

Ask HN: What language should I learn? - smoran02

Hi,<p>I'm a Computer Science major in college right now, and it's moving at a somewhat slow pace for me -- granted, I am in the very early stages.  I have some experience with C++ and very little experience with Ruby.<p>I have heard about lots of languages, but I'm not sure what I should start to teach myself that would be the most useful.  Does anyone have any suggestions for me?<p>Thanks.
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gexla
Asking which language you should learn is like walking into a wood shop and
asking which tool you should learn to use. Screw the tools, just build
something and grab whichever tools you feel are right for the job along the
way.

I never could learn a programming language for the sake of learning. I always
had some idea of something I wanted to build and then used that project as my
learning experience. Hopefully at the end I had something which could possible
be useful for me.

You should probably be doing the same. If you have no ideas of what to build,
then you should probably change your thinking. NOW is the best time to start
thinking about which direction you feel you would like to go and start working
on something in that area.

Games? Security? Mobile apps? Web apps? Systems administration? The list goes
on. You need to get dirty so that you start to itch. Once you start itching,
let that carry you. At that point, all other questions are answered.

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notmyname
French. Or Arabic. Or whatever you don't already speak.

Snark aside, the standard answer is something like "Learn a language in each
of the different kinds or programming (functional, procedural, etc)". Really,
though, programming is not about a particular syntax. It's about learning how
to think and deconstruct problems.

So that brings me back to the spoken languages. Learn new things that will
challenge you (spoken languages are great), and learn how to deconstruct
problems. And above all, have fun doing it.

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steventruong
1\. It ultimately depends on what you aim to do. A large part of HN will
recommend Python (myself included).

2\. If you do a quick search, you'll realize this has been covered an endless
amount of time with more in depth answers to help.

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smoran02
Alright, thanks. Should have thought of that.

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rman666
Ruby, Ruby, Ruby. Or something else, it's up to you :-)

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phektus
just build something yo'

it will come to you eventually

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hendrix
It doesn't matter. I'm in a similar position to yourself (although i have
graduated college w/ a non EECS degree) and have chosen c++ for the challenge.
It depends tho; if you want to do webapps by all means learn ROR/python, if
you want to do low-level suff then c/c++.

