I live in Ukraine, we are at war. It is quiet where I live (not counting alarms and attacks or nearby cities) for now. For the last 18 months, I was working as a customer support manager for an Israeli company. The salary is ok, a lot of free time, everything was fine. Most of our team is from Ukraine (4 cs managers + 3 programmers) and they are less lucky than me - 1 cs manager lives in the town that was occupied back on 24 Feb, others live in Zaporishya and Kyiv and are bombarded constantly. Only me from the cs team and 1 programmer continue working. I work every day so the rest of the cs keep their jobs, but I don’t know how stable our company is. I mean, they can hire a replacement or close and I think that this war will last for a few months more if not longer.
This made me think about looking for other backup options in case the company closes or I need to move to another place. I’m looking to start learning and I need some directions. No technical experience (programmed Visual Basic, C#, C++ back at school, but it was almost 10 years ago), but I think that I can become a programmer. Of course, I know that it will be a long road and I won’t become a programmer after a few courses. But I need something to distract and spend time usefully. I need advice about where to start. Python? C++? Java? What is demanded today? The best chances to start? Thanks in advance.
1st, I did not realize you were in Ukraine, man. I thought you were in Greece or that area.
Second, praying for you, and your country a lot.
and next, I know a very successful programmer, he is so successful he is retired now and Microsoft is actively trying to get him to come out of retirement and work for them. I posed your question to him, and will let you know what he says.
Our soldiers kick asses for now, but Russians bombard cities, civilians dying. We are almost defenseless from the air. We are holding, and we will keep it that way as long as we can. Russian suckers told that they will take Kyiv in two days and look - we are keeping up and not going to fall. Thank you for the support!
As for my question, I know it is very general. I just need pointers on where to start.
As for which language you should learn…you need to tell us what you wanna develop. Here at Amazon you can go far with Python and JavaScript. Even then, you have to have a goal what you wanna do.
If you are into gaming development, learning C++ or C# is your best bet. If you want to develop something related to networking and network infrastructure, python and C is what most of the companies are looking for.
At this point, anything you learn will be good for you and pretty much any language is in high demand.
Alive and well, although I have more gray hair now. It was like a really long bad day. It still is.
Some sources say that Python is viable/demanded, other sources write that not much sense in Python if you don’t know C++. That is why I’m asking.
As for what I want to develop - honestly don’t know. I mean I want to code, remotely if possible, and it doesn’t really matter if it is a game or software. I’m deciding between Python and C++.
You can learn them both. Python is relatively easy to learn since it’s using names for reference values instead of variables which is used for C++ so it’s harder to understand what you’re writing.
If you’d ask me, I would start with C++ since it’s complete, faster and backwards compatible for the used system. After you got that, python will be a piece of cake for you.
But then again I’m a network technician and I barely use any of those that much. Maybe someone who’s more into programming can tell you more details or which language suits you the best.
I’ve been a game/simulation programmer since… like 2009 I think officially, did programming in highschool a little before that.
I agree, start with C++. It’s the most powerful language and it makes it much easier learn other languages later when you understand how things actually work. All the other languages are very black boxy and do a lot of “automagic” stuff. These days I’m mostly using C# with the Unity engine. C# is supper easy to get into after c++. You can even import c++ .dlls to be used in c# and vice versa. Those are the most important languages to know. Everything else I learn as needed.
What I’m doing now is technically game programming because unity… but we make software tool suites for other companies to make their own training software. Here’s one for Ikea:
I just finished a ICT Specialists / it network systems administration course and we learnt mainly Python and some CSS, no C++. Python is good for networking as said before, i didnt go into other areas so far, i am just happy to finish it but soon i plan to go deeper. Whatever path you choose, you will find demand for it nowadays.
I’m behind a bit, but Python is pretty big these days. My companies entire code base is Python based.
For Python, one of the books that an engineer on my team recommends is “Learn Python the Hard Way”. I’ll send over a copy of you’re interested.
And in Germany? Hell no. But I love you…from a distance. 