I need to learn a programming language, which one is easiest out of this list ?

[T3X4S]

I have a really important job interview coming up in 10 days.
This company contacted me about a year ago, but I had just accepted an offer for a 1 year contract and couldn't back out.
So, I contacted them back, and they are interested still woohoo !

Only problem is, the position they want me for requires some coding - I dont know any.

Which would be easiest for me to submerge in a crash course for the next 10 days?  ( I once heard python is pretty easy)

Java
.NET
Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby

And I need familiarity in 1 of these:

Git, Perforce, SVN, TFVC

Obviously this job is out of my comfort zone, and I am taking a slight risk, but I am wanting a change -

Thanks Everyone

[T3X4S]

  On 11/11/2015 at 06:14, Gerowen said:

I've only really dabbled in Python myself, but I've learned enough to tell you that it's easy as pie.  It's plain english for the most part, so you don't even have to know Python to be able to look at it and take a pretty good guess at what's going on.

And as others have said, 10 days is not gonna be enough, perhaps you should have been honest about your ACTUAL skills from the start.  Ask them what kind of coding might be required, they've probably got some sort of system already set up.  Won't do you any good to learn one language if they need you to be proficient in something else.

Anyway, here's some sample Python, :-)

The infamous "Hello World".

print ("Hello World!")

And a little countdown timer.

import time
print ("Counting down!")
var = 10
for i in range (10):
    print (var)
    var -= 1
    time.sleep(1)
print ("Blastoff!")

Gerowen, I appreciate your input - but if you would have taken a little bit of time and actually read the thread - you would have seen that I did not, in any way, mislead about my abilities.  The position they called me about had references for programming skills, of which I had none - so in case I was asked, I wanted to be able to say, " I know a little xxxxx" and not be lying.  It wasnt 10 days, it turned out to be 2 days.  And when the phone interview happened, they didn't care about programming skills, though I volunteered I "knew a little Python, and the basics of Ruby as well".

I am now scheduled for Dec 2 for the final interview which is an all day event @ their Dallas office so I guess I did OK so far.  The whole point of this thread is to learn something quick because I didn't want to mislead in any way but wanted to be able to fit as much of the desired job skills as possible.

BTW - I like your little program there

 

[DevTech]

  On 12/11/2015 at 09:32, mrninkoz said:

My vote on Python, it's so easy to get started.

Everything is easy to get started.

There is a reason Khan Academy switched their learning to program course from Python to Javascript.

After you get tired printing "hello world" on a console screen, there is no obvious and easy route to push pixels on a screen with Python. It gets awkward and non-beginner real fast.

Not that anything else is any better at the end of the day (metaphorical day = xx months), just that there really isn't any "Silver Bullet"

 

 

[+FloatingFatMan Subscriber¹]

  On 12/11/2015 at 10:16, DevTech said:

Everything is easy to get started.

There is a reason Khan Academy switched their learning to program course from Python to Javascript.

After you get tired printing "hello world" on a console screen, there is no obvious and easy route to push pixels on a screen with Python. It gets awkward and non-beginner real fast.

Not that anything else is any better at the end of the day (metaphorical day = xx months), just that there really isn't any "Silver Bullet"

Indeed. There's a very good reason why none of those "easy" languages get used for commercial application development.  You really do need to be using C/C++/C#/Java, or if needs must, JavaScript.  Anything else is just fooling around, for the most part.  

I would never recommend anyone learn something like Ruby, PHP, Perl or Python as a primary programming language.  They're fine for an ancillary, but if you're going to learn to code, learn a commercially viable language.

[th3rEsa]

  On 12/11/2015 at 14:36, FloatingFatMan said:

Indeed. There's a very good reason why none of those "easy" languages get used for commercial application development.

 

I regularly chat with people who write Fortran and COBOL applications for really large companies; also, there's still Lisp. It's horribly wrong to assume that $your_language_here is giving you a better commercial perspective that $another_language_here just because $some_company uses $your_language_here.

Random example: SAP uses Fortran.

I myself learned QBASIC and Turbo Pascal as my first languages, today I'm making my money with PHP/JavaScript (currently in the process of starting a new job with C#/JavaScript) web development after having done Perl/Python some years ago. If you really don't know which language to start with, consider an application you would want to be able to write. The choice of the language depends on that application.

You can get results really fast with Python (it even was designed as a language for beginners), the main problem with Python is that you can't use your Python knowledge very well to learn anything else.

[Andre S. Veteran]

  On 12/11/2015 at 14:36, FloatingFatMan said:

Indeed. There's a very good reason why none of those "easy" languages get used for commercial application development.  You really do need to be using C/C++/C#/Java, or if needs must, JavaScript.  Anything else is just fooling around, for the most part.  

I would never recommend anyone learn something like Ruby, PHP, Perl or Python as a primary programming language.  They're fine for an ancillary, but if you're going to learn to code, learn a commercially viable language.

So... Youtube, Twitter, Github, Facebook and Wordpress, to name a select few, are just fooling around and not commercially viable projects?

PHP and RoR alone are a huge part of the web ecosystem and used in indefinitely many commercial projects. I don't know in what world you live where these are not commercially viable.

[+FloatingFatMan Subscriber¹]

The world of programming is not made up solely of web apps.

[Gerowen]

  On 12/11/2015 at 09:04, T3X4S said:

Gerowen, I appreciate your input - but if you would have taken a little bit of time and actually read the thread - you would have seen that I did not, in any way, mislead about my abilities.  The position they called me about had references for programming skills, of which I had none - so in case I was asked, I wanted to be able to say, " I know a little xxxxx" and not be lying.  It wasnt 10 days, it turned out to be 2 days.  And when the phone interview happened, they didn't care about programming skills, though I volunteered I "knew a little Python, and the basics of Ruby as well".

I am now scheduled for Dec 2 for the final interview which is an all day event @ their Dallas office so I guess I did OK so far.  The whole point of this thread is to learn something quick because I didn't want to mislead in any way but wanted to be able to fit as much of the desired job skills as possible.

BTW - I like your little program there

 

I apologize then.  I wasn't meaning to sound abrasive, and you're right, I just read the OP and was responding to that, and I misinterpreted what you'd said, :-)

[Andre S. Veteran]

  On 12/11/2015 at 19:27, FloatingFatMan said:

The world of programming is not made up solely of web apps.

Nope, not anymore than entirely made up of C-derived languages. You don't need curly braces to make money  

[th3rEsa]

Right. COBOL has none either!

[T3X4S]

  On 12/11/2015 at 19:45, Gerowen said:

I apologize then.  I wasn't meaning to sound abrasive, and you're right, I just read the OP and was responding to that, and I misinterpreted what you'd said, :-)

Its all good sir - no need to apologize, but I appreciate it and apology accepted.

[astropheed Veteran]

  On 12/11/2015 at 14:36, FloatingFatMan said:

but if you're going to learn to code, learn a commercially viable language.

Expand  

Yeah!!...  like Ruby, PHP, Perl or Python.

 

I work for a large and popular company (mostly as a C#/Razor/JavaScript developer in your defense) where all of those technologies are used and then some; and even a lot of the 'trendy' frameworks. All of the people who use all of those things make copious amounts of money. They also use the fancy C languages, all sorts of database languages and even legacy ones. They are all highly skilled.

 

It's not really so much about the language but more what you can do with the language. A respectable company will know this; go ahead and learn Python!

 

I don't even know why you said PHP, it's massively "commercially viable".

[th3rEsa]

You can do everything with every Turing-complete language. 

[th3rEsa]

I taught someone programming with Perl5 a few months ago. I guess everything is "easy" if you're not biased towards a certain programming style yet.