What language to concentrate on?

Andr3w · 11 Jun 2009 at 11:21

Hi all, i did software development at college (2 years ago) where we did visual basic 6, python etc i really enjoyed it but never carried it on

I feel like learning a language as i have quite abit of spare now and feel like a challange. What should i go for? Stick with VB6? Or go for something else.

Java?

Inquisitor · 11 Jun 2009 at 11:28

What ever you do, don't stick with VB6!

As for what language you should learn, it depends entirely on what you want to use it for. What're you goals?

Andr3w · 11 Jun 2009 at 11:30

ATM Just for some fun

I enjoyed making basic things like calculators/till interface but obviously i felt VB was a little restricted.

C++ May be a little too advanced for me.

Inquisitor · 11 Jun 2009 at 11:34

Well everyone's going to recommend their own pet language, so I'll recommend mine: C#.

If you're developing on Windows and are not bothered about portability, then this is probably the best option for general app development. It also has outstanding GUI capabilities (i.e. WPF). C++ is a powerful language but is complex and also unnecessary in the vast majority of circumstances.

RobH · 11 Jun 2009 at 11:37

I would say either C# or Java, both are great languages and are very poweful.

E1mo · 11 Jun 2009 at 15:13

Perhaps try PyQt?

These are Python bindings for the Qt GUI framework, generally regarded as the best cross platform GUI framework available.

Working with a nice scripting language is much more fun for the hobbyist than going with a compiled language like C in my opinion.

http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/software/pyqt/download
http://zetcode.com/tutorials/pyqt4/

Inquisitor · 11 Jun 2009 at 19:54

Yep, Python's also a good bet; would've recommended it only I wasn't aware of any decent GUI frameworks for it, so there you go

Ruby's also very nice.

lokkers · 11 Jun 2009 at 20:41

I would second C# - nice and powerful, but the basics are pretty simple. My favourite language at the moment

It also gets you into the world of the .NET framework, which gives you access to ASP.NET, WPF, Silverlight and WCF.

azteched · 11 Jun 2009 at 21:02

Ruby or Python

kkbigal · 11 Jun 2009 at 21:30

I'd personally go for either C# and the .NET framework, or look at Java.

Draeger · 11 Jun 2009 at 21:34

azteched said:
Ruby or Python

I have been dipping my toe so to speak, in Ruby recently. An impressive language, but like most newcomers I'm finding the learning curve a bit steep.

Then again I have only just got my head around XHTML and CSS in the past year or so.

Peve · 11 Jun 2009 at 21:35

C# if you want to program for Windows or Python for Linux.

Mystique · 12 Jun 2009 at 16:25

I'd vote for C# if you're gonna be developing for Windows, definately. Or C++ if you fancy your hand at games/graphics programming (my personal field).

azteched · 12 Jun 2009 at 19:37

Draeger said:
I have been dipping my toe so to speak, in Ruby recently. An impressive language, but like most newcomers I'm finding the learning curve a bit steep.

Then again I have only just got my head around XHTML and CSS in the past year or so.

I'm coming at Ruby from a C++ perspective, and yeh it's pretty nice. It's elegant, in a way say, Java, isn't.

For learning-programming-generally something like ruby is a better choice than C# IMO. If you want easy GUI development for Windows and whatnot, c# is of course an excellent choice.

Draeger · 12 Jun 2009 at 19:46

azteched said:
I'm coming at Ruby from a C++ perspective, and yeh it's pretty nice. It's elegant, in a way say, Java, isn't.

I see what you mean by that and would 100% agree with it, yeah. :cool:

Inquisitor · 12 Jun 2009 at 19:57

azteched said:
For learning-programming-generally something like ruby is a better choice than C# IMO. If you want easy GUI development for Windows and whatnot, c# is of course an excellent choice.

I agree with this actually.

MrWhippy · 12 Jun 2009 at 22:07

Whitespace

Inquisitor · 12 Jun 2009 at 22:13

MrWhippy said:
Whitespace

Hell, why not Malbolge!

Malbolge was so difficult to understand when it arrived that it took two years for the first Malbolge program to appear. The program was not even written by a human being: it was generated by a beam search algorithm designed by Andrew Cooke and implemented in Lisp.

Afaik, until quite recently, the only Hello, world program available in Malbolge was without a captialized H, as no one had yet been able to write a version of it that produces correct capitalization

Lightnix · 12 Jun 2009 at 22:20

There's a language which I got a week ban for mentioning on these boards once which I would quite like to bring up at this point. It begins with brain.

Inquisitor · 12 Jun 2009 at 22:32

Lightnix said:
There's a language which I got a week ban for mentioning on these boards once which I would quite like to bring up at this point. It begins with brain.

Brain****'s not that bad; the only difficulty lies in its absolute simplicity. Malbolge is a completely different game: just look at the Wikipedia page about how it works