[plug] What language to learn?

[Hooker]

My suggestion would be to learn Java well. It's fairly common for development work 
and you ought to be able to make the jump to C# without much difficulty if you feel 
the need in the future.

C++ is another FOSS language that occurs a lot, but it's certainly not trivial to 
learn well and write fluidly.

Predictably the market has a lot of .Net work, but this being the plug mailing list 
and your question about FOSS suggests that your interests are elsewhere. Daniel is 
right about COBOL - there's a truly amazing amount of it with a diminishing number 
of competent programmers. Once you understand how to define data, it's a easy 
language to use. Again, that may not be to your taste.

My advice would be to learn a couple of languages well enough to write good code, at 
least one of which should be strong OO (i.e. not Perl, much as I enjoy the 
language). If you enjoy the work, you'll pick up other languages as you go.

Paul


-- 
"Microsoft is not the Borg - the Borg had good networking"

On Thu Feb 24 13:05 , Daniel Pittman <daniel at rimspace.net> sent:

>On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 06:04, Marcos Raul Carot Collins
>marcos.carot at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I would like to learn a programming language that is both widely used in FOSS
>> and is also in good demand in the job market.  What is in high demand these days 
other than .Net?
>
>In FOSS?  Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, Java, and C are all pretty broadly
>used.  If you want to figure that out, though, play about with this:
>http://www.ohloh.net/languages\?query=&sort=projects
>
>As to "also in the job market", the set is about the same.  Really,
>though, one of the things that gets you hired is being good, more than
>the specific language you know.  Heck, if you really want job
>security, consider investing in COBOL.  It isn't widely learned any
>longer, but there is … well, "a lot of COBOL" would be an
>understatement.
>
>Regards,
>     Daniel
>-- 
>⎋ Puppet Labs Developer – http://puppetlabs.com
>✉ Daniel Pittman daniel at rimspace.net>
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