don't know how advanced the skills I have in each language are vs. what it would take to actually do this every day.

Some that I'm considering are: Python, Visual Basic, SQL, Java, C++/C#. As mentioned above, I have a basic understanding of the last 3 (OOP is the height of my knowledge), but I'm sure I'd have to learn more to use it in the workplace.

Some of the positions I've thought about going for are System Engineer, DBA, Networking guy (not sure the actual title), and possibly developer (would require the most work). My company is paying for me to get my CCNA certification but other than that, I'd be learning the rest on my own. I have access to a MS Volume license if that helps too.

One other thing that may be worth mentioning is I don't know Linux >.<

I'm open to and appreciate all advice and suggestions, thanks!

[Willy]

First I would recommend that you learn Python, with previous programming knowledge in other languages it wont take more than a week to understand it.
It's always good to know a scripting language! (For example I myself changed all the meta tags of my gf's 10k pictures with Python. Do that in 1 hour with any other language!)

Regarding the other ones:

Visual Basic; No personal experiance on the subject so I really don't know where you would need/use this.

SQL; Databases, databases... You'll probably need them everywhere! Even though it's probably most needed in the networking departement!

Java; Myself I started with Java, it's a great language if you want your programs to run on multiple os's. That's it. If you're only programming for windows rather go with C#, very similar syntax and way faster.

C++/C#; C# is increadibly easy to make applications with a graphical interface in! But it only runs on windows. C++ on the other hand, runs on multiple os's and it's probably more powerful than all the others together. (Excluding SQL, cause you can't really compare them...)


Bottom line? Start with Python then play around in it until you're comfortable with it. Next SQL.
Now make a Python program playing around with a SQL database!

Then when you've had your share of the fun, choose another language to specialize in.


I hope I helped you a little atleast!

[mightychieftain]

Thanks for the advice, I really appreciate it. Another thing I came across today when looking into automating processes in Windows was powershell. Have any opinions/know anything about that. Obviously it's limited to Windows, so I'm going to take your advice and start with python, then SQL, but just curious

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[Fisher]

(For example I myself changed all the meta tags of my gf's 10k pictures with Python. Do that in 1 hour with any other language!)

Best use of Python I've heard of so far.