programming education & career

Question

I'm currently attending programming courses in a college and I must say that I'm a bit overwhelmed.. In our college, we were taught basic VB.net for ~3months, then Java (basic too for 3 months) and right now, I'm doing basic C++ .. That's basically what I know so far..a little bit of everything ..

It seems that anything .NET is really hot (especially C# and ASP) and Java isn't so bad either. My question is, do I need to be really good in a lot of languages (ie. C#/Java/C++/C)? or should I just concentrate on one (I"m thinking C#) and work my way through that? coz I really don't know if I should spend too much time on one language when I can work on some other thing .. you know what I mean ..

Any advice? Thanks!

Answer 1

Language is not important. What is important are the concepts. If you have got that mastered, you will be able to pick up a new language in a very short time. However, if you do not have the concepts down, you will struggle to write code in every language.

Edit: In fact, many courses use a 'pseudo' language to teach programming in order to focus on the concepts rather than the actual implementation.

Answer 2

True academic CS education isn't aimed at teaching you one specific technology. It aims to teach you general concepts and the ability to apply them in one instances, you're expected to be able to make the transition when necessary.

The problem is that many people get a job when they are done with college that is based on the languages they learned, and some of their experience comes from schoolwork and projects.

My advice is not to worry about languages too much, but focus on being a better programmer. If you understand a variety of languages you can then pick a book and start programming in another language and eventually become good at it.

Focus on getting practical experience in the languages your college teaches, or do everything in your power to get internships.

Answer 3

It takes a very long time to really learn to use a programming language as a pro whereas it only takes a very limited amount of time to pick up the basic concepts.

So I would suggest getting really good at one programming language plus looking occasionally into some others as a learning experience.

Answer 4

I would concentrate on one for now (Probably c# for now, as that's the way you're inclined.), and once you're quite knowledgable in that one, learn related ones.

My take on picking up languages is, it really helps to know one language extremelly well, as this first of all teaches you alot about all the concepts related to that language, but also makes learning other languages easier.

Just make sure it's a good first language, like c#, c++ or Java.

Answer 5

While sybreon and Uri are correct that for you, at this point, the concepts are more important than any single language, I do believe you would benefit from learning one language reasonably well. Doing your assignments will be easier, and after that it will be relatively easy to learn other languages. Just don't assume that you will be able to go through a career in programming with a single language. And don't assume programming is about knowing how to type in a certain programming language (again, the concepts are the most important piece at this point).

What is the best language to master probably depends on your school and your personal likes and dislikes. If your school mandates that classwork must be turned in one of the four (C#/Java/C++/C), it makes sense to master one of them. If you already know you'd like to work in an area where some language dominates, it makes sense to learn that well. For example, if you'd like to be a game developer, C++ would probably be a good bet. If your school does not care, and you'd like to do something like web application development, you might want to look at some well-liked general purpose languages in that space like Python or Ruby.

Answer 6

You may be missing a few things from what you are being taught:

1) Commonalities. How close is the OO-code of Java, C++, C#, VB.Net? Do you notice some patterns in terms of how to change the syntax from one language to another? Do you see how one may do some things better than another, e.g. how Java using a virtual machine or the .Net intermediate language has both benefits and drawbacks? Do you see differences in how pointers are handled in each language?

2) Different paradigms. While you may be taking a few different OO or procedural languages, there are functional languages and scripting languages that could also be worth learning enough to see where they can be useful. There can also be some database and networking stuff that while one can use C# for some of it, I'm not sure I'd want to write my own database server software from scratch in C#.

3) Technology churn. While .Net is hot now, there was a time when Win32 was hot and then something before that and something before that. My point is that there will be new technologies and knowing how to pick up a new technology quickly is a great skill to have that I think you may be selling short in terms of getting diverse experiences.

4) Even if you take one language, you may not get all the way through it. Take C# and all the different ways it can be used, e.g. WinForms, WebForms, ASP.Net MVC, Console Applications, WPF, and WCF to name a few, and does anyone really know all of these things thoroughly? Ok, maybe Jon Skeet or Scott Gutherie, but are there mere mortals that know all of the powers of the language?