What to learn?

SP534

Hey all,

I'm 15, transition year coming up, so I'll have some time on my hands. I love programming, and am planning working on my "real-world" skills over the next year.
I'm planning on doing programming as my job once I'm finished with school/college, so I was wondering what you guys would say would be the most important languages to get a hold on...For college and for freelance/company programming.


I can currently code well in Delphi and VB.NET, and have used a small bit of C++ and Assembly.


Any replies will be much appreciated
- SP534

Pygmalion

Java and C++ for desktop apps.
PHP/SQL/Javascript/HTML for web apps.

Evil Phil

I would say learn C# or Java. As you have VB.NET then C# will be a lot more familiar to you. Java is a very popular teaching language so that would be well worth learning as you'll probably be studying it in college. You could do both as they have very similar syntax and moving from one to the other isn’t difficult. However focus on one and give yourself the entire transition year to get used to it.

SQL is going to be necessary if you're doing any kind of database work. And if you go into a career as a developer then you will be doing database work but you can focus on that later. (@Pygmalion why SQL only for web apps?)

For your Leaving do Maths at an honours level and applied Maths if you can, they’ll help a lot in college.

Free Integrated Development Environments (IDE)
Visual Studio Express for C#
Eclipse (for Java)

Python is a fun language too

Skud

it's better if you dont use and ide to start off with. You learn a lot more at the beginning.

yupyup7up

C# java, html and php.

I no its not a "proper" language as such but if you learn Actionscript 3 well enough. it will look very good on a CV

Pygmalion

Evil Phil wrote: »

@Pygmalion why SQL only for web apps?

Not sure, don't have much coding experience so that's all I've ever used it for. I'm aware it can be useful otherwise (my music player uses it for the collection) but just never thought of it :P

Webmonkey

Pygmalion wrote: »

Not sure, don't have much coding experience so that's all I've ever used it for. I'm aware it can be useful otherwise (my music player uses it for the collection) but just never thought of it :P

What about all those applications that store data? - banking applications, point of sales systems etc. I'm guessing dynamic web content is where you've used SQL in web stuff, well this is only a fraction of database use's

SP534

Thanks for all the replies everyone!

@Evil Phil: I've actually done a small bit of C# too, as you said it's similar to vb.net...I think I'll work with Java now, it's something I've never used before so it sounds interesting

I'm already planning on doing Honors maths in leaving, and will be starting applied in 5th year (it's not available for some reason during transition...). Cheers for the link to Eclipse too


@yupyup7up: I might well have a look at ActionScript at some stage, looks like it could be interesting. Thanks for the idea


So thanks all for the ideas!


-

Just as another (slightly related) question, rather than making a new thread:
If I decide in the future to work with C++ again, and learn it better, would I be better off using "Visual" C++, ie. With the drag'n'drop interface like what's available for VB, or would I be better learning Win32 API and coding apps with that? Or does it make any difference?


Cheers,
SP534

Webmonkey

Keep alway from Windows API programming and Visual programming until you know exactly the ins and outs of standard C++. The Windows API is horrible and will more than likely turn you off programming.
Start getting to know standard C++ first and then move on. You may be better off with the beautiful framework, QT for GUI applications later on but don't get ahead of yourself.
By the way, C++ is quite harder and troublesome than Java.

Raskolnikov

If you want to start off with programming, Javascript is definitely your best bet. To get started, all you need to do is to open up Notepad and start writing code.

fasty

SP534 wrote: »

Just as another (slightly related) question, rather than making a new thread:
If I decide in the future to work with C++ again, and learn it better, would I be better off using "Visual" C++, ie. With the drag'n'drop interface like what's available for VB, or would I be better learning Win32 API and coding apps with that? Or does it make any difference?

I've never understood suggestions to avoid IDE and "Visual" programming before learning a language myself but there are better ways of being about it than Visual C++ and Win32.

"Visual" C++ basically refers to an API called MFC, a set of C++ wrapper classes and macros that isn't really that elegant these days despite still being used all over the place.

Win32 isn't a C++ API btw. It's a C API and has quite a steep learning curve that you'll shake your head with for a bit until suddenly, you "get" it but it's not something that will yield instant results. I disagree that it's crap or badly thought out, there are just some major WTFs in there thanks to a half hearted attempt my MS to keep things backward compatible with old versions of Windows, as well as some inconsistent decisions when it comes to passing data to certain functions.

ganon

Hey, i'm in a similar situation,
I'm heading into TY and want to start programming.

I decided on Java aswell, what are using to learn? I'm using the 'Java for Dummies' book.

SP534

Sorry about not replying all, been busy in RL

@WebMonkey, fasty: Sorry I don't think I worded my question right. I will be working using standard C++ at first, but I mean when I want to make GUI apps using C++.

@WebMonkey: Yeah Win32 API is simply horrible haha I worked with it a small bit with Delphi. Did not like it one bit, so just stuck with VCL :pac:

@fasty: Oh. I thought "Visual" C++ was based off the .NET framework

@ganon: Personally I'll be teaching myself from the web mainly, I might pick up the odd book but looking at full source along with tutorials is the best way to learn (for me anyway).
As for what websites I'll use, I found about.com's stuff excellent when I started with Delphi, so I'll probs read up there a lot (http://java.about.com). CodeProject (http://www.codeproject.com) has a Java section too, which could be handy. Then of course Google will be my main tutor. :D:D

ganon

Cool, let me know how you get on,

No i'm not using a book, I have it in PDF,
I just made my first Hello World program