recommending on a first programming language for today job market?

[imNAKED]

Any recommendation? C, C++, Java, VB, etc.............? Thanks.

 

[notfred]

Learn the fundamentals and good programming tecnique and picking up aprticular languages will be easy.

As far as specific languages, it depends on what you want to do.

 

[imNAKED]

Since most of the corporation are moving toward web application, shouldn't Java be a good choice to learn first? That way you'll have some knowledge of OO programming before you tackle C/C++.

 

[Descartes]

I would personally learn C# unless you have an affinity for non-Microsoft platforms. .NET is ahead of the game with v2 of their framework vs. J2SE 1.5, and you could certainly leverage your C# && .NET knowledge in Java; vice versa as well. There are some exciting things coming with J2SE 1.5 (many of which were borrowed from .NET ;-)).

 

[ugh]

One thing though, if you do learn Java first, you'll get spoilt by the pointer-less world. Once you get to C/C++, you'll be cursing up and down for a while

But having said that, I do agree that Java is a good language to start with. It has most of the concepts that any new programmers should be aware of.

 

[Armitage]

Originally posted by: Tyler
Learn the fundamentals and good programming tecnique and picking up aprticular languages will be easy.

As far as specific languages, it depends on what you want to do.

Exactly ... pick up the basics, and pick up some knowledge in a non CompSci domain while you're at it.
Don't define yourself by the language(s) you know ... If that's all you have going, it will close as many doors as it opens. Define yourself as a problem solver who can work with whatever you're given.

The language you use will be defined by the domain you work in, and the team & company you work for and the project you work on. It's rare, at least starting out that you'll get to pick the language. I know some places that still work almost exclusively in Fortran.

Now that I've said all that ...
Take a look at the domain(s) you're interested in working in. If you want to get into scientific and high performance computing, don't spend alot of time with VB. You'll need C/C++/Fortran etc. If you want to do web stuff, C probably isn't your first choice.

 

[eklass]

i'd say go with c/c++ first.. get the basics and fundamentals down

then i would say learn something more obscure like java

with those under your belt, learning any other language should be cake