macOS Basic skills for a computer hobbyist?

[Caezar]

Hi,

I do not have any formal education in computer science, but I do enjoy writing small programs at work using VBA. I am also learning Python right now, but my knowledge of these tools is somewhat limited.

In your view, which skills should an aspiring amateur-developer acquire, in order to be able to start creating interesting applications? I was thinking of the following:
- Unix (to go beyond the basics of OS X)
- A scripting language (I chose Python, but it could have been Ruby, or VB & VBA in the Windows world)
- GUI (wxPython for instance)
- SQL
- HTML, CSS, XML
- Regular expressions

What else?

 

[Cromulent]

It depends what type of applications you want to develop. The skills you have listed would be great for a web developer.

 

[kainjow]

Python is a great language to start out in. There are lots of ways to write GUI-based applications with it. On OS X you can use the Cocoa-Python bindings that are now available natively in 10.5 and via third-party in 10.4. With that, you can write a lot of "interesting" applications, but it really depends on what kind of apps you want to write. If you're wanting to write games, than Python isn't the language to learn.

 

[Catfish_Man]

Python is certainly a good choice if you're wanting to pick up programming. If you're looking for something a bit more immediately useful, either shell scripting (for automating tasks on your computer), or web stuff (html/css/js) could be better choices.

Regular expressions, while arcane and annoying, are useful almost everywhere.

 

[vanmacguy]

I found that for sheer usefulness, Perl to be the outright winner.

There are so many times that I've been able to whip up a Perl script to automate things that I can't honestly count (this was in my Windows days, I've no idea what Perl is like on the Mac).

My point I guess is that you should learn something that you, yourself, personally will use and save time with. To that end I might try applescript (and will one of these days).

Scripting languages *will* save you hours and hours of work. They're not as sexy as some killer web app, but I don't need sexy, I need more time back.

Just one guy's opinion.

Cheers.

 

[yeroen]

If you're learning Python, I'd also suggest picking up the Qt framework for cross-platform and GUI development. Qt has a python language binding, PyQt that enables you to make full use of the powerful and elegant Qt model without having to know C++. Qt is generally regarded as being superior to wxWidgets.

 

[jb60606]

Hi,

I do not have any formal education in computer science, but I do enjoy writing small programs at work using VBA. I am also learning Python right now, but my knowledge of these tools is somewhat limited.

In your view, which skills should an aspiring amateur-developer acquire, in order to be able to start creating interesting applications? I was thinking of the following:
- Unix (to go beyond the basics of OS X)
- A scripting language (I chose Python, but it could have been Ruby, or VB & VBA in the Windows world)
- GUI (wxPython for instance)
- SQL
- HTML, CSS, XML
- Regular expressions

What else?

Is UNIX a staple at your office? Perl would be pretty helpful and still a requirement for a lot of IT jobs if you plan on making a career out of it. Java is also a valuable tool.

I was in the same boat as you about 5yrs ago. Since then, I've learned the languages below, in the following order:

Shell (not really a "language" but incorporates some methods common among scripting/programming)
PHP + MySQL (great for a Web based front end)
Perl (powerful language and my personal favorite. There is a gigantic perl community as well)
JavaScript
Java
C# (It's not just for Windows)
C++

My office is a 3000+ node mixed Linux/Solaris/Windows shop, with heavy emphasis on *NIX. My responsibilities lay solely in our *NIX environment, but I learned Java/C#/C++ so I could supply GUIs/Interfaces for our Windows users, to our *NIX environment.

 

[AlmostThere]

You should have enthusiasm, you will acquire frustration, try and learn patience