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Best Language for Employability?

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Ehtyar:
For the dotNET languages, it would seem silly not to use the IDEs btw., since the GUI designers make everything so easy (and that's the frigging point of dotNET, to be easy and fast to use!)
-f0dder (August 13, 2007, 04:18 AM)
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I make it a point to learn languages the hard way before the easy way. In most cases i actually never start doing it the easy way (no radasm for asm and no vs for c). As an example, for my first 6 or so months of win32 development, i did all my dialogs from scratch by hand (i use resed now).
Another aspect is portability, which visual studio is intentionally made not to be, as much of my coding takes place on several computers, many of which i do not have administrative rights on. Reading a C# thread the other day (link) i found an interesting c# IDE (link) that im considering trying which should suit me in the portability aspect.
Thanks for the answers so far guys, your post was particularly reassuring iphigenie, there may be some hope for me yet (better download a perl interpreter huh  ;)).

Ehtyar.

KyleLanser:
Elitist attitudes about using VS, or eclipse are childish in inefficient.
You use the best tool for the job, doing asp.net web development, the best tool is VS.NET. Doing java development the best tool for the job would be eclipse with 5 or 6 major plugin's installed. Doing things the 'hard way' is a waste of time and resources.

For learning "C#" and "Java" the language is just a bunch of for loops and OO relationships. To be a C# or Java code monkey, you gotta know the API, and then, to be a productive employee you gotta know the tools.

As for languages to choose for employability... I always just did what i enjoyed, and because its what i love i want to be the best, and so i've always had at least 1, usually 2 contracts going.

so figure out whats fun for you.

Web development? asp,php,flash,ajax

Server development?
ftp, ssh, apache, subversion, all open source so start playing.

Windows Desktop development? all the cool stuff on this site

Graphics programming? directx, opengl, sdl,

embedded systems?
hobbyengineering.com - BoEBot great fun.
"javalin" - embedded java programming
http://bigelowaerospace.com/includes/jobs.php?jt=Software%20Engineer

pocketpc development?
write apps that interact with gps modules
alternative data entry - "dasher" (again open source)
write apps that interact with rfid tag's, and write your own inventory management app for moving companies...

there are just so many ways to go...

maybe you wanna do some computer science Research, go back to school, work on computer vision, 3d visualization, Voice recognition, voice sythesizers, Darpa great race kinda stuff...

so more than languages or api's, both of which are just tools to get a job done, decide what kinda JOB you wanna do. There are so many jobs out there that if you love what you do, you'll be good at it, and if your good at what you do, you'll probably find yourself a job doing what you love.

Kyle

Eóin:
Elitist attitudes about using VS, or eclipse are childish in inefficient.
You use the best tool for the job, doing asp.net web development, the best tool is VS.NET. Doing java development the best tool for the job would be eclipse with 5 or 6 major plugin's installed. Doing things the 'hard way' is a waste of time and resources.-KyleLanser (August 13, 2007, 07:53 AM)
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I really have to agree with Kyle here. Sure knowing how to do things the hard way is an advantage, but persisting with it is childish.

cnewtonne:
Instead of asking yourself or others what do I need to learn to get a job? You should, instead, ask yourself how can I become so good (at whatever you like doing) that employers beg me to work for them to do what I loving doing and pay me for it.

It may sound idealistic and hard to think this way. Yes, it may not be a short-term approach. But long term, this is the only way to survive, make a good living, and retire doing it.

Focus on become a guru in something not simply finding a job. There are a lot of real-life examples all over around us. There is a guy called Mark Blank. Mark developed a nitch Palm OS application called ChatterEmail. His abilities and skills showed very good in his creation that this app became the best man-known email software for the Palm OS. Even better than what Palm itself gives out natively on their Treos. He was so good that Palm offered him a position and he took it, they bought his software, and I'm sure he's pretty happy with it.

It works this way ...

To make a good living (over 6 figures to start with), you need to be a guru in something. You won't become one till you spend a hell a lot of time learning/doing it. You won't be able to do so unless you love it. This were you need to start.

Good luck.

f0dder:
I make it a point to learn languages the hard way before the easy way.
-Ehtyar
--- End quote ---
The language is easily learned, you probably mean "the environment" which also includes IDE and standard libraries. It's usually a good idea to learn what's going on under the hood, but imho it's not necessarily best to start doing this.

Car analogies are ever so popular (and ever so stupid), here's my attempt at one: first you learn how to drive the car well, and the various traffic rules - then you can start tuning it.

If you're going to learn dotNET, you really should familiarize yourself with the RAD GUI tools, otherwise there isn't really any point in using dotNET at all, imho. Not saying that you should reduce yourself to a click-and-play GUI builder, there's obviously a lot of other stuff than that - but do use the ease-of-use GUI stuff so you can concentrate on those other more interesting subjects.

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