I am just starting out

[Andrew J Bromage]

G'day all.

On Sat, May 24, 2003 at 11:45:07AM +1200, sashan wrote:

> From a practical perspective, unless you want to pursue a career in 
> academia,  you should focus on a language like Java or C++, since these 
> are far more marketable than Haskell.

I disagree.

Most sufficiently nontrivial pieces of software have some kind of
scripting system built into them.  Many of these scripting systems are
proprietary and unique, mostly because they're domain-specific.  You
WILL be asked to write code in one of these scripting languages at some
point in your career.  If you end up on the other side of the fence,
you may even be asked to maintain one of these.

A very important skill these days is the ability to pick up a new
language quickly.  Being familiar with how very different kinds of
programming language work is going to get you a long way there.

Cheers,
Andrew Bromage