request for programmer advice

[jinian]

I have a horrible choice to make for next quarter. The computer science course I need for the AS degree teaches only Visual Basic .NET or Javascript. I've heard that neither of them is even a half-decent language, but I don't have enough experience to tell for myself. Which is less likely to cause my brain to be useless for learning further programming languages if I ever get around to doing that? Am I being overly alarmist?

Comments

[fourgates.livejournal.com]

Javascript is closer to a minimalist modern language than VB.NET. VB.NET has a considerably steeper learning curve than VB6 (the previous version, which was commonly used in Beginner programming classes) because it requires you to know (or learn) a fair bit about the .NET framework, which requires you to know (or learn) about object-oriented programming. I think learning Javascript may get you to the same place in terms of learning some CS fundamentals, but it will be less painful. Learning VB.NET after Javascript and Java, but before C and C++ would probably be the ideal way to go.

By the way, Javascript is quite commonly used in web applications. I would consider it a worthwhile resume bullet point. Programming with the .NET languages is more cutting-edge, and not as likely to lead to work at this point.

Also, VB.NET is very nearly as powerful as Visual C++.NET; that was one of the big changes with the .NET upgrade -- all .NET languages can produce identical binaries. This has two main benefits: 1) a project may have VC++.NET modules that interact well with VB.NET modules. 2)One could implement a massive project using VB.NET with no concerns about performance tradeoffs.

[fairoriana.livejournal.com]

Javascript is highly useful. Decency aside, it's widely adopted and widely required by employers. (There's sort of a triumvarate of skills for a web applications programmer, what I am. You need a database interaction language (only once choice -- various brands of SQL), you need a business logic language (VB.net, ASP, ColdFusion, Perl, JSP, JAVA, there are gajillions), and you need a client-side scripting language (usually). Your two choices there are really Javascript/JScript (widely used on almost every big site in the world), or Action Script (Flash).

Worry less about the prestige of a particular language, and it's coolness on a OO scale or some such rot, and more about whether employers will want it and whether its useful. I code in a much reviled language (ColdFusion), but my experience with it has caused my current employer and the employer before to seek *me* out.

[drakemonger.livejournal.com]

Both are actually pretty useful. I think you're more likely to be able to get a job with Visual Basic. If, however, you want something that'll work somewhere other than Windows, say, in your own web pages, I'd go for JavaScript.

I actually used to code relatively complicated systems in JavaScript... it can be done, and the language is actually much more powerful than people think.

Re: request for programmer advice

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

overly alarmist. :) javascript is the more universally useful one of the two; aside from the other things already said, it ties you less to microsoft.

[eub.livejournal.com]

VB.NET is not a rotten language, it just has a rotten syntax. (Ask me about whether you can put a comment in a function call that's broken over multiple lines. Go on, ask me.) It's basically C# in an excruciating polyester leisure suit, and C# is, to a first approximation, Java, and Java is a decent language.

Javascript I have no experience with. So I'd go with Javascript. (It looks like a decent language, another in the modern garbage-collected and safety-checked crop. It doesn't have a standard data-structures library, though, does it? I hope the class would provide one, since I believe people should get to start out using data structures without having to implement them.)

JavaScript-the-language

[hattifattener]

JavaScript, as a language and isolated from any consideration of web browsers, is a fairly nice language. It's kind of like Self, if you've looked at that: it has the same bizarre-but-nifty prototype-based OO system. (JavaScript is utterly unrelated to Java.)

Like most recent languages it has arrays/lists and maps/dictionaries as basic language elements. IMHO that's enough for general basic programming, and they are powerful enough to make implementing other data structures relatively easy.

Re: JavaScript-the-language

[eub.livejournal.com]

Maps are all you truly need in life, yeah.

I worked in a prototype-based OO system once. Everybody tried to avoid relying on instantiation after prototype modification, because nobody had ever gone back and filled in all the holes. Oh well.

[baxil.livejournal.com]

I suspect "overly alarmist" is the best answer here. That having been said, I'd push toward Javascript -- if only because Javascript is Java lite, and Java is C lite, and C-family syntax is so common in other languages it's not funny; the more Java you learn, the easier the learning curves get for useful languages like, say, PERL (not to mention C itself, if you want to go hardcore).

I'm not free of bias here; VB=Microsoft is a strong disincentive for me -- but, then, not necessarily because the language sucks, but because it's by design proprietary and thus less transferrable. BASIC-like languages are basically dead except for VB, which is a MS flagship. You'll be able to find plenty of work in it -- it's Microsoft, after all -- but if you ever tire of the Evil Empire, having a big grounding in Windows-native stuff will be a hindrance.

impersonal clarification

[jinian.livejournal.com]

ONE computer science course required for degree. No plans of programming for future work. In fact, trying not to think about future work too much until I'm done with second degree. No particular interest in l33tness, no love for M$.

Re: impersonal clarification

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

i was thinking so. plants do not so much care about what programming languages you know, and iirc, you were thinking about being all about the plants.