with all of the different technologies.. which would be the best to learn first...i'm thinking about going back to school in a few years, and i'm interested in Programming. So before I go, I want to familiarize myself with some technologies.. I've been messing around with Front Page for a while and know a little bit about HTML.. but thats it. Any suggestions?

T.A.

well, that's pretty wide open - where do your interest lie - web publishing? application developement (ie, through a Integrated Development Environment)? application programming (ie code production)? there's ppl here far more knowledgeable in these areas than i that will undoubably answer ur question, but a little more direction would be helpful.

I'm not sure many would agree with me on this, but if I were thinking of learning how to program from the beginning, I would learn C# and the .NET platform. And the best way to start would be to sign up at a local college or junior college and just take an introductory course.

My reason for C# and the .NET platform is that you can program just as easy for web applications as you can for desktop applications—(web forms or window's forms). And MS has spent well over a billion dollars on its development...so it ain't gonna disappear and will most likely become revolutionary for MS.

Personally, I'm learning PHP because I know C and it seems very easy to make the transition. But the reason is my own weakness for programming to a unix prompt or a dos prompt. If you started out with C# you would learn how to program actual windows applications....and .NET makes it much easier to do than it has been in the past.

HTH

That's a heavy question. Are you interested in web applications? Desktop applications? Network? What is your operating system of choice? Are you looking for an environment where you will have the most fun programming or just there to make money?

That's a tough question to answer. If I do give you an answer, then it would probably be biased from my experience. Care to expand on your question? I take it you want to get more into web development than anything else because you mentioned FrontPage and HTML. But remember that FrontPage and HTML are just tools used mostly for web design, and web design is NOT web development.

Well.. I'm interested in Computer Programming as well as web desing/development.... hope this clears things up a bit.

T.A.

You say you want to go back to school in a few years? Possibly for computer science (note: a lot of math/theory).

If you want to get started with a programming language, I highly suggest C++. Java, C#, etc are also nice to learn too, but they're very object oriented. OOP (object oriented programming) is optional in C++. Therefore, you may wish to begin doing some simple stuff, and then once you feel comfortable with OOP, dive into Java, etc. Of course, this is if you wish to develop applications, etc.

If you wish to be more of a web development person, there's always ASP/.NET, PHP, and Coldfusion. Of course, you'll have to learn about relational databases here, as well.

If you want to become a programmer in web development, I suggest you take up C++ first. Do you remember any programming at all? C++, in my opinion, is the best language to start in. Not as easy as QBASIC, but it definitely has great benefits. One of them is the OOP approach. You could take up Java instead of C++, but you'd have to pick up OOP sooner than C++ because Java forces you to use an OOP mentality. Also, C++ has been around much longer and has a solid foundation. Now, this just covers programming.

If you want to get into web development, after you know the basics of programming, going into another language is a snap. It's just a matter of syntax. Sure the form of thinking might change slightly, but algorithms will pretty much be implemented the same way. You have your choice => ASP/ASP.NET, PHP, ColdFusion, JSP, Perl. Those five are the most popular to date. Again, this is just programming.

Next, comes databases. A web application is nothing if it doesn't handle data in some way or another. You have a few options here: Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Sybase, DB2. Also you'd have to learn SQL (the language) so you can query the databases.

After that, comes technology you use on the front end (on the web page that you see). This includes HTML, JavaScript, CSS.

XML. This is a technology that's become more useful by the minute. With it, you can make two different technologies (e.g. an application developed in Perl and another one developed in Java on a PDA) talk to each other and transfer information. You can also make information be displayed with a CSS or XSL stylesheet.

Web Application Servers is another big one. These are the servers that run PHP, ColdFusion, etc. The big ones are IIS, Apache, Tomcat, JRun, JBoss, Weblogic, and Websphere.

Now this is just the icing. There's other stuff like security. Other stuff you'd have to take into consideration is located in a post I put up a while back. It's the fifth post from the top: http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread50.html

Now, don't let this intimidate you!! Don't think I know everything about what I just mentioned. However it's good to at least know one or two about each section, and know at least the basics of the rest (or at least know of them). Another good thing is to keep up with the latest news.

If you need any more input, let me know. Glad to help! ;P

so what your saying is that I should brush up on my math skills then eh?.. Ummm.. I'm thinking Web Development/Designing would be a better place to start.. I've heard alot of ppl say that C is pretty boring. This post was meant for cscgal but it looks like inscissor and i posted at the same time. lol

So I'm thinking that taking the Computer Programming course in college should be a good one to try out then.

Who told you C was boring? You should go to Slashdot and post that. Just wondering how fast you'd get flamed or hacked. Like I said before, all languages are boring, it's what you do with it that makes it interesting. A lot of 3D engines were made in C (some I believe are still being made in C). Unix/Linux still uses C. Many toolkits still use C heavily, even over C++. There's still many people out there that prefer it over C++. Like I said, do a post on Slashdot to find out.