How much / what programming do you learn

Bit of a broad one: On your course and of your own accord how much programming do you learn and practice in terms of depth of knowledge and what languages you're proficient in.

I'm thinking overall of aiming to have a good grounding in most popular languages by the time I come out of uni, maybe specialising in a couple that the uni prefer which I believe will be Java and C++. I'd ideally like a job that doesn't solely consist of programming, but it is an element, perhaps database analyst/admin

I'm interested in how much programming people learn on their different courses and what they think is a practical level of knowledge and ability to look for employment with when finishing uni.

Reply 1

-Em-

At York (first year) we covered the principles of programming in Scheme, algorithms and data structures in Ada (I gather this is changing to Java next year) and a smattering of illustrative assembly for architectures.

This year, I think is C for a continuation of formal languages, Prolog for logic programming, Z80 assembler for electronics and probably SQL for the relational database stuff.

In my own time I much prefer to fiddle with Haskell, though I did do an extra-curricular architectures project in C and have variously dabbled with Scala and Python.

A few years ago I'd have called myself proficient in about 3 or 4 languages and conversant with 5 or 6. Now I just ignore them and get on with it.

Reply 2

the_satsuma_man

first year at staffordshire we did C and Java and, in second year we can choice what we'd like to do.

Reply 3

laser

This year, I think is C for a continuation of formal languages, Prolog for logic programming, Z80 assembler for electronics and probably SQL for the relational database stuff.

In York's second year, there's an optional course in C, but if you're doing the Graphics modules you do need to know it. Modules are also taught using SQL and Java, but you're not expected to know the Java and there's no exam in it.

Reply 4

WoWZa

We did Java, C++, SQL, and a variant of XML but to be honest, on the grand scheme of things, there is much more to learn. No university course can teach you all of it, but can give an awesome foundations for a career in something like applications or systems development. You can them move into systems analysis/project management. Or consider pursuing projects of your own that could make some $$$. w00t :tongue:

Reply 5

newman24x

I learn in,
1st year: C JAVA, HTML, SQL.
2nd year: Data Structures (in C and JAVA again :s-smilie:

), some Octave syntax(much like Matlab), PROLOG( very basic... :s-smilie:

), Shell Scripts.
3rd year: Assembly for Intel X86, PHP, JSP(currently) Matlab(currently)..

not much really...
still collecting :biggrin:

Reply 6

ish90an

Did JAVA in 1st year, and some basic data structures, plus HTML and got an intro to Relational Databases in Access over 3 weeks(it was this plus HCI and VB all in one module). Then I did Python during the 1st month of the summer vacations which also got me a summer job at the Space Technology Center at uni. C++ and remaining data structures and algorithms(search, hashing etc) and SQL for 1st sem next year, and shell scripting for 2nd sem.