College for programming?

I am just curious what all languages should I be learning in college?

I am currently in a community college which the courses are
-java
-VB
-C++
-JavaScript
-PHP (I think)
-XHTML/CSS
-Access

Is there anything I should learn in the meantime because I am missing some entry level requirement?

 

you should study all of it prior to taking the courses, so the real work is easier.
That will put you ahead of others, and make it easier to learn new things.

 

I will do it one language at a time if I do.
Is Java a good choice? I am already familiar with its syntax but ya.

 

In general its not about languages more about theory. Once you know one programing language you essentially know all of them. A good computer science program teaches you things like data structures/algorithms, design principles, system architecture, grammers/parsing, etc..

Most schools teach c++ or Java as intro classes so I guess learn one of those, but really they all do the same thing.

 

It's a tough question. It really should not depend on the college but it should depend on the job that you will get in the future. Companies use different languages and whatever languages that you are familiar with, you will have to choose a job and the company that fit your languages. For example, I have a friend who is good with ASP because his old company which was big used ASP and Microsoft products mainly. Then he quit his job and had to look for other jobs that would require his expertise in ASP. However, ASP started to fall because there are so many new languages came up which sooner or later proved to be superior to ASP in various aspects. So jobs for ASP were not as hot as before anymore and he felt that he needed to walk away from ASP. He tried to learn other languages after that but technically speaking, without real world experience in a corporate environment, his newly learned languages were not in high expertise so they would not qualify for him for job requirements. He is still stuck to his ASP unless he can volunteer or have some chance to be exposed to corporate environment of other languages which is so rare. No one would allow you to do anything with their codes if you are not a pro in the field because you would screw it up rather than helping most of the time. It is the reality that you do not really know which language will benefit you best, you just kind of go with the flow around you and hope it will turn out good for you in the long run. Hope this gave you a deeper view into working environment.

 

Thanks .
I figure no college can honestly give you 100% of what you need to learn for a true career. You have to teach yourself to some extent.

 

I want to go to college for CS as well and I'm going to start learning HTML/xHTML/CSS now because that's what I want to do when I get out.. What do you want to do after college? Applications? Software? Games?

 

I'm currently on a CS course in the U.K. First year I'm learning;

- Java
- XHTML (CSS, PHP, JavaScript)
- SQL

 

Wow that's cool. Why so soon? I thought you didn't start till like 2nd or 3rd year? Is UK different in that way?

 

First year you only learn the basics of each so you can get used to the syntax and the theory behind it. Second and third year, you take it to a more advanced level (Java anyway). Thats in my Uni, it might be different depending on where you are.

 

Wow, that's lucky. I'm dreading spending the first 2 years on 101s >.<"

 

learn python

 

Java
- XHTML (CSS, PHP, JavaScript)
- SQL
this are good

 

I'm in a computer science program at university and python is the language we learned in the first semester. This coming semester we learn java..

 

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/

Go there and watch a few lectures about computer programming.
You will see python is the language of choice in the beginning.

 

I just watched the entire video for the first lesson. It's quite interesting actually with some of the statements he had made in the video, but the points seem to be valid.

Python is definately growing in popularity and has inherited some things from other languages, so it would definately be a good place to start.

I saw the title of the thread and it was a little interesting, as I'm looking to go to College for Computer Science.

 

Also note that python is a very good language to learn first because the syntax is very readable, yet in ways it is similar to java.

 

Computer science degrees almost always start with Java, because it's considered one of the easiest entry level cross-platform programming languages, then they slowly move you to C++, then ASM.

Just 2 cents coming from someone who is about to graduate with a degree in computer science and biochemistry.

 

I thought java was considered a advance language?

 

most schools start with basic then java. java is more complex then basic due to OOP. If you start in ajava first that means you skipped a semester(typically requires a 5 on the AP CS A exam) OR you could skip ajava and basic all together and move on to complex computer algorithms by getting a 5 on the AP CS AB exam, which CollegeBoard no longer offers because very few people take it and it was more of a liability then a profit.