Hello.
Long-time reader, first time posted.
I apologise in advance for the proceeding wall of text and understand that, this in itself has the potential reduce the propensity for people to read/respond or just type TLDR,etc... nb: couldnt figure out how to \n while writing this
I had a question regarding whether or not i should be investing time into advancing my perl skills to perform certain tasks or if a language such as C or C# would be more appropriate (if a similar question has been answered before or if anyone can provide reference to an answer feel free to post the link)
Background: My qualifications are in mathematics and anything i know about computer science is self-taught on a ‘needs basis’. I work in an area where we play around with data and learnt perl because clients kept sending us data in formats that were unusable and it was suggested that perl would be a good tool for data cleaning. Once cleaned the data would be loaded into SQL Server.
I consider myself a novice in perl and an advanced SQL server user.
I am writing this because SQL server is starting to frustrate me with regards to how long it takes to execute complex PROCs on large data sets and also with regards to the limitations of the language itself. For instance, if I could use the regex capabilities in perl instead of SQL queries such as LIKE, i believe this could add significant value to the analysis i am trying to do.
here is the problem: i do not have a significant computer science background and was wondering if perl is an appropriate language to pursue further or should i start building up some C or C# skills - i say C because i eventually want to learn objective C and write business apps (maybe for the Iphone/Ipad) and i think perl is not a good tool for this (but I don’t have a good enough background in programming to say this for certain). From what I understand both perl and C/C# can be used to query sql server and then once you have the data then you can start manipulating it using the language of perl/c/c# .
As such, on the basis on the information provided are there any suggestions as to which language would be most appropriate to invest time into learning (in terms power (what it can do), speed (how fast it can do it), and also ease of use (i.e. can be learnt by searching google) when it comes to connecting to SQL Server and then messing around with the data. And if I really want to get into writing business apps (I’m not sure if I will go down the iphone/ipad path) it worth just learning something other than perl because it can manipulate data and also create these apps in the same language.