Which language?

Gall1987 · 1 May 2011 at 22:30

Hi

I'm after some advice on which programming language I'd be best to study over the summer. I'm coming to the end of my first year of a Computing degree and so far I've had experience of .net and Ruby on Rails.

I'm going to start learning another language over the summer in my spare time, but I'm not sure which one would be best. A couple of my people have mentioned C#, but I'm not sure which would be most useful and give me an advantage when it comes to learning new programming languages.

Thanks for any advice

oldbag · 1 May 2011 at 22:36

Java or c++

smyth · 1 May 2011 at 22:45

could go hardcore and try this:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/

Souleh · 3 May 2011 at 11:32

http://lolcode.com/

GravyMonster · 3 May 2011 at 12:57

I guess if you've done .Net but not learnt C# you've been using VB.Net. In which case C# would be both a doddle and a good idea as 80% of jobs involving .Net dev work use C#.

Other than that, what oldbag said. Or Javascript if you want to go all webby.

NathanE · 3 May 2011 at 13:58

Java is dying, and is too much like hard work nowadays, so don't go there.

C#, Python, Ruby are where the action are. Learn one those.

Alex74 · 3 May 2011 at 15:05

I started with C++/C, then moved into Java/C#. Honestly I learned by far the most from C++, but I would say it depends on whether you want to spend time learning more or to just get into application development in the fastest way possible. If you want a faster product on WIN32, C# is probably the way to go

, esp given your experience with .net.

nippynoo · 3 May 2011 at 19:33

C# and Silverlight 5 (currently in beta) with XNA - awesome combination! Develop for any platform, including mobiles/web/standalone.

JimAroo · 3 May 2011 at 20:19

NathanE said:
Java is dying, and is too much like hard work nowadays, so don't go there.

C#, Python, Ruby are where the action are. Learn one those.

Amen brother.

mp3duck · 3 May 2011 at 21:35

Deffo go for C#
I'm a .NET Web Dev using C#, and it's a fantastic programming langauge to work with!

And, as said above, if you've done .NET stuff already with VB.NET, you won't find it hard to convert.

HumbleCoder · 3 May 2011 at 21:48

Depends on what you want to learn, if you want marketable job skills learn C#. If you want a good grounding in algorithms, comp sci, best practicies etc learn Python.

At the end of the day a good dev should be fairly partisan, imo.

Spyhop · 3 May 2011 at 21:56

HumbleCoder said:
If you want a good grounding in algorithms, comp sci, best practicies etc learn Python.

Seems an odd thing to say. You learn those by learning those. They don't come free with a language.

I think people get this question inside out. Figure out a thing you want to create, then find the most appropriate language to create it with.

HumbleCoder · 3 May 2011 at 22:00

Spyhop said:
Seems an odd thing to say. You learn those by learning those. They don't come free with a language.

I think people get this question inside out. Figure out a thing you want to create, then find the most appropriate language to create it with.

I know what you mean, but with I find with C#/Java/Ruby/OCAML/<Insert other here> you get bogged down in the idioms and syntax of a language. I'd say that Python is mostly free from this noise.

But that's strictly IMO.