Developing a Balanced Set of Programming Skills
Learning anything that’s overly difficult can get discouraging very quickly, and that’s probably the sort of difficulty that you’re going to have if you start out with a programming language that’s just too challenging. Learning Python is going to give you more immediate rewards, making you more enthusiastic about learning programming languages in the first place, which is going to ultimately lead to better results for you in the future.
Of course, that isn’t the only reason to learn Python. I don’t want to start selling Python short as some sort of training-wheels version of a programming language that’s useful for beginners and not for serious programmers, because that is definitely not the case. Python is actually one of the most versatile programming languages that’s in use today, and it has managed to replace several of the old standbys in the industry already. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why I recommend it to beginners so strongly.
There can be something frustrating about education for education’s sake. When kids complain about the fact that they’re never going to learn a good portion of the stuff that they’re struggling with in schools, they’re not entirely off the mark. They get to have grades at least, and these grades can help them get into better schools. If you’re teaching yourself a programming language, you need to be able to work on your own rewards system, and that’s a whole lot easier when you know that you’re actually working for the sake of tangible rewards.
Some adults go back to school for the sake of educational enrichment and self-improvement, but most of them are going back to school for the sake of furthering their careers, gaining the education that they need to change their careers, or broadening their job opportunities. Any of the grades that they receive when they’re actually in college are just personal bonus points. The important thing is that they have earned the sort of credentials that might actually manage to help them earn more money. Python is the sort of programming language that can definitely serve as a gateway to a newer and better job, even for people who already work in programming if they just aren’t familiar with a more profitable programming language.
Python is a programming language that will prove to be instrumental in emerging and existing 3D applications, game scripting, various systems, administration scripting, and the web. People in a wide range of different fields are going to be able to benefit from it, which is why it is such a good introductory language. It’s a newer language than many of the programming languages that you might decide to learn, which is part of why it is relatively easy to learn than many of the others.
However, it is still a good idea to learn JavaScript at one point or another. Ambitious people could still start out with it, and adding it to your repertoire is always going to be a good idea. When you know JavaScript, you will be able to create the sort of applications that can be used all over the world, which is not something that most people can do. It’s the sort of thing that people tend to dream about when they get started with computer programming in the first place. If I could sum up the language of the entire Web, I would probably have to just reference the JavaScript language. It’s hard to go wrong with learning how to speak ‘Internet’ and that’s what can happen to you if you try your hand at JavaScript.
I do recommend that if you’re going to learn JavaScript, really go all the way with it. It’s really not the sort of thing that you can dabble with, and it’s not really the sort of thing that you should dabble with. I honestly think that a lot of buggy websites and buggy web applications can be attributed to programmers who didn’t entirely learn how to do JavaScript in the first place. I’m of the school of thought that we have more than enough programmers like that, and we don’t need more of them.
If you know both Python and JavaScript, you’ll be able to do so much online and elsewhere that it isn’t even funny. Learning how to do both of them is definitely the sort of worthwhile goal that is worth struggling with and setting aside your free time for, even if you don’t have a lot of free time.