Which coding language to learn?

Sevenshot

Sevenshot

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I've been interested in learning a coding language for the last few years but haven't had a good reason to devote the time until now. My wife and I run a media company and one of our clients is the parent company for a group of individual facilities; we do their social media marketing. For things like universal branding posts, I currently copy and paste a specific facility's name into a post then copy and paste that facility's hashtags, then duplicate the post and replace those 2 spots with the next facility until I do them all. Obviously, this unnecessarily takes too long. I understand this is a 5-10 min project for someone who knows how to code. What is the best language to learn for projects like this? It's best I find that code has wide uses for future projects as I get better. I'm thinking buying a recommended book for that language and going from there?

Thanks for any help.
 
For only what you're talking about (if I'm understanding right), all you really need is some macros where you take a list of facilities and have them replaced into the text. But if you want to get into something more complex, where you're doing something beyond social media, then you'll want to go deeper.

IMO, if you're building websites, PHP would be the way to go. If you do, start off with the latest, PHP 7. I suspect this would be the closest for what you're trying to do, being a media company. You could even build a script for your posts that would take the text of the post with the placeholders, then automatically post the message with the right hashtags to the right account. (Of course, that would be a fairly advanced undertaking because you would have to learn to use the various social media APIs).

For websites, you will also want to learn Javascript, so you can do some of the nicer front-end manipulations and live updates (like the "you have 1 new alert" messages here).

You will also need to learn HTML and CSS to at least a moderate degree.

I used to have a couple books that covered all of this - let me see if I can find them, or at least try to remember the titles.

There are plenty of languages that you can build websites in: Python, Ruby on Rails, Java, Node.js - but I think PHP is the simplest to set up and get started in. If you start to get into more complex design, then you'll be in a place to start looking at other options.
 
Once you master the built in functions of MS Word and or Excel, you can take a class at community college
for a language or commercial software tool(s) as random suggested and or tools for the social media platform you are working with.
 
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These days, one of the most widely used, including for web development is Python. It’s a good choice in that it’s well structured and supports a lot of the object oriented concepts like inheritance.

I sort of agree with @random on PHP except (combined with HTML and CSS) it is becoming the less favored way to program sites over frameworks like Django, though you still need to know HTML and CSS.

I might suggest C (not C++) over PHP for a newbie because it is strongly typed (in terms of variable assignments) and will force you into programming better habits and catch some of the logic errors a new programmer will make. If you learn C, you’ll fall right into PHP naturally as it’s almost the same.
 
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Python is popular.


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Python. I use it for GIS stuff mostly, and special projects with our IT department. Tons of libraries to do pretty much anything and lots of forums for support.
 
random said:
For only what you're talking about (if I'm understanding right), all you really need is some macros where you take a list of facilities and have them replaced into the text. But if you want to get into something more complex, where you're doing something beyond social media, then you'll want to go deeper.

IMO, if you're building websites, PHP would be the way to go. If you do, start off with the latest, PHP 7. I suspect this would be the closest for what you're trying to do, being a media company. You could even build a script for your posts that would take the text of the post with the placeholders, then automatically post the message with the right hashtags to the right account. (Of course, that would be a fairly advanced undertaking because you would have to learn to use the various social media APIs).

For websites, you will also want to learn Javascript, so you can do some of the nicer front-end manipulations and live updates (like the "you have 1 new alert" messages here).

You will also need to learn HTML and CSS to at least a moderate degree.

I used to have a couple books that covered all of this - let me see if I can find them, or at least try to remember the titles.

There are plenty of languages that you can build websites in: Python, Ruby on Rails, Java, Node.js - but I think PHP is the simplest to set up and get started in. If you start to get into more complex design, then you'll be in a place to start looking at other options.
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We currently don't do websites. That's a tough game to get into and plenty of other people do it. Most of our social media management is on fb, twitter, instagram, and LinkedIn. We do a lot of other stuff but fb is all this client needs.

noway2 said:
These days, one of the most widely used, including for web development is Python. It’s a good choice in that it’s well structured and supports a lot of the object oriented concepts like inheritance.

I sort of agree with @random on PHP except (combined with HTML and CSS) it is becoming the less favored way to program sites over frameworks like Django, though you still need to know HTML and CSS.

I might suggest C (not C++) over PHP for a newbie because it is strongly typed (in terms of variable assignments) and will force you into programming better habits and catch some of the logic errors a new programmer will make. If you learn C, you’ll fall right into PHP naturally as it’s almost the same.
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Python will do what I need? I've been recommended python before for running statistics but the lead writer ended up subcontracting it out to get the papers done quicker. I want to just go ahead and buy a book to get started learning since I often find myself wishing I knew how to code to do a small project.
 
Sevenshot said:
Python will do what I need? I've been recommended python before for running statistics but the lead writer ended up subcontracting it out to get the papers done quicker. I want to just go ahead and buy a book to get started learning since I often find myself wishing I knew how to code to do a small project.
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If you do this, you're overthinking it and using the wrong tool for the job. Yes, python is powerful and you will eventually learn how to use it to do what you're after.
However, you'll get where you NEED to be with MS Word and the mail merge functionality.
 
VA_GENTLEMAN said:
uhm... FORTRAN? BASIC??

That's... yeah.. that's all I know.... are these still good bruh?
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georgel said:
Dude! Get with it! Cobol!

Does this mean we're old? :rolleyes:
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Im with you guys...Pascal, Basic, Cobol, Assembly... these were the languages I learned in my youth. Really wish I had continued to learn newer languages, but got mostly involved in PLC, HMI, and SCADA programming, as I work on industrial and commercial machinery. Didn't make time to learn more, except for things like HTML. So many acronyms, so little time...

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VA_GENTLEMAN said:
uhm... FORTRAN? BASIC?
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jodyisaacs said:
Im with you guys...Pascal, Basic, Cobol, Assembly... these were the languages I learned in my youth.
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Believe it or not they’re still valuable. Ok, BASIC is pretty well obsolete as Python has the same shell and real time interpretation function, but much better.

I consider Pascal to be a precursor to C that like basic is a dinosaur. COBOL still comes up once in a while but was pretty much wiped out around Y2K. It’s still used in banking of all places.

Assembly and surprisingly Fortan are still alive. A lot of DSP library functions are implemented in assembly as are some other low level functions. Fortan is still a winner when it comes to high level math coding. For example the ham radio protocol FT8 is Fortan at the core and the Matlab clone Scilab is built with it.

Really wish I had continued to learn newer languages, but got mostly involved in PLC, HMI, and SCADA programming, as I work on industrial and commercial machinery. Didn't make time to learn more, except for things like HTML. So many acronyms, so little time...
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A lot of these things are going to more conventional programming and away from ladder logic, especially in how they get into dereferencing data structures and IO. I got into one called VHDL and use(d) it coupled with function blocks for schematic hierarchy to program FPGAs during hardware design. It too has a lot of similarity to other high level languages. It’s basically what is called structured text in PLCs.

At work, our SCADA system is really Visual Basic with some add on libraries.
 
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georgel said:
Dude! Get with it! Cobol!

Does this mean we're old? :rolleyes:
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I run 100% COBOL jobs each night, we've been using it since 1959.
I think we are the last VSE IBM shop in NC running an ES/9000.
Migrating to client server next quarter after 10 years planning and 'can you do this' detours. :(
 
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Ikarus1 said:
I suggest learning Tamil or another Indian dialect, because if you manage to beat out the other 1 Billion programmers that speak that then you will need to communicate with your coworkers [emoji23]


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Only for two weeks to cross train them then you get RIF'd. :(
 
Button Pusher said:
I run 100% COBOL jobs each night, we've been using it since 1959.
I think we are the last VSE IBM shop in NC running an ES/9000.
Migrating to client server next quarter after 10 years planning and 'can you do this' detours. :(
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Wall St still uses Cobol in background regardless what the front end looks like.
Cobol is known for efficiency of digital number crunching.
But it isn't as widely used as it was prior to Y2K.

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noway2 said:
These days, one of the most widely used, including for web development is Python. It’s a good choice in that it’s well structured and supports a lot of the object oriented concepts like inheritance.
Click to expand...

Last I checked, #2 second to Java in general use. Python is 90% of my day job.

As for Django and frameworks - that really depends on what you're doing. Frameworks are great for mid-level work. Too complicated for simple websites, too limiting for really sophisticated work. I can't comment specifically on Django as I've never used it. My reason for suggesting PHP was "shortest path from A to B". If OP expects to be doing anything more sophisticated, I would probably agree with your suggestion to learn basic programming with C - that would give you a good start on almost anything you moved to, but it's a much steeper learning curve than PHP or Python.

Goofyfoot2001 said:
HTML, PYTHON, JavaScript and Java (You may want an Android App one day)
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Objective-C or Swift for iphone, or React Native, which uses JavaScript (btw, thank you for spelling it right!)[/QUOTE]
 
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Tim said:
Xcode, Javascript, HTML and Java so I can hire you.
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This is what I was thinking but what do I know. The only code class I ever took was Fortran with WATfor and WATfiv. It took me a long time to get on the clue train but I remember it being a LIGHT BULB moment when I figured out WTF was going on.
 
jimmyjames8 said:
This is what I was thinking but what do I know. The only code class I ever took was Fortran with WATfor and WATfiv. It took me a long time to get on the clue train but I remember it being a LIGHT BULB moment when I figured out WTF was going on.
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Man, you made my day. I have not seen either of those words (WATfor and WATfiv) in literally decades, and here you come along and use then both in one sentence in one day! :D

Disclaimer: When I was getting my MS at Clemson in EE, I taught a section of Intro to Engineering, and taught FORTRAN using WATfiv...
 
Man that was 40 YEARS AGO! Even though I was not a coder, the last 5 years of my professional career, I spent in front of 3 screens. I'm still emotionally scared.
 
Back in 1980 Fortran was used on all the DEC PDP 8 series mini computers at the nations labs, on LI NY we have Brookhaven Labs.
Valueline, the financial research company, used Fortran too.
 
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I did my MS and PhD in computational electromagnetics. FORTRAN ruled. Nowadays I use mostly python for that due to the libraries and the complex data type.
 
RFMan said:
Nowadays I use mostly python for that due to the libraries and the complex data type
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One interesting trivia bit about Python and math is that it doesn’t have a max size on integers like other languages do.
 
Button Pusher said:
I run 100% COBOL jobs each night, we've been using it since 1959.
I think we are the last VSE IBM shop in NC running an ES/9000.
Migrating to client server next quarter after 10 years planning and 'can you do this' detours. :(
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I used to program C on OS/2 which passed variables to cobol on a mainframe and also converted a system 36 wholesale/retail app to a windows/sql back end for Y2K. The business burned to the ground a week after I finished and I think it is the best thing that ever happened to me or I would still be aupporting that shit.
 
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