What would be the most useful programming language?

I graduated from college over 21 years ago as a Digital Electronics Engineering Technician. There was some programming - Basic, Fortran %26amp; Cobol, I think. The group one semester behind me took C which already outdated my program. I'd now like to take 1 or more programming courses to update, so wondering which one(s) would be most useful to find a job in the field, probably in government (Canadian)?


Thanks!

What would be the most useful programming language?
The C family of programming languages are powerful, but difficult to learn and use, kind of like using a stick shift rather than an automatic transmission - more power, but more responsibility!





You can actually write data into parts of your memory that are not related to your program!





But I think C# (C-Sharp) compensates for that weakness from the previous versions.





My language of choice is Visual Basic.NET. It is fully Object Oriented now, is completely .NET compliant, and takes full advantage of all the .NET functionality that's available in C#.





I think it's easier to learn, and you can get up-and-running a lot quicker.





I wish you the very best of luck, and "happy programming" :-)
Reply:Bear in mind COBOL fetches $50/$70 an hour if you're willing to travel. The money end of computers has old hardware and never upgraded.





C++ has no GUI. In the time it takes you to learn the finer aspects of C++ you could have learned java which does have GUI.





Database is its own science, distinct from code-monkeys. There seems to be specific openings for database. You'd learn SQL and also Set theory.





Since you learned C, take Python. Get you a Linux box and learn Python, the language that powers Google. Python is the nice trade off between newbies and advanced users. Python is a glue that can patch two unrelated technologies and unrelated Operating Systems.
Reply:C and C++ are still widely used programming languages. I can't speak to what the Canadian Govt is using, but learning an object oriented language like C++ or Java will probably be more helpful than a refresher course in Fortran ;-)
Reply:C++