Programming languages for Software Dev. 2011

[MJRomeo81]

Is there any official list of the accepted languages to teach? Our school is doing VB6 but I was curious to see what the majority of Vic. is studying.

[meepcat]

The approved languages are:

Basic (object-oriented variations only, e.g. VB.NET)
C++
C#
Objective-C
Pascal (object-oriented variations only, e.g. Delphi)
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby


Our school is doing Python.  Wouldn't mind doing Objective-C though.

[huss48]

i preferred to use VB.NET, as its common.

i will upload some programming exercises soon 

[cohen]

I'm doing IT-SD via DECV, and we're using PHP

[iamtom]

I preferred to use VB.NET last year, and it worked well for what we needed to do (it mixed well with MySQL).

This year, my teacher (who wrote the course design + book for this cycle of Software Development) is teaching C#. No idea why, I think it's so he can continue to use his free Xbox's.

[MJRomeo81]

I preferred to use VB.NET last year, and it worked well for what we needed to do (it mixed well with MySQL).

This year, my teacher (who wrote the course design + book for this cycle of Software Development) is teaching C#. No idea why, I think it's so he can continue to use his free Xbox's.

Man you're lucky to have Adrian Janson as your teacher. The textbook is awesome this year and those power-points he creates are useful! I've heard about the C#/XNA xbox 360 programming in class and it sounds sweet!

[iamtom]

Yeah, it's pretty awesome. His classes are traditionally laid-back; as long as you do the work he sets (whether it be a SAC or homework), he doesn't care how you spend the period as long as it relates somehow to I.T... so many lessons of modding WarCraft 3, surfing the Internet and programming random apps in VB.NET were had.

I wish I did Software Development this year again! It was heaps of fun. The book is much, much better. And the powerpoints are amazing theory.

[MJRomeo81]

Yeah the ppts simplify things in a way where it's easy to remember. Same for the textbook really. It isn't full of useless crap like other texts are.

Back on topic, I heard VB6 will be out of the course for good next year. I don't mind doing it this year since it's easy and I know quite a bit about it.

[iamtom]

I'm pretty sure it's still in... and will be for a while. I know Mr. Janson wants to shift focus up to C/C#/C++ and Python.

[MJRomeo81]

Most applications these days are developed in those languages. The argument can be made though that the inherent nature of programming is the same for all languages. The ability to read and interpret algorithms, along with representing them in pseudocode, is something that EVERY developer does regardless of language.

Learning C++ in high school might be great because it's what they use in the industry. But the way I see it, if you know the nuts and bolts of programming, you can learn the syntax of any language and go from there.

[ell]

Yeah, apart from VB, if you learn one you'll know the rest. Java is a particularly good one to start off with. I probably wouldn't recommend Objective-C as a beginning language.

If you're interested in web development, I'd highly recommend Perl, as well as Python/PHP/Ruby. Obviously it's your school's decision as to which language you do, but hey, it's not stopping you from learning another on the side (something I wish I'd done when I was in highschool)!