I'm a chemistry major with limited experience in programming. I've done a few things mostly in VB.Net in the past but I'm interested in learning a new language. I've started learning C++ but I was wondering if it's a good choice in my field.
I can imagine that some programming experience would be useful in almost any field but I don't know what language I should focus on. Any advice?
Thanks
What do you want to program? Each language has a specific target. Perl is great for text manipulation. Lua and C++ are great for games. Java, Python, Ruby, PHP are great for webpages. Some languages are more general than others, e.g. Java, Python, Ruby.
Java is C++ with rounded edges. I recommend either that or Ruby.
Python is a great beginner language, and there are some pretty good online books on learning it. You'll probably want version 2.x instead of 3.x, because most libraries you'll be using probably haven't migrated to 3.x yet.
For learning material, check out "Dive into Python"
Java is a nice starting point and would be useful in your field. Do you have any experience in MATLAB or mathcad?
Radu, these days a little inclination towards rich internet application gives you a better chance to make your career better. As you mentioned that you have a Vb.Net exp, I suggest going to WPF/Silverlight way. You will have a little learing curve and wil soon land up in a booming career.
I'd suggest learning either Java or C#. I expect you'll be using programming to crunch data of some kind. Both Java and C# are fast, and they have lots of libraries to do the things you'll probably encounter.
Also, since you're relatively new to programming, you won't need to jump into memory management and things like that that you'd have to do in C++.
It might also make sense to get familiar with MATLAB or Mathematica. Both are very geared towards doing large number crunching tasks.
However, while languages have their strengths/weaknesses, Norman's answer should also be considered: what are all your (chemistry-major) friends using? This way you'll learn from them and you'll be able to share and collaborate.
Fortran and Matlab would be good if you wanna to work on simulation. There are quiet a few existing codes and libraries. C++ and Java should be also good to pick.
Your best choice is almost certainly whatever your chemistry-major friends are using. In this case it might be Matlab, which is widely used in both natural sciences and engineering.
I'd suggest FORTRAN. You'll find it all over the world in laboratories and other scientific institutions. All the other suggestions here are good suggestions, but if you have to pick only one, that'd be it.
I don't want to get drawn into a language war here, but I'd say learn C++. It is an excellent language - very fast and very powerful. The best part however, is that once you know and are comfortable with C++ learning (almost all) other languages is very easy.
I'd suggest Python. It's easy to learn and has very good library support for scientific programming such as Scipy/Numpy. It has a good support community and it very good for churning out code quickly.
Radu, i suggest having a look at Python, Perl or Ruby.
Please don't get this wrong, but it is unlike that you'll develop a fully-fledged quantumchemical package in the near future. (Neither will i). Thus, FORTRAN and C, while definitely not dead languages in chemistry, shouldn't be your first choice.
But you'll be using existing applications, e.g. Gromacs (written in C), Gaussian (written in FORTRAN), MOPAC, PLATON, etc and you might be interested to generate input files, parse the output and visualize the results.
Consequently, interpreted languages, particularly when supporting regular expressions, input and output of csv files and coming with plotting libraries will be more useful in your studies.