Asked By: Jared Friedman - 9/2/2011

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

Not to be negative, but it will take you several years of programming to get a job in a corporation. Most won't even look at you without a degree based in programming. You could freelance or work on open source projects in the meantime. Programming isn't everything. Some jobs may require you have specific knowledge in a particular computer science field in addition to programming.

C/C++ is more difficult than C#/Java. Try C#/Java for a gentler introduction to coding. Pointers can leave you confused real fast. C/C++ is very error prone. Before I ever dedicated time to reading C/C++ books from beginning to end, my programs crashed almost every time I wrote them because I simply didn't understand what was happening. In C#/Java that's not an issue so much. For example, it may take you two years of hardcore programming to be able to answer most of the programming issues posted in this sub-forum with ease.

The proper way to decide is to base your choice on the type of applications you want to make, and since I highly doubt a novice programmer will be creating real-time or embedded applications, C#/Java/VB is the better choice for desktop applications. Many suggest C/C++ because it exposes you to more and makes you a more knowledgeable coder. That's true, but still, you don't have to make it your first language. I have most major universities backing me on this. They usually start with a Java course first.

PHP is also a good first language. It's fairly simple to use and web applications are exciting for novices. They certainly beat command-line programs. Python is very similar to PHP. I really don't see anything special about it. It has its place in web processing. I think novices would find PHP and Python easier to use than C/C++/C#/Java because they require a lot less "code writing (syntax)" to accomplish the same thing. The trade off is that it's more error prone since it's weakly typed. PHP/Python is easier to learn, but not a whole lot more than the others.

You have to remember that when you learn to program, you don't really learn a language or a syntax. You use a language to reinforce your learning. You learn the concepts that compose a style of programming. You learn about: conditions, operators, primitives, objects, functions, arrays, searching, sort. All languages have constructs for those concepts, and the syntax (typed codes) differ slightly.
It will take you a lot longer to "learn" the concept than to make it a reality in a language. If you feel like you know a concept but have massive troubles coding it then you probably don't understand it well. After a while you focus on learning a concept correctly, not coding it. That's the least difficult thing to do.

SQL is a different type of language. It's declarative, not imperative like the others. An imperative language is one in which you tell the computer what steps to take to accomplish some goal. A declarative language is one in which you specify what results you want. SQL is very easy to learn. Depending on what you want to do, it could take you a day or longer. A simple database query can be learned in hours.

Haskell, as well as the other functional languages, are notoriously difficult to learn mainly because you have to learn a new way of doing things. It's a completely different way of thinking about things. It relies on recursion heavily, which can be difficult for novices at first, making it seem more difficult than it really is. But recursion is in my opinion what makes it an elegant language. It's a very clever style of programming. It's certainly not a language for building 99?f mainstream applications. It's mostly used in academia. Why are Hashkell developers paid so much? Not really sure. My guess is because it's very efficient for some things. It's a very valuable language where good developers are hard to find. And, of course, they can demand a high salary. For an interpreted language, it's very fast (2.5x slower than C), whereas Python, PHP, etc. can be upwards of 25x slower than C. Functional languages can be highly optimized because they don't use variables (rather they don't keep program state).

Don't know much about VB. I think it's pretty much the same as C# and Java.

Answered By: Blackcompe - 9/2/2011