I want to be the BEST programmer in the world... where do I start?

[sciencewhiz]

I guess I didn't make myself completly clear. I wasn't giving a road map to which language to learn when, but general principles to becoming the best programmer in the world. I agree that you shouldn't learn more than 1 language at a time, but to become the world's best programmer you need to know many languages with a wide variety.

While C and C++ and a different, there isn't any program that you can write in C++ that you can't write in C, though it may take more work to write it in C.

I am going to stick by my original statement that the world's best programmer would be proficient in assembly. There are 2 reasons. First, there are somethings that assembly just does better than any other language. Also, knowing assembly is the only way to debug compiler errors. Modern compilers have many bugs that can only be found by looking at the assembly dump of your program. In the last year and a half, my boss has found 3 compiler bugs (they were in Turbo Pascal, Delphi, and Visual C++) and if he hadn't known assembly, it would have been impossible to identify the bugs and work around them effectively.

I agree that object oriented programming is where the jobs are now, but again, the world's best programmer wouldn't restrict him/herself to object oriented programming.

Here would be my suggested list of programming languages that the world's best programmer would know, not in any particular order:

assembly, C++, Pascal, Cobol, one of the visual languages (visual basic, visual C++, visual J++, or Delphi), and perl or other scripting language, and possibly ADA. Using these languages, you could write any program in the world efficiently.

 

[BFG10K]

You want to be the best? Simple, get an apprenticeship with John Carmack.

Weyoun: I thought you were the guy from DS9 but I didn't want to say anything in case somebody accused me of being a Star Trek Geek. BTW I am a changeling so you know what that means!

 

[M]

My advice would be to refrain from asking a programming question on a hardware site. Particularly not a consumer hardware site (Not to take away from those who are members here; it's just not 'where it's at'). I can't really recommend any sites to hang around, other than, perhaps, a brief look around at /., which, although more a mainstay of the OSS and Linux communities, tends to attract the attention of a fair few coders. If you search the 'ask slashdot' section, there is a wealth of information on how to choose a programming language to learn; what's hot and what's not, so to speak.

That said, I would put forward that you should really consider the fundamentals. Jumping into the deep-end with C/C++ and/or assembly, is generally a Bad Idea (tm). Really, I'd suggest you start out with a fairly simple language with good fundamentals; python comes to mind. JavaScript, whilst not great, isn't bad either.

harping back to my original point, I can't say I'm terribly well equipped to answer this question (In fact, I know that there are many more coding gurus with far more knowledge than I); all of my learning so far has been needs driven (I want to do something, so I learn a language to deal with it). I was just lucky that I picked JavaScript to start out with first; given that it's syntax is a very nice representation of object-orientation.

 

[MSNY]

I've been a system analyst (applications programmer) for 6 years. I went back to school after some years to get this degree and it opened all kinds of doors for me. Now I'm making 2x what I made before in my other career.

I'd start with going towards a bachlors degree in Computer Science or Information Technology. You need to decide if you want to specialize. I'm a business applications programmer on an AS/400 mainframe. I know C, C++, Cobol, RPG and Visual Basic along with T-SQL. But...I have the best of both worlds because I can also program at the PC networking level and connect the two (pc & mainframe) together. Several of these languages cross platforms so I'm good on any machine.

Jot down some goals for yourselve. What areas of interest do you like ? Most off I found out that whatever you do, make sure it's something you have "fun with" and it doesn't become a boring job. Another thing, once you get into this field your in demand, you can almost name your salary. To stay on the cutting edge get into a company that pays for future training. The company I work for has spent a small fortune for my training. Good luck !

 

[Cybordolphin]

I was going to let this die.... as it was posted in the wrong forum. I know better. For that I appologize. BUT I must thank everyone for their response(s). Great stuff!

I will consider all.

Thanks very much.