Simple programming languages/ideas

Andypandyboy

I would also say Python was your best bet.

Mr_Toad

Another vote for Python.

I spent 40 years as a software engineer and Oracle DBA using many languages over the years. Following early retirement I started using Python and I find it great. There are libraries for almost every application and it is both logical and easy to use getting as complicated as you can handle or need it to be.

It's cross platform, I use it on my Raspberry Pi to analyse and plot data from a weather station. I use it on a laptop running Linux to control an astronomical telescope and on my Mac for all sorts of other stuff.

esuhl

Wow! Thanks all! :T

I'll definitely be having a look at Python, LiveCode and Powershell, and maybe SQL or C# if I'm feeling brave!

I_have_spoken wrote: »

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.

Oh really? I've done pretty much everything you can do in Excel, I think. (Well, last version I used was Office 2003...). But what's "machine learning"...?

I had a weird job once where I was told to design a system to anticipate company profits and stock market prices. I was told that it HAD to be in Excel as users wouldn't cope with anything else. It was a case of quit or do as they asked (no matter how daft).

I ended up with VBA code that ran to 200 pages of A3, and had to break down cell formulae into multiple operations so I could cram them in to the 255 characters limit for cells.

It had an amazing user-interface (if I do say so myself!) that dynamically updated based on available data, and used OLE Automation to connect to an Access database. I loved the fact that you could just look at it and see at a glance what data were needed to calculate the remaining unknowns, and what had already been deduced from available data.

In the process, I wrote dozens of functions and subroutines that would come in handy. Years later, I corrupted my hard drive and lost almost everything. Argh...

I'd love another job where I could spend all day writing code...

Lorian wrote: »

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.

Oh, I haven't used (old 1980s) BASIC for over 20 years. The horrors and abominations of BASIC were made quite clear when I learnt Pascal shortly after! I really try to write clean, logical, modular code now (on the very rare occasion I dabble). I also have a Computer Science A-Level from many years ago, but I've probably forgotten most of it!

Powershell sounds interesting. I always hated MS-DOS (and the subsequent command prompt in Windows). I used UNIX for a year and absolutely loved it. It just seemed so elegant. I guess that's why I like GNU/Linux, even though I don't do much with it. I guess I should look at Bash scripts too...

Anyway, I'll definitely look out for that book.

S0litaire wrote: »

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

Ah, I don't have Windows 10, just W7 and Arch Linux. I guess there would be the same scripting languages available in Arch...?

RobTang wrote: »

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 dabbled in C and C++ very briefly 20 years ago, and found it pretty baffling. I also did some random adult learning course 10 years ago where we learnt Visual Basic, Java and HTML/CSS. I found the VB and web design dead easy, but struggled with Java.

I can't remember why I found C and Java so hard. Maybe because they're not as verbose as Pascal and Visual Basic...?

onomatopoeia99

C. So much stuff is written in it and it's not going away any time soon.

I have no idea about the job market and what's in demand / trendy this week btw, so you may wish to ignore me. Aside from C, I mostly write x86 and x64 assembly language at work ( I do not recommend these for someone looking to get into coding ).

Johnmcl7

Mr_Toad

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

C. So much stuff is written in it and it's not going away any time soon.

I have no idea about the job market and what's in demand / trendy this week btw, so you may wish to ignore me. Aside from C, I mostly write x86 and x64 assembly language at work ( I do not recommend these for someone looking to get into coding ).

Yes, there's a lot of C and C++ out there. At one time most of my coding was in C but as hardware improved the requirement for tight, efficient code that used as few resources as possible changed to I don't want it perfect, I want it on Thursday.

C is a great language but I can't remember the last time I used it, or even if I still could!

All my Linux code in recent years has been shell script stuff.

Doshwaster

esuhl wrote: »

Wow! Thanks all! :T

I'll definitely be having a look at Python, LiveCode and Powershell, and maybe SQL or C# if I'm feeling brave!

I'd say Python and C# are the most useful in the jobs market.

Basic SQL should be a core skill in any IT job as it crops up all over the place and is very simple to pick up. It's only when you get into PL/SQL that things get complicated. I can't remember the last time I saw a Visual Basic job advertised.

Otherwise I'd look at mobile app languages. Depending on whether you are an Apple or Android person go to https://developer.apple.com/ or http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

ChiefGrasscutter

blimey...
Reading this most interesting thread tells me how times move on
There was I starting with Basic before moving to a bit of Pascal and then Fortran at University on ICL mainframes.
..and on to and engineering career of mega number crunching where Fortran was king.

S0litaire

I remember programming in machine code (well a few of my college I.T. courses covered it)

Mr_Toad

One of my Uni lecturers was involved in the design of early ICL machines.

When I started programming it was in assembler on IBM 370s then on VM/CMS systems as well as DEC Vax BSD Unix.