Programming...

[SilentJay]

So because of the striking nonsense at colleges around Ontario, I dropped my night courses. I'm looking to take a class or two that teach either web development or some other useful language.

Problem is, I haven't coded in ... 6-8 years, and even then it was super-basic stuff in school. I've been completely left out of the loop with regards to what the "in" thing is or what's in demand, so maybe someone here can show me the way.

What language should I learn, why, and what non-college institution wouldn't charge and arm and a leg for it?

Thanks :chuckle

[Hyperion]

When in doubt.
Java.

[Fuyuzora]

When in doubt.
Java.

This is probably the safest bet; you can then expand from there.

C++ is often handy as well.

[SilentJay]

:P Just my luck, I hated Java in school.

Colleges are backlogged with the strikes, universities want an arm and a leg... Anywhere else come to mind? :P

[Hyperion]

Don't know about schools.
Online:

[XTOTHEL]

Course Description (and links): http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-00-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-fall-2008/

Lectures: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-00-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-fall-2008/video-lectures/

[ski4life101]

if your looking for basics stick with Java/ C++ everything is moving to the web though so might be good to see what is there, any .net language would be good C# is a common one these days.

[DaveOke]

Here's some must-haves for this field of work:

Languages:
C/C++, C#, and Objective C. You might find many large companies with vb6 code still hanging around too.

Technologies:
.NET, WCF, COM (still lots of that around), Cocoa, OpenCL, WPF

Alot of things these days are going multicore so learn up on multithreaded processing, mutexs, writing thread safe code, critical sections...etc. The newer development APIs are making writing multithreaded code easier (e.g. Grand Central Dispatch, .NET parallel extensions) but it's still very handy to know how to write thread safe code for the lower level stuff.

[alho]

Alot of things these days are going multicore so learn up on multithreaded processing, mutexs, writing thread safe code, critical sections...etc. The newer development APIs are making writing multithreaded code easier (e.g. Grand Central Dispatch, .NET parallel extensions) but it's still very handy to know how to write thread safe code for the lower level stuff.

I agree that multi threading is probably the best thing to learn, esp given the fact that all processors have multi cores. I would say learn C/C++. Once you know C/C++, it's not hard to learn another language. It's pretty much the same stuff, but differing syntax. As well, if you're interested, I would learn GPGPU and heterogeneous programming as well.

[SilentJay]

Thanks for the advice :)

I've done some really basic C in Unix, Java, VB6 in school so it's not totally foreign to me - just wanted to get a "leg up" on the next guy :chuckle

[SomeGuy]

It's not the specific language you know, learn any of the ones above and you can learn any of the others very very quickly. Programming concepts remain the same between all the languages, it's just the syntax that changes (especially c based languages).

(I'm a software engineer)

[alho]

It's not the specific language you know, learn any of the ones above and you can learn any of the others very very quickly. Programming concepts remain the same between all the languages, it's just the syntax that changes (especially c based languages).

(I'm a software engineer)

I think it's also what he plans to learn and accomplish too. If he wants to get to know how a program is at a lower level (ex: memory allocation, memory layout etc), then C would be a better choice than Java. But on the other hand, if he mainly wants to know programming for programming, then yes any languages would be fine.

I would also suggest to learn the best practices in coding. IMO, there's a fine line between knowing how to write code, and writing code well....

[PCLoadLetter]

IMO, there's a fine line between knowing how to write code, and writing code well....

CTRL+C

or

right-click > copy?



:chuckle

[n00bMeiSter]

If you don't mind just going through some reading by yourself. Then go to the Seneca @ York bookstore and pick up the C++ books written by Evan Weaver. Best $12 I've ever spent.
Each book is about $12 bucks and there's 3 of them.
They are the only textbooks I've bought that got used. My other text books ($100+ each) are all still sitting in their plastic wrappings.

PM me some more detail on what you want to do and I'll see if I can point you in the right direction. Include your budget too.

[Slade]

I learned Perl by being shown under 10 lines of code.

I do mostly command line stuff on routers, but it's also good for database and building web apps I find.

Google is awesome to search.

I'm in the middle of finishing my Webmaster Certificate from Mohawk, so I actually learned php before Perl which helped a ton.