Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 09:33:32 -0700 From: "Craig Critchley" <cac@fuzzer.com> To: "j mckitrick" <jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org> Cc: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: what language should i learn next ? Message-ID: <081901c018e9$5cc254a0$0201010a@craigc> References: <20000907150644.A4202@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <XFMail.000907173343.uebs@gmx.at> <20000907165111.B4757@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>
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my personal suggestion, if you pick only one, would be perl, if only because
its useful for a lot of different interesting things worth learning about...
in addition to "normal programs" its well suited for shell-script-type
programs, you can build gui's with tk, and if you're interested in web stuff
you can use mod_perl with apache. it's not too hard to plug in a database
like mySQL, either. there's also a vast library of code and add-on modules
(CPAN) for all kinds of stuff - email, image processing, etc, etc.
it's not too hard to learn enough perl to make a useful program, although
there is a lot there if you want to be an expert...
with java you can do gui stuff and web stuff (servlets), but its not well
suited to "quickies" or "script" type programming. it's more formal, more
object-oriented and more like C++ in some ways, although if that's what
you're interested in, Java might be a better introduction than Perl.
...Craig
----- Original Message -----
From: "j mckitrick" <jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org>
To: "Philipp Huber" <uebs@gmx.at>
Cc: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2000 8:51 AM
Subject: Re: what language should i learn next ?
> On Thu, Sep 07, 2000 at 05:33:43PM -0700, Philipp Huber wrote:
> | On 07-Sep-00 j mckitrick wrote:
> | >
> | > I want to set the goal of learning a new language in the next couple
> | > of
> | > months. These are the ones I am considering:
> | >
> | > perl
> | > python
> | > shell scripting (I am weak in this)
> | > java (no freebsd support yet, right?)
> |
> | depends on what you want to do.
> | my personal favourite is perl, but i don't know python anyway.
> | you could try all of them and see which one you like most.
>
> I want to avoid that, if possible. I'd like to make an informed decision
> from the beginning so I can use my time efficiently. I guess what I want
to
> do is learn the tools that require some skill and that are efficient for
> common jobs on a unix box. That way, if the door ever opens for a unix
> career, I would have valuable skills that would set me apart. But I would
> also like my knowledge to be useful now, on my little non-networked
laptop.
>
> Frankly, since I am not running on a network anyway, I first need to think
> of some problems that need to be solved, or some tasks that can be
> automated.
>
>
> jcm
> --
>
>
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