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Young Student Needs Your Advice


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Hi,

Im a 20 year old computer science major student. When I was 15, I started a successful e-commerce website and outsourced the programming. I have been in love with the web ever since, especially social media.

I decided I wanted to get into web-programming. A senior-programmer friend of mine suggested I learn python,ruby and CSS. Do you think that is a good idea? If not, can you suggest which languages I should study?Also, can you suggest the best way of learning this languages ( Ie: which books, websites are most helpful).

I would really appreciate your help, and will definitely take all your advice into consideration! I feel a bit lost, to be honest!

Please give me some of your time, and reply to this post!

Cheers,

Greg

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You started a successful e-commerce website at 15, and after 5 years you don't have a good foundation of web development skills in place?

I dont mean to put you down but that seems really strange.

Anyway, I can't personally vouch for python and ruby as I have never dabbled within either, but if someone were just beginning, it would probably be helpful. I myself am focused on .NET development.

The web development framework with .NET is known as ASP.NET. Web pages in ASP.NET traditionally follow the Webform model, in which you have a front end aspx, and a corresponding backend aspx.cs file, which is where you would write your native .NET code to perform any dynamic logic processing and datastore operations specific to that page.

Microsoft recently released their own implementation of the MVC (model view controller), which is like a plugin for ASP.NET, but more of a very powerful framework in its own. And I believe Ruby has always been based on the MVC model. So either way you go would be good, I think.

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I decided I wanted to get into web-programming. A senior-programmer friend of mine suggested I learn python,ruby and CSS. Do you think that is a good idea? If not, can you suggest which languages I should study?

No.

I think you should find a language you love and master it - look for a job developing with it, not the other way around.

I've been able to find work writting damn near any language that strikes my fancy over the last 10 years (it became much easier once I'd finished University though). Cobol, C, PHP, Ruby, Objective-C, Phython, Perl, C#… etc. All the money in the world won't make you happy if you're forced to spend 8 hours a day turning out code in a language you despise.

For what it's worth: when I like writing Ruby as a first-choice language. When that's not an option I like objective C. I've tried dozens of others (including the ones listed above in a professional context) and found that it fits my mind best.

If you just want to get into the industry: pick up PHP and a bit of HTML/CSS - you can get in ground-level almost anywhere with those skills and then learn on the job. The other alternative is one of the ASP.Net languages (C# is popular): either way it's easy to find work writing those. Finding a shop that's taking entry level people that uses Ruby/Python/etc is much more difficult than the other two because those languages just aren't popular.

Also, can you suggest the best way of learning this languages ( Ie: which books, websites are most helpful).

That depends on you. IMO you shouldn't waste your time focusing on a language, you're much better served by learning computer science fundamentals. General knowledge applies to any language - and then you can leverage the strengths of the only you're working in to solve problems more efficiently.

A computer science major is the best way to learn the generalities of programming. If you just want to pick up a new language without much technical background then the "Pragmatic Programmers" books are great. Once you've mastered a couple of languages I'd recommend O'Reilly books - they tend to assume you already know what you're doing and keep the introductory stuff to a minimum.

IMO "The Art of Computer Programming" is required reading for anybody that wants to move beyond "code monkey" to programmer.

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No.

I think you should find a language you love and master it - look for a job developing with it, not the other way around.

This very solid advice, loving what you do should come as the highest priority.If you can passionate about it then it is even better.

Find a way that makes you feel this way. This is the secret of success.

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To be honest, once you get the concepts down you can jump from language to language pretty easy.

I started with ASP.NET (it's what my base was using) and then used PHP (it's what my school was using) then to Ruby on Rails (it's what one of my professors forced me to use for some project). Whatever you decide to learn, the concepts will directly apply to any other language. It's good to be multi-lingual anyway.

LAMP servers are easy to set up (you should know) which in turn makes a PHP + MySQL easy to get up and running. Of course, you could always use what is supported by your current servers.

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