Simple programming languages/ideas

esuhl

I'm looking for a bit of inspiration and advice about some simple programming I can do for fun.

I taught myself BASIC aged 12, and Pascal and Visual Basic (and VBA in Word, Excel and Access) later. I have very briefly dabbled in HTML, CSS, and Javascript. I also started a Computer Science degree.

So... I understand basic programming concepts, and can turn my hand to simple scripting... but I'm not an accomplished programmer and am not familiar with some of the very complex-looking IDEs and languages that are around these days.

I recently had an intermittent broadband fault. To log when disconnections occurred, I wrote a Windows batch script, and remembered how much I love to code. I kept thinking of ways to make it more sophisticated and useful and built it into something that (I think) is pretty cool (in a small, humble way).

I'm looking for something that's flexible, useful, and that I can "get into" really quickly. Something where a "hello world" program is one or two lines of code; not a hundred references to library files and obscure components.

And also some inspiration of interesting/useful/fun programs or scripts that I can write. It'd be great if I can write something that others would find useful.

If there's something that would look good on my CV, that would be a bonus. I use Windows and Linux, so something that works with either platform (or both) is fine. I also have an Android phone.

Thanks for reading! Any suggestions gratefully accepted! I don't really know where to start.

RobTang

Python is always tipped as a good learning language and is pretty useful.


But honestly its not trendy but learn Java for a "C like" language, its easy to lean, widely used and its been in the most in demand skills list forever.

I_have_spoken

Not programming as such, but management information skills are in demand and tend to be harder to push to India. Excel pivot tables, macros, power query, PowerBI, visualisations, data mining, machine learning, etc.

TBH if I'm looking for developers, I expect them to know Visual Studio 15, model-view-controller patterns, Ruby on Rails, GitHub, ...

prowla

Python is the current trendy language.

Client-side Java is on its way out.

paddyrg

Python is free, pretty straightforward, platform agnostic.
LiveCode is quite fun, close to English syntax, and the IDE is simple and compiles down to mobile devices easily
JavaScript is ugly and clunky but widely used
Java - it's day has passed really (awaiting flames from Java programmers), the runtime causes regular security concerns than home users are routinely advised to uninstall it, nobody runs it in browsers any more, although it holds on in some business sectors
C# is still very popular and open, and if you like curly-bracket languages, it's far more elegant than JavaScript.
VB.NET is C#'s less loved cousin, complies down identically on the same runtimes, might be worth a tinker.
HTML/CSS is a dog's dinner, having gone from being a markup for documents to a platform for web apps with lots of abuse along the way. Pretty much no web pages are hand-rolled any more, but an appreciation of the basic structure is still useful.

Of these, if you wanted to work in IT, I'd go with C# (MS do a free IDE and compiler etc) as from there you can learn other curly-bracket languages more readily. If you don't, and just want to kick something around for fun and very speedy results, try livecode or python.

Lakeuk

Learn about databases and SQL, then move on to a programming language, think of a problem that can be solved by storing data in database. Programming jobs is a global market, I agree management information is more regional than global due to preference for developer / customer to be closer but a lot of it is being serviced offshore and it direction companies want to go to save costs by being self serviced.

S0litaire

You could pick up a cheap R-Pi or Arduino board + some I/O devices and have fun!

Their are loads of code projects you could get your teeth into.

Since you've been having Internet problems How about a "Hartbeat" device. Something that sits on your network which checks your internet connection periodically and reboots the router/Modem if it can access the internet or if it finds a problem then it sends you a message and reboots the router/Modem automatically.

Check out "SamKnows" they use a router to test internet speeded and reliability for ISP's around the world. they open source their testing scripts.

John_Gray

If you wrote BATch files to reduce the amount of effort in administering PCs and laptops, then you might consider PowerShell, which is considerably more powerful - and more complicated!

Sadly I am too old to learn PowerShell, but I write BATch files on an almost daily basis, and they are Task Scheduled on several servers to run many times a day.

ARandomMiser

Just as something a bit different you could look at UI design and user experience ... some of the tools available there such as Balsamiq, Axure, Invision etc. They seem quite in demand these days.

Lorian

Powershell. (obviously Windows Only)

Try the book "Powershell in a month of lunches"

Coming from a BASIC mentality you won't be entirely happy until you get to the end of the book, but just go with it, and do it in the right order.

S0litaire

You can run an Ubuntu Shell in windows 10 now,
So that opens up a lot of scripting languages.