Which programming languages will get you good jobs? (Details inside)

[print_Life]

I've always wanted to program for personal reasons, but my eyes have been opened by all the freelance sites for coders and graphic designers. I may even consider getting a job as a programmer, but I'd like to know which programming language pays.

I want to know which programming languages I can rely on in the long term. I don't want to invest my time in anything that won't pay me back. I know a few things about a few languages, but not enough to answer my own question.

Here are some of my (misinformed?) thoughts on some languages, to give you a better idea of where I'm at.

PHP I've read on slashdot that many don't like this because of how it's poorly updated or something, but it's used on media sites, and porn webmasters seem to need it. This seems like a good choice, but then again, I don't think it would necessarily pay the bills if I devoted my time to it since those same webmasters try to learn it themselves.

Perl Tried to learn it, but I just hated the tutorials for it. And what's up with the freaking "Perl Poetry"/Obfuscation contests? Weird. But it's one of the three P's, and is supposedly the "Glue for applications"(or am I confusing it with python?).

Python Simple and reliable python. I like it, tried learning it. They claim google uses it, and nasa and some other special effects company (Industrial something). But python just doesn't come off as a popular, profitable language to me. More like a little scripting language for people's personal projects.

Ruby Python clone.

C++ Ubiquitous. When I was much younger and new to the internet, I saw many articles about this language, and it seemed like a fad at the time (I thought after C++ they'd make a new one called C+++). But it's still here and used for many things. I don't doubt it's money making value, but I'm afraid that since it's so widespread, competition will be extremely fierce and I'd be looking for a job for a long time.

Java What's the deal with Java? The whole virtual machine stuff sounds like garbage to me. However, a few programs I know are made from it. So, meh.

ASP I once asked a classmate what they knew about this and they replied "I don't waste my time learning GARBAGE". But I do notice it online from time to time. Hmm.

C# I don't know much about this except that it's new and is part of .NET, one of the new internet languages of the future. But I have barely seen or heard of it. ????

[Melon00]

Your bag of programming languages is not what will get you a job. Stuff like how to use an IDE/Debugger, know programming concepts well and can apply them to an interview question, that is what will land you a job, not because you know C#, Java, blah, blah. However, the general consensus in the job world, is C (for hardware programming), C++ (for its portability), and C# (for windows application programming).

If I had to pick one language for you to know extremely well, to help you communicate to recruiters, is C++. Yes, it is widespread, but it is your personallity and project management skills as well as how you can communicate that will seperate you from the rest of the market. A programmer is worthless if they cannot communicate, no matter how many languages they know.

After you get a job, it would help you a ton to understand databases and how they work (in general), as well as knowledge on operating systems.

[XPc]

Java 0_o

The whole virtualmachine thing is actually a good idea, Cross platform applications can be wrote easily.

Maybe instead of looking at the languages as a money making tool, Think of a few projects that u could make where you would have to learn/use each one of the languages and see how that goes.

Theres ALOT of different types of programming jobs, Most of the ones i do they dont care what i use as long as they get to go 'ooohhh ahhh' in the end.

[dude543]

I can land some from my experince. I worked five years as c programer on unix with oracle data base.
The most diffcult thing for me to do, is reading big source files.
I am now learning c++, but still unable to read 500 or more source code lines.

[oracleguy]

print_life,

You seem to have some very well formed views on the programming languages without actually have used them.

PHP - Quite popular since it runs on Linux and Windows so it provides a good level of code portiblity. Lots of sites use it, their online manual is one of the best around.

C/C++ - Very useful and widely used because its quick and powerful.

Java - I personally don't care for it but it has its uses when you need to write something that is very easily cross-platform compatible. But that comes at a price, speed.

ASP/ASP.NET - Granted it only runs on Windows and IIS natively but lots of people use it, especially companies that use lots of microsoft products. I personally don't like the ASP.net but I'll manage when I have to. I've done a lot more development in ASP classic and I'd say its a good thing to know.


I'd suggest actually starting to program in a given language before you form some views on it. And just because you "know" a given language doesn't mean you'll get paid the most. It has to do with how well you can apply that language to solve a given problem and how quickly you can do it. Some people can just see the solution when they sit down and code, others struggle with it. And there is more to knowing a language than knowing the syntax and the methods, there are things like good and bad practices when writing the code, ways of implementing algorithms, etc.