[clue] Budding SW Engineers

[Chris Fedde]

I suspect that anyone finishing a current vocational programming
degree will have seen quite a bit of Java. It's a good career skill to
have.  The other half of the recent graduates have some set of
Microsoft tools under their belt:  C#, VB, powershell, .net etc. but
for this discussion that whole universe is pretty much irrelevant.
C++ is a strong second on unix/linux especially with tools like QT
available to you.  Pretty much all big applications environments use
either java or C++.  But Gnome still hangs on to C and has been doing
a great job of keeping it relevant for linux programmers.  As with all
these languages, modern C does not look much like what you used when
you worked your way through K&R.

I suspect that Javascript and the other parts of the HTML5 tool set
will become even more important to all of us as the browser becomes
the platform of chooice for even more UI.   The maturation of the web
with things like Google apps, jQuery,  and  seems to be headed that
way.  We'll still need "server side" languages but things like Node.js
give javascript interesting things to say there.

It's hard to become a competent Linux user without some exposure to
shell languages, pipes and the assorted tools.  But these days
sed/awk/grep pipelines are less important than they once were.   Tools
like Python, perl, ruby, lua etc live in this space too.  Pick one,
buy the t-shirt forget about the others and go to town.  You'll always
be stuck knowing something about the shell if you are more than a
casual linux user.

As an aside.  It is useful to note that a pipeline involving lots of
small text processing tools in a producer-consumer chain is a great
way to get a parallelism  bang out of your multi-core processor.
Modern linux processes take care of all the messy bits for you.

Then there are all the other contenders, R, Go, Haskel, Lisp/Scheme,
Prolog, Cloture, etc.  Erlang, etc.  In the end it comes down to
experience, background, taste, and which t-shirt you put on today.

I can't end without throwing in an aphorism: "The determined Real
Programmer can write FORTRAN programs in any language."  Ed Post.
http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/realmen.html

This got a bit longer than expected.  Thanks for the prompt.
chris

On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 11:57 AM, David L. Willson <DLWillson at thegeek.nu> wrote:
> I can't count the number of times I've been asked, "What is the best
> programming language? Which one should I learn first?"
>
> I can answer now, with some confidence.
>
> Learn them all, but start with Python, because it's easy, fun, and highly
> capable out-of-the box.
>
> Next, if you want to get further away from the OS, go Java. If you want to
> get closer to the OS, go bash.
>
> And enough JavaScript and perl to get by on.
>
> --
> David L. Willson
> Trainer, Engineer, Enthusiast
> RHCE Network+ A+ Linux+ LPIC-1 Ubuntu
> Mobile 720-333-LANS(5267)
>
> This is a good time for a r3volution.
>
>
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