[ale] [OT] Advice needed

[Joseph Knapka]

Oooh goody! A flamewar in the making! We haven't had one in a few
days, and it's beginning to get a little chilly in here...

lee hartley <h_lyric at bellsouth.net> writes:

> Not sure if this counts as off topic...
> I am wanting to gain experience in programming and linux administration in hope of getting an entry level job in this field. Any advice would be great! 
> Back ground=I have done a little java and javascript...(has been a while), Apache, Windows (2k) network admin, Web design, technical writing/e-learning, tinkered with php and mysql,...I am a philosophy grad., so, I am having to slowly move into this sector...
> 
> my questions-
> 1.what would be a desirable language to learn? (in terms of usefulness and job market)... I plan to work on an open source project to gain experience...any project recommendations?

IMO (others will doubtless differ a lot):

Usefulness: Python, SQL, C, *ML. Python because it's really useful and
delightful to work with. SQL because you're going to have to deal with
databases eventually.  C because if you have to touch bits and bytes,
or hardware of any type, or glue together code written in different
higher-level languages, C is often the only way. *ML (by which I mean
HTML, DHTML, XML, etc., and by extension XSLT) because the Web is
really a great way to deploy thin clientness.

Job market: Java, Javascript, SQL, XSLT, maybe PHP (I don't know
anything about PHP, but it seems to come up a lot in discussions of
web development).

> 2.What distro(s)to be knowledgeable of...I am currently running redhat 7.2

Red Hat to be trendy, Slackware for deeper understanding of what Unix is
like.

> 3.What are best avenues/routes for crossing over (e.g. just get in a large place and work through, startups,...)
> Any advice is welcome!

Can't comment on this.

Cheers,

-- Joe
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