Learning a programing language

[Robpocalypse]

Many moons ago when I went to school I started out in computer programing. At the risk of dating myself I took COBOL, FORTRAN and learned a smattering of C. Life took me down another path and I ended up going into accounting & finance.

I flirted with coding since then scripting on MUDS & MOOs but nothing expansive.

I'd like to get back into it and have been debating between Java and PHP. Any suggestions or advice? Either of those going the way of PASCAL in the next decade?

[Rooks]

Personally, I'd recommend Python, but that's because it's why I use currently.  It's super easy compared to the old guys like Fortran (only had one semester of that and it was the devil).  I learned mostly on C and C++, but now do all my work in Python in my job.  It's powerful, loads of libraries out there and much easier to write and use.  Don't need to do things like compiling or anything.  You just run it.

[Robpocalypse]

Personally, I'd recommend Python, but that's because it's why I use currently. It's super easy compared to the old guys like Fortran (only had one semester of that and it was the devil). I learned mostly on C and C++, but now do all my work in Python in my job. It's powerful, loads of libraries out there and much easier to write and use. Don't need to do things like compiling or anything. You just run it.

I'll take a look at it. Thanks for the suggestion! The lack of compiling seems attractive.

[bigm141414]

Java and Python would be my recommendations. It depends on what you want to do with the programs. Python and Java are good to know for software dev, but there is a bunch of stuff depending on if you get into web developement or embedded processing, or firmware control. Lots of places where code is used these days. On the plus side the algorithms and logical thinking about problems hasn't changed much Same core ideas, different set of verbs and nouns

 

Check out codeacademy.com for some good intro lesssons and coursera.com for some more academic background. 

[MaD MaLKaV]

I like Python, thanks to the "batteries included" philosophy. That said, if you've done some C why not do some more. It's still the most popular on the TIOBE index and doesn't remove you so far from the hardware that it's harder to picture what's going on (if you like that sort've thing). Heck, I wish they taught me COBOL in school, because there are nice jobs doing it and they often have trouble getting them filled. That said it doesn't look "fun". Lots of the math libraries Python uses via numpy are still written in either C or FORTRAN.

Choice of language is more influenced by what you want to do with it. Never hurts to do PHP and/or Ruby+Rails for web (I consider PHP ugly and it allows some pretty bad habits), Python for general purpose Quick results w/ Django if you want web, C or C++ if you want to be closer to the machine (C++ still best for games and other performance software, you can make some cute some with PyGame for fun), C# if you like Microsoft, Haskell if you want something really different (or Erlang, Scheme, or Clojure).

But yeah, learn one language and any other becomes easy. Python is one of the most straightforward to reason about and see quick results. I don't particularly like Java (even though I've taught courses on it) but ut does have some awesome libraries both standard and out there (although other languages stealing popularity from it is why C is back on top).

[Robpocalypse]

Thanks for all the feedback guys, I decided to give Python a whirl. Started out with the Code Academy website and am progressing along!

[Ambisagrus]

CodeAcademy, aye. That's in my future, too.

[Robpocalypse]

So far I'm enjoying Python.  Seems very intuitive.  

[Hellany]

Just started taking programming classes and Python is what they have started us on...I guess its popular and easy to learn these days. Good luck!