IMO Its either C++ or COBOL. If you know either then VB wont be a hard nut to crack at all. Contrary to popular opinion on sites like this VB very certainly has a place in the programmers tool box. But like most of MS's stuff its pretty easy to learn just from the documentation that comes with it. For someone that has achieved a decent level in almost any other language VB would be a piece of cake.

Personally I regret not learning C++ properly, wheras ive never regretted not learning COBOL at all. Some of the posters in this column state that there is lots of work on legacy COBOL systems (and other mainframe languages). This is true, I know several people who earn a very good living doing this type of programming. However I would think carefully about the choice. Maintenance programming is not all that fun in any language, doing it an a beast of a language like COBOL doesn't appeal to me that much. Whatever the cash.

In the spirit of honesty however, I do have a book on COBOL that I went out of my way to find. However I did that more for the reason that Abigail-II points out, that is to learn our mutual heritage a bit better, and as a parachute if I _really_ _really_ _really_ need to take that job...

Good luck.

--- demerphq
my friends call me, usually because I'm late....

In reply to Re: Which language would be most helpful? by demerphq
in thread Which language would be most helpful? by mrpilot

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.