What to learn?

Hi,
I wish to learn something that will help me in my future mabye. I was considering either html, a database program or a C ++ language. I know nothing about any of them but would like to learn something with coding in it, and something that would be useful for mabye a job...

what do you recommend and why?

Thanks,
Bohh

It depends on what you're most interested in doing, and what your background is.

What do you really want to do as a programmer? What's your dream?

If you want to be a programmer, than C/C++ is the building block of almost every other language. One you learn the theory of 'how to program' and the logic behind that, learning the syntax of differnet languages doesn't take much.

Its not huge steps from say C++ to PERL to PHP. Now SQL is a little different, but still once you understand the the theory, it becomes much easier.

HTML is beginning to see its way out. Most people can use Frontpage, DW, or some other layout editor. Seems like HTML is needed now to understand HTML for layout work. Most sites are going to dyamic sites using PHP, ASP, or JSP. PHP and JSP seem to be the big two now.

Personally I am a big fan of PHP. JSP seems to be slow unless you have a site with heavy constant traffic.

Actually, JSP is losing ground. The 3 most popular server-side applications/scripting languages are ASP, Cold Fusion, and PHP. Also, once the JSR[forget_the_number] is published, PHP could eventually supplant JSP entirely (basically, its an API for PHP and other scripting langs to directly access J2EE objects).

I would recommend learning C/C++ - but, only if you're interested in doing applications development. If you're more into web applications, and the internet in general, I would go straight to Java. Again, it really depends on where you see yourself in 5, 10, 15 years.

Well, eventually I'd like to make games I think, my goals could change I guess.

On the database Side I'd like to do databases for companies. Might be fun I think.. I'd like to know more about them if someone can elaberate.

I'm downloading DJGPP right now. I'm not sure about different compliers, will DJGPP allow you to make games and everything else?

I have Visual C++ that came bundled in with a teach yourself how to program games a few years back, but my concerns with that were it would be limited in some ways seeing it was bundled...

So I thought I'd try a free one.

Also do these programs allow me to make the programs in a way that I can just put them on a disk, in one file, and give it to a friend for example, and all they have to do is run the file... I remember when I was trying before I had to bundle all these files together and it didnt seem very good. I'd like to have just 1 file that lets it run...


Thanks,
Bohh

Forgot to ask, which compiler would you recommend if I wanted to go for games (2d to begin with.)

Sorry for all the questions, but i've seen games made with flash that are kind of neat. Do you make flash things by coding or what?

Thanks!

humn want to do game programming?
go for either c++ or java; java wud be my pick but it depends on wat u need. java provides you a lot more options but c++ and vc++ in particular is pretty good.

if u cant make a decision, think internet and go for java or if u want to confuse urself still then go for . net as well.

i guess go for some course in c++ and move to .net. would be simple and effective.

asp and cold fusion are among the most popular languages? =D that's new.

any articles that show the advantages? =D

yup i was also wondering about that.
asp, perl and php would be my guess
never knew cold fusion was that popular, i mean popular alright but this popular?

Read it in an article somewhere... surprised me too, figured Perl would've been mentioned, but it wasn't. I'll try to dig it up... :\

for all the time i spent here i saw 1 coldfusion website. it was some university. that site was pretty slow.

so if there are like charts that tell how % of the sites use cold fusion =D.

I found this site very useful to people just starting out. http://www.visibone.com/html/tech.html

They have alot of different stuff!

Darla