I started coding in Java at uni about 4 years ago and since then I have been very Microsoft centric. Recently I have been reading Chris Dalbys blog (http://www.yellowpark.net/cdalby/) and bought my self a current cost meter, and am very very tempted to get a SLUG.
However I dont know Linux and really cant code in anything other than C#. So should I learn another language? If so which one!
- Java: Know a bit but haven't touched in in nearly 4 years.
- PHP: Again learned a bit at uni but not in any depth
- C++: Did about 10 minutes at uni of this! maybe something to learn!
- Ruby: Quite liked the idea of this dynamic language but was not totally sold on it!
- Python: No nothing about python other than its a scripting language!
Last year I had a very interesting conversation with Dave Verner about Ruby on Rails and he said I should aim to learn a new language every year - at the time I thought he was a bit nuts, and he probably thought I was a lost cause - but I can see sense in what he was saying now!
I suspect Im going to try and learn a bit more about Linux so hopefully a language which will run happily in Java makes sense (though Im pretty sure all the above run happily under Linux).
Any suggestions??
3 comments:
Hi Ross
Thanks for the link. As you may know, I have been heavily Microsoft centric for many years. I decided to try a few new things over the last couple of years. One of them was to dip my toe in the water of a phone system built on asterisk and linux, the other was php.
I have always had a probelm remaining focussed and enjoy the thrill of learning something new. My first programming language that I learnt was VBA, followed by ASP. I then moved onto Flash and ActionScript. I think it is good to keep options open and integrate the right tools for the job.
If you want to play with a slug, it is very well documented, just follow the links on my blog. I would probably try ubuntu to get my head around linux in the first instance. Install apache, MySql, php, phpMyAdmin etc.
A couple of months ago I learnt php when I built chinposin.com. There was simply more documentation out there for using the twitter API. You'll probably find it is similar to C#. The major thing I found is that there is just alot more code examples out there, and php.net is well documented by the community.
Glad to hear you got a current cost. We're using #currentcost when we talk about it on twitter. Keep up the good work! Chris
Rails (and Ruby) is quite fun. It's fairly likely that a certain department will be teaching it in the second year soon. I taught it to MSc students this year, and it went very well. Come along to Super Monday Something and find out more.
Paul
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