JMHar said:
What is the first language I need to learn an master before moving on to others. Is it DOS, UNIX/LINUX, Java, C, C++, PERL, Visual Basic, Basic, FORTRAN, COBOL, JCL (just kidding with the last 2! Iused to be a mainframe COBOL programmer.)?????
COBOL,Fortran are procedural business application languages.
DOS and Unix/Linux are operating systems, not languages.
Perl, PHP, VB are interpretive languages for 'quick n easy soultions', but serious
work gets compiled, not interpreted. The big exception here is that a lot of
web cgi programs are written with this stuff.
You need to understand, no one language fits all environments, just like a
carpeter has more than one hammer -- you need to use the right tool for each job.
Before Mac OS X (which now has a FreeBSD foundation) Macs were written
in a event processing style; sort of OO but witout inheritance. Systems
are written primarily with Procedural Code using languages like C and assembler.
You gain a lot of understanding with this level of coding.
Today, APPLICATIONS are usually written using Object Oriented (OO) languages; C++, Java, and the MS exclusive C#
Systems Administration most often is not the same thing Programming.
Admins configure, tune, install, upgrade, backup n restore. If there are programs to be written, they usually are report generators
(eg: Perl== Program Extration Reporting Language)!
final thought: a study of Operating Systems and their management is NOT
an exercise in learning programming languages.