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Thread ID: 99639	2009-05-09 05:59:00	What programming language should I learn?	Renmoo (66)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
772450	2009-05-09 05:59:00	Dear all, I would like to learn a programming language during my spare time. I noticed that Ruby and PHP are widely used over the Internet and I am thinking of learning one of the two, but I'm not sure which one is "the best". I'm also open to other programming language suggestions. In the long run, I'm interested in developing applications (both web application and / or computer applications). I'm comfortable with HTML and CSS. Cheers :)	Renmoo (66)
772451	2009-05-09 06:12:00	Maybe learn XML/Javascript, I been trying it a little for editing my blog templates/widgets. Then maybe try applying AJAX to merge them and others together...	kahawai chaser (3545)
772452	2009-05-09 06:13:00	Visual Basic, then move on to Java and C++ That was what I did, and VB isn't too hard eitehr which is good Blam	Blam (54)
772453	2009-05-09 06:22:00	Visual Basic, then move on to Java and C++ That was what I did, and VB isn't too hard eitehr which is good Blam You should skip VB - there's no real value in starting with it first, and then moving on to something else. It is becoming less commonly used in industry, with C# becoming more "preferred". While it is more forgiving of mistakes, it is important to drill good habits into you sooner rather than later. Java is a good "learning" language, as it is logical, easy to understand, well structured, and you can find tons of resources on it. It is used for developing web applications at an enterprise scale (i.e SAP's "WebDynPro" uses Java, Oracle uses Java, as well as a number of other large scale environments). The key thing for you at the moment is to learn the principles underlying software development / programming - once you learn that (and it doesn't matter what language you use first), you can easily pick up a second or third language very quickly. My advice, would actually be to learn how to build Windows Applications in C# - Visual Studio Express Edition is free (or if you are a student, jump on Dreamspark and get the full blown VS), and has a fantastic GUI designer which will make it easier to start developing interesting applications. This will allow you to focus on learning the principles, rather than tearing your hair out over how to assemble a nice UI. From there, you can move to ASP.NET or ASP.NET MVC (using C#) if you wish to do web development, or shift to Java (the languages are very similar). Likewise, once you understand the principles, you could easily move to PHP if you choose. I would stay away from RoR at this stage - esp. since you are a beginner. Although it is allows you to minimise the number of lines of code you have to write, it has a lot of "black magic", and it would be valuable for you to understand the basic principles first before moving to it.	somebody (208)
772454	2009-05-09 07:34:00	PHP & Javascript	stu161204 (123)
772455	2009-05-09 08:11:00	I vote for Python. It isn't used a lot for web applications at the moment but this is changing quite rapidly. It's very simple to learn and is also very powerful, and is highly object oriented. There is a huge library of Python modules available for just about anything you'd like to do. You can dive right into python quite easily by running it as a command line interpreter, so you can enter commands and see the results straight away without having to save and compile or run a file. Python is cross platform, unlike Visual Basic, so will run on Linux and Unix (including Mac OSX) and it's widely used by Google, NASA and many other organisations.	ad_267 (6193)
772456	2009-05-09 09:05:00	QBasic and Pascal :eek:	beama (111)
772457	2009-05-09 10:24:00	Python. nice for beginers but you can get real work done.	robsonde (120)
772458	2009-05-09 23:42:00	+1 for Somebody's comments, pretty much spot on. I'd also add learning JavaScript and jQuery (which is a JavaScript framework).	dyewitness (9398)
772459	2009-05-10 05:59:00	if your good with html then integrating php into it isnt all that difficult theres heaps of help online for it. But it is mainly web based so that limits your windows applications	hueybot3000 (3646)
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