[fpc-other] What would your second language be and why?

[Marco van de Voort]

>But  there comes a time, when I like to extend my knowledge a bit.
>Pick up some new skills and maybe ever carry those skills over to my
>daytime job and programming language.

First, on what primary grounds do you select the language? Commercial (iow
something to put on your resume) or technical skills?

If commercial, and aiming at larger business, pick either C# and Java.  If
technical, pick something that is complementary rather than competing to the
skills you already have.

But first, decide if you want to target larger or smaller companies. 
Smaller companies are less rigid in their language ways.

Also, the languages you picked are geared at the straight administrative
side of programming, where both the money and competition is biggest. 

If you go numeric, embedded (and there are several levels there), choices
can be different.

>From the start I have been a big fan of the Java programming language.
>To me, it's a very clean and well designed language and is relatively
>easy to learn and understand. Just a shame the GUI performance was so
>bad, though that was many years back. I don't know if things have
>improved since.

I never really liked Java syntax. I don't mind the language itself so much,
but there is no love lost there. 

>I don't want to learn some obscure
> anguage like D or F# that nobody would hire you for - there just
>isn't a commercial demand for such languages, no matter how good
>features they have.

So, the commercial angle. Well, blindly selecting, VB.NET or C# then. Maybe
if you have a feel for the industry that you go to (say they are not
typically MS shops, but IBM or Sun), Java could be a choice too.

>Anyway, what I see as mainstream at the moment is Java and C#. Both
>seem to be well designed, commercially acceptable (from a job hiring
>point of view) and appears to be clean code. Scripting / interpreted
>languages like Perl etc are out! So for me, it seems a choice between
>C# and Java. So far I am leaning towards Java, because it's more open
>(no big giant monopoly hanging over it), been around for years and is
>commercially viable. Development tools, documentation etc are plenty
>full! Plus it's well supported on just about any OS and device.

Don't try to rationalize a commercial decision with technical arguments. It
is pointless.

> * What's your thoughts between Java vs C#?

Roughly the same. Choice boils down to allegiance of your future employer to
either MS or Sun/IBM.  The size of the C# language scares me a bit though,
specially the heaps of modifiers, and new syntax every two years. Though for
the former one could argue where C# stops, and MSVC modifiers start.

> * Have you got a better choice in mind and why?

While learning C#, learn VB.NET too. Not that hard, and VB.NET shops are
often in desperate need for that one programmer that solves the problems the
hordes can't.