I went to school for programming years ago and when I got out I found a job in system administration and that is the direction my career took. I’d like to get back into development of some sort and have been ‘playing’ with C# and ASP.NET, but I’ve been hearing lots of buzz for other ‘new’ languages (by new I mean that they are new to me) like Ruby and F#. I guess I’m wondering if I’m wasting my time with learning largely MS languages instead of being more of a generalist. Having not been apart of the development community for a long time (if ever I was) has me floundering with trends and I’d like not to be left behind the times.
Any thoughts to if it’s better to follow the ‘latest’ languages or stick with what is more tried and true technologies?
You should learn at least 1 compiled language (like C# or Java) and 1 Script Language (Python, Ruby, etc). This is usually enough to help most developers succeed at what they do, regardless of the age of the language.
As for new vs old, I’d stick with C# for now as it’s pretty popular. Learning a new language wouldn’t be too bad though.