Where to start?

[giodamelio]

I am a 14 year old just out of 8th grade.

I have been programming in vb.net for 2 years now.
I have mostly have made little projects that have something to do with my current interests. Because of that i have a whole slew of unfinished projects.

I currently see myself going into a career as a developer.
I am wondering what technologies would be good to learn?

If anyone has any suggestions as to what i should learn please speak up.

Thanks in advance.

[baja_yu]

.Net is a good place to be at currently. But as technology develops the trend is tending to lean towards Ineternet and webapplications. C/C++ is something that's pretty stable/in demand even though it is old in comparison to .Net or newer technologies, and it's something definitelly worth having on your résumé.

[Nightwalker83]

I agree with what baja yu says! Also, if possible try and stick with the new technologies rather than going old school.

[NeedSomeAnswers]

Yes i agree,

.Net is certainly currently very popular in the business world and is good for designing business desktop applications.

If you are wanting to do any Web Development you could look at ASP.Net but a good understanding of HTML5 / CSS / Javascript / XML, won't do you any harm.

C++ is a must if you want to do Games development.

To be honest there are quite a lot of alternative languages out there you could learn and get work with, from; Progress, Python, Java, Delphi, Coldfusion, PHP e.t.c.

What i would say is no matter what language you start out learning, you will most probably end up learning more during your working life, i have currently learnt about 5 or 6 langugages and still learn new things every day.

As long as you are prepared to learn and adapt you will be fine.

[baja_yu]

Also, with programming, there is no wasted time, regardless of what you learn. Most languages have semantics which are present in all of them, only the syntax is different. This goes for a lot of data types and constructs. For example, declaring an Integer type variable in VB you might do

Dim Counter As Integer

while in C it would be

int Counter;

Creating a simple For loop:

'In VB
Dim I As Long
For I = 1 To 100
   'do stuff here
Next I


//In C
for (int i = 1; counter <= 100; i++) {
   //do stuff here
}

So, most of what you learn will be applicable, you will just be writting it a bit differently.

[techgnome]

NeedSomeAnswers touched on the real question... first thing to decide is what kind of development you think you want to do. If you want to do games, then you're going to want to learn C/C++ and possibly XNA, you're also going to want to probably at some point take some graphics arts kind of classes. I personally think it takes a special breed of developer to do that kind of stuff. If you want to go into business development, the things right now are .NET (mostly C#, but I know from experience there's VB.NET jobs to be had too). Something I'm seeing more and more is Sharepoint development. For some reason in the last year or so, it's really taken off. I wouldn't recommend buying it (it would be cost prohibitive)... but read up on it. WCF and WPF (Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Presentation Foundation) are two .NET technologies that are expanding as well.

Most languages have semantics which are present in all of them, only the syntax is different. This goes for a lot of data types and constructs.

I couldn't agree or stress this more. I was in the process of learning my 4th language and struggling with it, until some one pointed this out to me. Ever since then, it's like a whole new world has been opened up to me. Master the basics. Practice logic puzzles too. And math. 85% of programming is being able to take complex logic constructs (or computational equations), break them down, and re-assemble them in code.

-tg

[NeedSomeAnswers]

If you want to do games, then you're going to want to learn C/C++ and possibly XNA, you're also going to want to probably at some point take some graphics arts kind of classes.

I used to know a guy who worked for Gremlin as a level designer, and from what i understand the coders work mainly on the physics engines and games play rather then the art. I would have thought they would employee separate Graphic artists, but maybe i am wrong.

[Shaggy Hiker]

One thing to keep in mind is your age. You have four more years of HS ahead of you, then if you add college, you won't be hitting the job market for roughly eight years. Everything that you work with now will be gone by the time you enter the job market (except C/C++, which has legs). .NET will be up to version 2016 running framework 9 where every program will be running as a multi-threaded, semi-connected, graphically scaled app for cell phone and cortical implant. The web won't be the web in anything other than name, and there will be a government agency dedicated solely to the distribution of acronyms, as no other means will be possible to keep them all straight (except for the letter i, which will be effectively patented by Apple, and the letter e which will be the punchline for jokes that will already be considered lame and out of date).

Basically, if most of the people here (at least the ones who are old enough) look back 8 years at what they were doing, they would say that they have very little idea what technology will be critical 8 years from now.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and I should also add: You are off to a great start so far, so don't worry about it.

[techgnome]

That's true.... I mean when I look back at what I was doing 10 years ago... what I'm doing now would have been a pipe dream... when I compare what I know/can do now compared to when I was 14.... it would have been unimaginable... one thing to remember, when it comes to programming, you NEVER STOP LEARNING.... if you stop learning new things, it means you've changed into a completely new career... or you're dead.

FYI - my first practical app was for my high school my Jr year - a system to track yearbook sales, then to track who had picked theirs up. We re-used it the following year too... no clue if they kept using it after I left or not.

-tg

[Shaggy Hiker]

When I was 14, you drew out graphics on a sheet of graph paper so that you could determine which pixels to turn on and off. You could get a single sheet that would have the same number of cells as you had pixels on the display. Of course, the computer didn't have enough memory to actually re-draw ALL of them at any one time, but it took so bloody long that it didn't matter anyways.

[FunkyDexter]

To be honest, I'm lucky if I can remember what I was doing 10 minutes ago. When I started it was on a ZX Spectrum. All the commands were attached to keys (so pressing P would result in a print command). Think that through and you'll realise that you were playing with about 26 commands.