I don't know which to choose as my second language

I don’t know which to choose as my second language to PHP, Please who can I advice on which to choose but definately, am not going for .NET as am not a fan of single platform and its only base on microsoft alone and am I don’t wanna go for the unstable node.js now. so, I want the advantages of choosing either RoR over phython or phython over RoR

I think you should choose RoR… because it’s on my list of languages to learn this year if I can, and Python isn’t :smiley: :smiley:

Oh, did you want a technically sound opinion?

Ask one of these other smart people.

:stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

Edit: In the interest of providing something useful. My acquaintances who use one or both say that, generally, RoR is more of a… flexible language, but harder to get a handle on perhaps in some ways, and that Python is a bit easier to use but more rigid? I have really never used either so I don’t know. I also know that there are great wars started with simpler questions than “RoR or Python” so good luck :wink:

I’m a new Ruby learner and I’ll say that I LOVE it. Absolutely love it.

I haven’t learned any of Python though so that might be an excellent language too.

if you do go with Ruby, then take the Ruby course over at www.codecademy.com

It was great. Take it a few times though so you pick up on stuff you may have missed.

There’s also a whole category for Ruby over at https://learnable.com/topics/ruby :wink:

You can probably also find some really fantastic YouTube tutorial series on both as well (just browsing YT I mean). It’s amazing what you can get for cheap, or free, today. If I was just leaving high school, today instead of years ago, I’d just spend a year living with my parents and doing tutorials, and building a portfolio by doing small biz sites for free or cheap, not go to university at all, then go find a web development job… and life path would now be wayyy different :slight_smile:

I’d say it depends on why you’re going to learn it. If you are (or are looking to be) a web developer then RoR might benefit your career more than learning Python, although it all depends what sort of work is available where you live.

At the end of the day node.js is just server-side JavaScript, and JS is definitely worth learning these days, even if you’re not planning to use it server-side (although I do believe end-to-end JS stacks are going to become more popular).

You don’t feel getting a degree was worthwhile then? I don’t have a degree in CS, but I often feel like I’d benefit from having some formal training in the more theory-oriented stuff such as algorithms, data structures and the like. It seems to take longer to pick these things up along the way.

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I don’t believe mine was worthwhile. There might be some that are? The biggest issue is that it’s such a broad overview of software development… you get a basic touching on some web language and some software language, and you get some theory / logic / development general stuff, but… I don’t really think I’ve gained any value of it - especially for the massive debt I’ve incurred.

If I lived somewhere where education was free, perhaps I’d alter that logic? Unsure.

I am a web developer (front-end) and I refuse to go pay for a college course on this crap. I am not exaggerating when I say that every course I’ve seen / attended as a speaker, they all are teaching outdated code and ideas. It’s astounding and absurd. It’s a complete waste of money.

I don’t know how the programming side of things are, but hopefully better (the ONE Computer Science class I had in high school was a joke but in her defense, she only started learning it over summer break.)

I studied CJ in college and I wish I could have htat money back. The only use of it right now is I can say I actually went to college.

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Yes, if you’re talking about the web-specific degree courses then many of those do seem to lag behind… teaching out-of-date JS and old-fashioned markup practices etc. The web moves quickly and I guess it’s hard/expensive to be constantly updating the course materials (this is probably one area where online courses always win out over traditional universities).

I was talking specifically about computer science degrees. The ideas and practices in software engineering have been around for a while now, and I don’t think it matters too much what language is used to teach them. The principles that you’d pick up from a Java-based course (which many of them seem to be) will be just as applicable to PHP or Ruby. I guess studying concepts like recursion might not seem that useful if you mainly work with HTML, CSS and jQuery, but it can come in handy for the heavy lifting server-side.

Check out these lectures… really good stuff: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvJoKWRPIu8GhAhDBAH0BFB9BS7YxM1WT

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I don’t think Node.js is unstable, it’s being used in lots of mission critical applications.

But even still, learning JavaScript is not going to go to waste. You can use that knowledge alongside your PHP knowledge to create interactive apps.

If you don’t want to and want a challenge, you can always go for Scala. :wink:

This. If you come out of college with a CS degree that taught you lots of practical knowledge, like JavaScript or Ruby or anything like that, then you probably went to a bad CS course. CS is not a degree in programming, it’s a degree in Computer Science which hasn’t changed much since the 60/70’s. And it is invaluable.

Languages, tools, workflows, etc. come and go. What you’re using today will not be what you’re using tomorrow. If you spend 4yrs in college learning about yesterday’s (or today’s) tools, then that’s really not going to help you much 4yrs later.

That said, some colleges offer electives that do teach more practical knowledge. I learned the .NET stack through one of these and it helped me quite a bit. But most of it has been self study as far as languages, stacks, etc. go.

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