What's the best programming language for an aspiring Engineer to learn?

I've been recommended C and python by a friend but I'm not really sure whether an engineer would ever need (or whether it would be helpful) to learn them.

Which programming language would be best to learn and would help my CV the most when applying for Engineering jobs?

(I'm a beginner with programming, but I pick stuff up quite fast, so I'd prefer to learn an advanced one first if it's possible)

Reply 1

alexyfoot

Matlab is simple easy and useful. I like it but they are all very similar. It will probably depend on what engineering you do but Matlab is good :smile:

... I've tried C++ in school and now we use Matlab and it is much better then the heavy C++.

Reply 2

-Matt-

Mmmm. In terms of usefulness in a engineering job, I would say Visual Basic (for Applications) would probably be the most 'efficient' as it is near certain at some point in your career you will do something using MS Office applications that would be greatly speeded up by knowing the basics of VBA, while whether or not you would find an opportunity to use something more powerful like C(++) would be more dependent on your specific job (Proviso: this is based mainly on my experience of working in an engineering consultancy during my gap year). However as a language itself, VBA and even Visual Basic is fairly limited for more general usage, and does not lend itself to good programming practice.

In my (engineering) course we are being taught C++. This is the opposite end of the spectrum to VBA - powerful and flexible, but a lot more difficult to pick up (IMO). It takes a lot more to be able to make something useful using C++, but then there is little limitation on what you can code. Also if you were to learn C(++), I would say it would be much easier to pick up other languages such as VBA than vice versa.

Python is a good compromise I think. It is inherently flexible, has lots of libraries with useful functionality, and is IMO a lot 'nicer' to begin on than C++. However part of this 'niceness' is that it conceals some of the lower level stuff which can equally be a disadvantage. Also as a (generally) interpreted language its unlikely programs will be as quick or efficient as compiled code. However for a lot of the uses you might put it to this will not necessarily be much of a problem - whether a script you write to solve some analytical problem takes 10 seconds or 10 minutes to complete is often not going to be much of an issue especially if the latter takes half the time to implement in the first place (unless of course there are a lot of such scripts to run!).

Any programming experience you can get, whatever the language, will be beneficial, both in terms of giving you a head start in your course (just getting the basic mindset for programming and understanding the fundamentals is a major step and will help whatever language you use to do it) and in a future career.

fortran

alexyfoot

Matlab is simple easy and useful. I like it but they are all very similar. It will probably depend on what engineering you do but Matlab is good :smile:

... I've tried C++ in school and now we use Matlab and it is much better then the heavy C++.

Matlab is a fancy calculator rather than a proper programming language. But still very much worth getting familiar with as it's fantastic for tedious things like matrices.

BTW - Matlab is a program you have to pay for... download Octave, it's the same for most things you'll use it for, and free!

Reply 5

ShinyApple

Everyone is answering the question without knowing what field of engineering they OP is asking about! Ha! Madness!

Engineering uses many different languages. Additionally, depending on the field, your time could be much better spend on doing CAD work or some suchlike.

Reply 6

Free Thinker

I will probably be applying for mainly general engineering. Or maybe mechanical...still not 100% sure. Aerospace sounds fun :smile:

Reply 7

alexyfoot

ShinyApple

I think I said it if I remember correctly :smile:

I will probably be applying for mainly general engineering. Or maybe mechanical...still not 100% sure. Aerospace sounds fun

It sounded fun to me. Now it is even cooler when I study it :smile:

General is Okey if you dont have a clear idea though :smile:

PS: Matlab costs money only if you are prepared to pay for it. There are always other ways to get it :smile:

Reply 8

Free Thinker

alexyfoot

PS: Matlab costs money only if you are prepared to pay for it. There are always other ways to get it :smile:

Haha, I know. I was searching last night. I'm behind a school proxy now though so can't... :frown:

Reply 9

Master Polhem

Free Thinker

I will probably be applying for mainly general engineering. Or maybe mechanical...still not 100% sure. Aerospace sounds fun :smile:

aero+fortran=love because of the ridiculous computational power required for CFD (computational fluid dynamics) - which most (60%) research is done on currently, at least in my department.