Learn Proggramming Languages?

[Paul1337noob]

Ive always been interested and enjoyed programming.
the 1st language i started learning was PAWN when i played GTA San Andreas:MP where i become the scripter for a server i used to play on all the time.

then in college weve been doing VB, i made a o's and x's game for the assignment.

then i picked up on HTML and CSS as i started messing around with websites.
its something i love doing, especially when i come up to a problem i need to solve.

but now i want to go into something a little more indepth like C or C++ etc.
ive always been entrigued at how people make hacks for games like the call of dutys, not the using of them but the concept of making something like that and how they bipass things like VAC. and it makes me want to learn this stuff.

what would be the best kind of language that you see will keep its longevity, such as still be around in a good few years, something that may come in handy at a later point in life should i continue in a career in IT(bloody hope i do).

im in college now and the most we touch there is a little VB6 and HTML
so what could i learn that will help me later on in life, even if its just something to add to a CV. and how would you recommend learning such things. I hope to be going to usniversity after college to do computer science and games development, but ive still got a few years left at college and i want to learn now. should i wait till college, just play around and read tutorials off the interwebs or look at an independant course,

Hope you can maby guide me with your experiences.

[omgMooter]

Well this can end up being a huge list of languages, I can probably only answer the gaming one since im in game dev. what youll want to learn is c++ since thats a very popular language for coding aswell as being usable on essentially all possible platforms. If you would want to code for multiple platforms you also want to have basic graphics language concept if not INTENSIVELY deep knowledge in this case you want OpenGL.

OR! go with the microsoft way of doing stuff and pick up C# and XNA (basically the same thing) and then learn DirectX aswell.

Also java is becoming more and more powerful/popular especially if this whole "fits in the palm of my hand" fad stays.

Just a heads up all of these languages are quite a big step up from VB6 so be ready for some difficulty at first

TL;DR

General Game Development: (Usable on almost all platforms)
- C++
- OpenGL

Microsoft Game Development: (Easy to use, Huge Community)
- C#/XNA
- DirectX

Other good coding languages for Game Development:
- Java

[TheMuffinMan]

As a software dev for 8+ years now I completely agree with mooter above...

I would also add if you want to do any kind of web development learn these:

JSP (Java Server Pages, essentially Java + HTML (NOT! JavaScript))
PHP
SmartyTemplates (A template engine used with PHP, SUPER handy)
JavaScript (Including jQuery and scriptaculous libraries)
CSS
And try to be good at graphics or at least have an eye for design

The #1 thing that has really helped my career is teaching myself stuff. I set out wanting to create a phpBB forum plugin that parsed the WoW armory, this lead to me learning heavy amounts of PHP, cURL, CSS and JavaScript(jQuery). All of this stuff I ended up applying in my professional career.

When in doubt, google some tutorials and go buy some books and a highlighter and go to town!

[Nghtmr9999]

Yup, I'm in college as well and most of the stuff I learned was either from classes (Java, C/C++ data structures in linux, and assembly), or self-taught (PHP, SQL, C#/XNA etc). Both mooter and TMM gave some wonderful advice on what languages to learn.

<sidetrack>
I recently finished my final project in assembly, a game based off of the choose your own adventure books. It has easter eggs, references to Portal and Lost, and has a secret insta-win code. My roommate is trying to do stuff with graphics. I think he's crazy, since it's due in about 10 days.
</sidetrack>

[ollee]

PHP or bust.

(c++ too)

[Paul1337noob]

Thanks alot, will deffinatly be takin this in to consideration

[p0weruser]

I am in College also for Computer Science, C, C#, C++ are a good start, at our University they started us off with Java to begin with, I prefer C over Java.
C# and VS2010 have a great tool of helping to create programs and GUIs etc.
Java and Netbeans are good for creating GUIs too,
Me and a group I was in just wrote a Password Generator/basic password cracker in C#.

Also REAL MEN LEARN HOW TO PROGRAM IN ADA...
one of the roughest languages to learn, but its got very good advantages to it.
One of my professor's contracts for Nasa, so he teaches Ada as the bases for our Data Structures class WOW omg the freaking Final in that class hurt my brain...

[TheMuffinMan]

My office contract with NASA is in C#. We have software on the space station!

AND OH SWEET JESUS F*** NETBEANS.

Stick with Eclipse.

[p0weruser]

Sorry Muffin, didn't mean to get you riled up with Netbeans, I was just suggesting for the newb, when I started with Java they had us using Blue Jay, omfg the worst freaking java programming environment ever.

I use Eclipse for my Droid dev. hasn't gotten anywhere yet tho bc of school being so over whelming

[Nghtmr9999]

Eclipse = amazing. I use it for Java and some lua/xml WoW add-on development as well.