RE: Looking for opinions on education

In the past couple of days, there was an article (CodeProject?) on "Why should I learn C?". Basically saying you're probably not going to use it nowadays to develop apps but it does give you a good basis for other languages. They equated it to learning Latin as the root of other languages.

I developed many a user facing app in C over the years - some doing a several million real time transactions per year - but I do agree that I wouldn't go that route currently. And, I agree with the premise that it has made me a better developer and made moving to modern RPG functionality a piece of cake. Procedures, service programs (libraries in C), etc.



-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Justin Taylor
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2017 2:37 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: Looking for opinions on education

C++ is one of those "just because" things for me. Yes, I'm that much of a geek.




-----Original Message-----
From: John Yeung [mailto:gallium.arsenide@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2017 4:26 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Looking for opinions on education

On Fri, Feb 17, 2017 at 3:27 PM, Justin Taylor <JUSTIN@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Absolutely there's lots of good stuff to learn. My (personal) laptop has M.E.A.N, Java, C++, MonoDevelop and probably other things I've forgotten.

Just so this isn't all just jibberish:

MEAN refers to a "technology stack" consisting of MongoDB, ExpressJS, AngularJS, and Node.js:

<http://www.infoworld.com/article/2937159/application-development/mean-vs-lamp-your-next-programming-project.html>

Now that people know what the acronym stands for, the components can be Googled more easily. (Searching for "what does mean mean" can give less than helpful results. ;)

Incidentally, while I did say there are practically no bad choices, and I still stand by that, I would not personally recommend C++ for anyone who is in a position to ask "what should I be learning now?".
It's an extremely powerful language, and very rewarding to master, but it's hard. And the kinds of things it is typically used for are pretty hard-core. If C++ is the language for you, you probably know it already and don't need us to give you any guidance.

John Y.