Hi all. I have been given $4000 from the state of NJ to go to any
technical school of my choosing. I am thinking about taking up
programming. I am also thinking about Network admin(MCSE). I already
have an A+ certification. A few years back I took a class on Solaris
administration, but dont remember much. The class was paced to quickly
and the teacher sucked. Really didnt get a chance to put that unix
stuff to practice. I work in Manhatten as a hardware tech. I mostly
fix printers and that really sucks. So I am in the process of deciding
what to do with this $4000. Do anyone have an idea of what programming
language is hot right now? What are companies looking for? What can I
take a course on and get in the door? Any help would be really great.

Mike

Hi Mike,

I think you should base your selection of languages to the kind of work you
really want to be doing.

If you want to develop web pages .. maybe PHP or JSP, JavaScript, and MySQL
Consulting? .. Maybe VB, ASP, VBScript, JavaScript
Product development? C++ or Java maybe
Hardware drivers? Assembler maybe

Why don't you talk to somebody in the industry you want to get into and
figure out what they are using and where they see the future opportunities?

Good luck
John MacIntyre
VC++ / VB / ASP / Database Developer
http://www.johnmacintyre.ca

"Mike R" <m3kerusso (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote

Hindi. Oh, you want a programming language. Never mind.


"Mike R" <m3kerusso (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote

After takin a swig o' Arrakan spice grog, m3kerusso (AT) hotmail (DOT) com (Mike R) belched out:
Well, if you actually got certified in A+, not that Morgan Stanley,
the creators of the language, have created any such certification, you
would presumably be able to readily find employment amongst those
companies using A+ and/or APL.

<http://www.aplusdev.org/>

There are not a LOT of companies hiring APL programmers, but it is
pretty steady work for those few that know it, and a lot of them are
likely to be in Manhatten, so your location is certainly convenient.
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "moc.enworbbc" "@" "enworbbc"))
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/functional.html
If two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it.
-- Hemingway

In article <cbf2bd83.0402201824.4009fab9 (AT) posting (DOT) google.com>,
m3kerusso (AT) hotmail (DOT) com says...

<I can't believe no one has jumped on this yet...>

The first language you should learn, if you want to be a successful
programmer is... Hindi.

Jawn <spammersRlosers (AT) spamcop (DOT) net> wrote:
programming concepts. Which particular language doesn't really matter if
you understand the concepts. Can you even get training on COBOL or FORTRAN
anymore?

The world rejoiced as "Dataman" <dataman (AT) ev1 (DOT) net> wrote:
Let me suggest a contrarian position on that...

Learning to Solve Problems is the _true_ goal.

Trying to hammer everything into "object-shaped holes" seems very
often to be a distraction from actually solving the problem.

This is particularly the case when working with C++; it apparently has
such a staggering lack of convenient expressiveness that people have
found it necessary to write series upon series of books on how to
express patterns that, in other languages, are often simply a screen's
worth of code.

Mathematics and physics are disciplines where it is vital to come up
with notation to describe relationships between things.

The "grand error" of the last generation or two is the error of trying
to replace mathematical analysis with classification of systems as
sets of "objects."

Unfortunately, "objects" haven't the history of hundreds of years of
development and successful use that we find with mathematics.

But since you can send people so illiterate that they can't factor a
simple polynomial to a course on drawing informal object diagrams that
_look_ as though they are a form of analysis, that _must_ make it the
Way of the Future.
--
(format nil "~S@~S" "cbbrowne" "cbbrowne.com")
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/nonrdbms.html
[Concerning MSFT innovating their way out of a wet paper bag...]
"Maybe if it were a very very wet paper bag, but then they'd face the
insurmountable barrier of surface tension."
-- Geoffrey Tobin <G.Tobin (AT) latrobe (DOT) edu.au>

Mike,

Learn whatever language you want but remember....

You'll only want to make a career out of something you enjoy and have
a flair for. Also, if your passionate about what you do then you may
want to stay away from the MCSE route and go for something that the
open source community take part in i.e. Java, C++, etc etc....

Do you want to be a darkened room programmer or someone who constantly
develops and uses whatever technology is the best at the time to get a
result. These are very different skill sets - which one are you?

If you take a software engineering course you could consider taking
one taught using Eiffel. You wont get a job programming Eiffel but it
will teach you how to program properly.

Hope this helps you decide.....

Jon

m3kerusso (AT) hotmail (DOT) com (Mike R) wrote in message news:<cbf2bd83.0402201824.4009fab9 (AT) posting (DOT) google.com>...

Christopher Browne <cbbrowne (AT) acm (DOT) org> wrote: