Development Best programming language to start off with?

Doing pl-sql by day......... but by night being a cat burgling ninja internatinal jewel thief !

Simples.

 

Agree 100%.
As I said - I learned C first.

The point I am getting at is that C# is ALSO a Rapid development tool. Drag and drop the button. Double click to auto-generate event handlers. That (IMO) makes it easier to pick up for a programming rookie (and possibly more satisfying).
But each person is different. I was insanely proud when I firs managed Hello world in notepad and some random commandline-only compiler.

 

Basic is a nightmare starting off at enough most colleges force you to learn it

C isnt alot better

C++ is really simple and you could be up in hours

depends what you want to achieve,

SQL is the one to have but it takes time to learn ( 3-6months minimum for most people )
pay is good though. and can lead to other things like hacking if you understand sql enough ( sql injection is fun to design )

 

Also, SQL is hardly a programming language. It's a query language.
That being Nazi'd about, though - SQL is important if you want to do anything in the commercial world, as it's one of the most common forms of data storage in the world.

 

SQL is Turing-complete, ergo it's a programming language. I saw someone write an app using it to generate fractals with. Fun stuff

And yes, SQL is essential to learn, as it's basically the only way to use databases, even if it's just SQLite.

 

Read these two articles:

http://mcsp.wartburg.edu/zelle/python/python-first.html

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3882

 

Hm... didn't know that... to me (and in the absolute majory of cases), it's a query language, and, as already said - absolutely essential as it's basically the only way to use databases.

 

i would argue that it takes 3-6 hours to learn

select insert update delete

i learnt SQL in a week in order to use

inner outer cross / comma joins

the thing with SQL is experience and having good knowledge of the DB schema

 

And then you get cursors, temp table scoping, etc.
The absics don't take long to learn but some of it is just plain experience.

 

I have been using SQL for years and I still find myself regularly diving back into the reference to figure out how to do something. Once for each dialect of SQL spoken by databases, of course. I wonder what happened to this 'SQL standard' thing

 

Some interesting tips in here! I'm trying to learn how to program Win32 programs with C++ and finding it tricky, I'll look at SQL when I get bored too.

 

Win32 in C++ - yeah... its a lot of code to achieve what seems so little.

Every day for 5 years now for me, and I still do it.

You also learn when coding a lot (and I have coded in 16 languages, last time I counted), that there's just no way for you to remember everything so you amass manuals, references, bookmarks etc.

 

pl-sql by day as a contractor and father by night....

and heck for most jobs you dont even need to be able to program (or get it right)..... you just need to live with the boredom.

IT industry is a (well paid) farce.

look at sql for 10 mins and you're employable


select
from
join
where
group by
having

100k please

 

Really? Maybe I should move to the Netherlands.
As I said - last I counted I'd commercially programmed in ~15 languages, 7 years industry experience (and finance), Management position, and I am still FAR under 100K euros/pounds/USD... not even halfway.

 

Thanks for the advice guys. Recently at work there has been talks of getting one of our team trained with SQL, and I expect that this will come with a better salary..

Any ideas what the salary ranges are for an SQL developer/DB admin are?

Josh

 

18k /year -> 100k /yr

experience / job complexity / range of skills all add up


what are you going to do with the SQL?

 

As someone with not a ton of programming experience, I have to say AutoIt3 was a good place to start, in a way. It's BASIC-like, but it has everything you need to get up and running within a couple hours. Starting with version 3, it has GUI development, as well, unlike Python, which forces you to learn another language if you want a GUI on your program. AutoIt was definitely helpful in getting into that programmer mindset, understanding how information flows.

All that said, I don't know any non-interpreted languages, so ymmv. I've dabbled in JavaScript (which is godawful), PHP, Python, TCL. Most anything I'm looking to do could be done in any of these (there are compilers that can compile PHP into standalone executables, and not counting JS), so mostly it's a matter of understanding what I'm trying to accomplish and how well each language handles those challenges.

However, it seems that still, C/C++ are the past, present, and future of programming for now, if you need a lower-level language. I did read a while back an excellent piece on how lower-level languages are not as necessary anymore, because processors have become so powerful there isn't such an advantage in having programs written in system-level languages anymore. But I may have just taken that as justification for being too lazy to learn C++, however.

There is something to be said for learning a language like Python for prototyping and C/C++ for actual production programming, though. Unless you're a samurai, you'll likely find Python faster to develop in, leaving you with a guideline to re-writing the actual program in C/C++ (plus you can recycle Python code in non-critical areas in the C/C++ implementation.)

Not to go OT, but has anybody else noticed the tendency of the Python crowd to start furiously masturbating over the wonders of tuples and pickles? It seems whenever I'm trying to get something done in Python, if I go looking for help online, it gets derailed by evangelists going on and on about the wonders of Python, rather than allowing me to find what I need.

 

I'm going to say Python as well. Doing an undergrad physics course at the moment and there are several computational modules involving programming in Python. It is high level, human readable code that still introduces fundamental concepts in programming like functions, variables, data manipulation, object-orientated programming and so on. Once these foundations have been laid, you can move onto compiled languages like C++ where you must deal with more complex syntax and other quirks. People that have never programmed before have been able to quickly grasp the concept and produce programs that solve physical problems.

Before Python, people were taught FORTRAN. I really felt for them.

 

I personally learnt JAVA first as it was the only choice we had at my course in first year, ( currently studying computer science at uni),

branched off and learnt C# for a module that I'm currently taking and as some of the other posters have said it is extrmly easy to move from java to c#.

I'm looking into learning ASP and C++ atm tho should be fun.

I recommend you learn C# first as its a widely sought after language in the industry, the company which im going to work for a years placement do all their programming in C#.

What ever language you pick it has its benefits and drawbacks.

 

B, just for shits and giggles.

I started with C, didn't have a choice, it's what my course said I had to use... It's tough, I don't like it, and it gives me a headache everytime I try and use it.

But yeah, go for something like Java or Python.