Whats the Best programming platform?

[GlacieredPyro]

Just for interests sake:
When I did computer science in school, we did gwbasic and turbo pascal. So that is the languages on which I cut my teeth. While studying, we did C, C++ but mostly Cobol as far as pure programming languages go. We also did sql, 4gl and Clarion. When I started work, I started out in VB6 and moved on to VB.net and now I do Natural. Additional stuff I also had to learn were HTML, XML, CSS, ASP, MSSQL and javascript.

Point? Pick a nice, forgiving language to learn programming but don't over think it too much because (if you don't go crazy) in 10 years time you won't be programming in that language or maybe even on that platform anymore.

Exactly.
I learned Pascal in school. Java and C# in college.
Started working in VB. And everything is a blur from there.

After you get to a certain point you can pick up a lanuage in a couple of weeks.
I just wish I had learned C/C++ much much sooner.

 

[matt]

Just for interests sake:
When I did computer science in school, we did gwbasic and turbo pascal. So that is the languages on which I cut my teeth. While studying, we did C, C++ but mostly Cobol as far as pure programming languages go. We also did sql, 4gl and Clarion. When I started work, I started out in VB6 and moved on to VB.net and now I do Natural. Additional stuff I also had to learn were HTML, XML, CSS, ASP, MSSQL and javascript.

Point? Pick a nice, forgiving language to learn programming but don't over think it too much because (if you don't go crazy) in 10 years time you won't be programming in that language or maybe even on that platform anymore.

Exactly.
I learned Pascal in school. Java and C# in college.
Started working in VB. And everything is a blur from there.

After you get to a certain point you can pick up a lanuage in a couple of weeks.
I just wish I had learned C/C++ much much sooner.

Ya, I think programming is more a way of thinking than a language, I also did Turbo pascal in high school, then VB6 in college, and when I started working, then moved into .Net, since then it's been ASP, ASP.Net, VB.Net, C#, Javascript, ActionScript, JQuery, T-SQL, PHP, HTML, CSS, etc. Doing windows applications, web sites and web based applications, web services, etc. Usually using web forms, but also been having to use MVC, CSLA, WCF here and there. Once you have the way of thinking right, learning a new language isn't such a big issue.

Better to pick a type of development, and main platform, eg Web sites / desktop applications / mobile apps / games. Windows / Linux or Unix servers will mean that you go for either .Net for Windows or PHP or Java for Linux / Unix. If you want to develop for Macs and iPads and stuff, look into Objective C.

 

[Mister 44]

Exactly.
I learned Pascal in school. Java and C# in college.
Started working in VB. And everything is a blur from there.

After you get to a certain point you can pick up a lanuage in a couple of weeks.
I just wish I had learned C/C++ much much sooner.

Ya, I think programming is more a way of thinking than a language, I also did Turbo pascal in high school, then VB6 in college, and when I started working, then moved into .Net, since then it's been ASP, ASP.Net, VB.Net, C#, Javascript, ActionScript, JQuery, T-SQL, PHP, HTML, CSS, etc. Doing windows applications, web sites and web based applications, web services, etc. Usually using web forms, but also been having to use MVC, CSLA, WCF here and there. Once you have the way of thinking right, learning a new language isn't such a big issue.

Better to pick a type of development, and main platform, eg Web sites / desktop applications / mobile apps / games. Windows / Linux or Unix servers will mean that you go for either .Net for Windows or PHP or Java for Linux / Unix. If you want to develop for Macs and iPads and stuff, look into Objective C.

Agree completely. If you can program, you can learn a new language pretty fast. What is very difficult (for me at least) is changing between OO and structured programming languages. That is why I won't recommend Cobol for somebody starting out anymore. Rather go the OO route from day 1.

 

[matt]

Agree completely. If you can program, you can learn a new language pretty fast. What is very difficult (for me at least) is changing between OO and structured programming languages. That is why I won't recommend Cobol for somebody starting out anymore. Rather go the OO route from day 1.

I recently learned a lot more about how Javascript works even though I've been using it for years, and where I'm used to strongly typed, class based languages, actually getting into the idea of a loosely typed, prototypal language was quite weird. But it's actually really cool when you start using it properly. The odd thing is that there are no classes, so everything is really a function, and you can sommer stick a new property or method into an object instance, any time you want to without a thought to class definitions or anything, and it just applies to that instance, or if you use the prototype, then it'll be in all future instances of that class (which is actually a function).