Re: About programing, a general question

The first thing you need to understand is that a programming language is a
*tool*, and after four decades of programming I can tell you that choosing the
right tool makes the job vastly easier. C is great for operating systems and
tools and has good data types, perl is an example of a language without types,
and can do strings and light networking stuff quite well. In general assembler
is so seldom used that other than (maybe) device drivers, device drivers, test
software, and similar you can skip it.

Beware learning one "best" language, if you only have a hammer everything has to
be a nail. Currently I think C++ is most likely to have fanboys who think it
does everything, but there are lots of others, and when someone says "there's a
trick for that," it often means the language doesn't provide an obvious tool to
do what you want.

Since you asked, one language: perl, three: add C and _javascript_. Read some
FORTRAN and COBOL programs to see how they work, you don't need to write for
them. I never found Ada to be the best tool for anything, although I wrote about
5k lines of it one year because a contract required it. Who better than a
political science major with an MBA to pick programming languages?

Good luck.

--
Bill Davidsen