Programming - Where should we devote our learning time?

[Migroo]

Current Situation:
We use FMPro for database work, Excel, Word, Outlook and many Adobe applications for image and multi-media work. We have used AppleScript, but not on OSX.

Current Experience:
My programming knowledge is rather limited, it includes VB and Cobol from experience during my High-school computing course.

My colleague used to create software using machine code in the 1960s, alongside Fortran, then Pascal and Basic. He has used Javascript more recently on one project after being in management for many years.

What we need:
Grateful for observations from software practictioners. Should we be upgrading our skills to use C#, or Visual Basic or what? We need to focus on a language that we can use occasionally for small projects. Our software needs to interact with other programs. For OS we use Windows (mostly) and Linux (occasionally).

Any replies would be appreciated!

 

[damiano]

if i was you, i would try perl ...

 

[PCHPlayer]

If your were only going to use windows then VB or C# would be good choices, but since you also want to use Linux then I would say Perl, Python or Java would be good choices.

 

[Migroo]

Thanks guys we'll give Perl a closer look.

Any more comments?

 

[Gaunt]

Another thing you may want to look at is Borland C++ Builder, and Borland's Kylix 3 for Linux. You can build your applications using their components, and run it on either Linux or Windows. Unfortunately the software is not cheap, and definately not free like perl.

As for just looking for new skills to aquire for possible jobs in the future... I haven't seen any software development houses using VB. That said, I've only worked in a professional environment with Windows, and in C++, so Visual C++ was used. .NET seems to be stumbling at the moment (probably what you would use with C#) so it might not be the best thing to dive into studying at the moment, although that's just my opinion.

So, really, it's up to you. If you intend only to do little projects that could run on multiple OSs, perl, python, or java might be options. Java is fairly easy to learn if you know C++ at all. As for perl or python... the code vaguely makes sense when I look at it, but regular expressions make me go crosseyed.

 

[Migroo]

Thanks for your reply Gaunt