Which programming language should I learn?

[Churchill]

Cheers Churchy! Found what seems to be a decent online course for C# so having a crack at that right now. The IDE is a bit daunting to be honest but the usual build, debug stuff is there and so far so good.

Visual C# .NET Programming

Good stuff! Have fun.

[BlasterBates]

Quite possibly they do pay him. The shortage of devlopers in Germany means they have to take any dreck they can get.
BB wouldn't last a second anywhere where real bright developers are e.g. the City.
That's why he has to traipse all the way to a foreign country in order to get less money than he would at home.

That's all changed I'm not interested in City contracts because they're too low paid. You need to check out the Swiss Franc (2.2 -> 1.39).

You must be on a pittance these days, and the taxes in the UK are higher

[sasguru]

That's all changed I'm not interested in City contracts because they're too low paid. You need to check out the Swiss Franc (2.2 -> 1.39).

You must be on a pittance these days, and the taxes in the UK are higher

Bollux. I can tell from your posts that you're not top drawer so whatever you're earning in some dullsville Euroville will not compare to what the best people are earning either in the City or on the mainland.

[d000hg]

Use whichever language you feel most comfortable with. I would suggest that you spend time getting to know the VS2010 IDE first, it has its foibles and really the last thing you want to be doing is learning a new language and the IDE.

Good luck.

Any questions drop me a PM.

Good call, though with C# the IDE is not exactly part of the language, but kind of intertwined. You'll be able to find tutorials/books which deal with both at once no doubt.

[Cliphead]

Good call, though with C# the IDE is not exactly part of the language, but kind of intertwined. You'll be able to find tutorials/books which deal with both at once no doubt.

The online course I linked to seems fine for a start, happy to consider recommendations for any books you may have come across.

[BlasterBates]

Bollux. I can tell from your posts that you're not top drawer so whatever you're earning in some dullsville Euroville will not compare to what the best people are earning either in the City or on the mainland.

If that's what you wish to believe

[minestrone]

You still haven't adressed the points, and in fact the debugger is slower by a factor as suggested by the "teenager" (several hundred percent). Since the debugger obviously works reasonably well most of the time (i.e. small applications and when it doesn't need to cope with large data sets), I suspect that Sun Microsystems, who invented Java, don't see the need to invest an enormous effort putting in optimisations, which weren't necessary in the C++ version. Anyway I can see you're not going to argue the points, so I think we can agree to disagree, and you can go back to your optimisation work.

I do not think SUN will be investing in Java this year.

[Cliphead]

So, ten hours so far of C# tutorials and I'm getting this, kinda hooked now.

Awright so I haven't done anything useful yet but I can see the possibilities and it's not as difficult as I thought it would be. Time for a breather but I can see this going into the wee small hours.

Begs a question, how many of you actually do enjoy coding or is it just a means to an end?

Oh yeah, can I interface with MySQL instead of SQL Server further down the line?

[d000hg]

Begs a question, how many of you actually do enjoy coding or is it just a means to an end?

I'm a big nerd, I enjoy coding.

Oh yeah, can I interface with MySQL instead of SQL Server further down the line?

Absolutely, it's basically DB-neutral. No doubt someone will come and pick holes in that, but essentially.

[sasguru]

So, ten hours so far of C# tutorials and I'm getting this, kinda hooked now.

Awright so I haven't done anything useful yet but I can see the possibilities and it's not as difficult as I thought it would be. Time for a breather but I can see this going into the wee small hours.

Begs a question, how many of you actually do enjoy coding or is it just a means to an end?

Oh yeah, can I interface with MySQL instead of SQL Server further down the line?

A word of warning: reading about coding is not the same as coding. When I learn a language I usually pick a book with plenty of hard exercises. Programming is a practical activity and practice makes perfect.

As to enjoying coding, I don't do it much anymore having moved to the management/mathematical modelling side but yes I think it can be one of the most pleasurable and creative intellectual pursuits going, which is why I'm learning Python* as a hobby with the side intention of programming a potential project for a mate.

*thanks NickFitz, you were right