C++

[Tiberius]

The downside with any .NET language is that it only works on Windows. The future is multiplatform, and with Java you get the bonus of being able to program for Android phones (the mobile market growing massively atm).

[Napoléon]

Well from a beginner's perspective I find C# pretty simple to learn. That's what I'm doing right now. I found learning C a lot easier though once I had a basic knowledge in C#.

[Tiberius]

Yeah, C# is still a good language, and I've developed in it before (when creating Xbox games), but I'll defend Java until some other language comes along that works on practically any platform without having to rewrite sections of code, is easy to use / develop, and has such a big variety of libraries to use.

[Chuff]

I need Adobe Flex / Java EE Developers if you're looking Tib

[Tiberius]

No thanks. I'm quite content with my job at the moment, mainly because I get to break stuff. Most of my development is either for my degree, or personal projects.

I'd probably hate a job in actual development though. I'd much rather do penetration testing and try to destroy other people's code

[Napoléon]

You're not going to ask what the salary is? Poor business sense Tibby!

[Chuff]

£400-£500 / Day

[Tiberius]

Hehe, unfortunately I don't know Adobe Flex. :-)

If you ever want someone to do a pen test of your systems, give me a call.

[Forsaken]

Agree with Tiberius on Java being the language of the future.

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[Autumnlicious]

Hehe, unfortunately I don't know Adobe Flex. :-)

I do. I work in it every day.

For the sake of all that is perverted and fun, DON'T TOUCH IT.

Seriously, while the language of actionscript, for the most part, is nice, there are some incredible inanities that make developers seethe "Gods I wish flash was dead."

Agree with Tiberius on Java being the language of the future.

I disagree -- with Java, you get a series of drawbacks that often leave one questioning the applicability of it. For instance, object creation is rather expensive in the JVM. You more often find that Java is fragile performance-wise to bad programming patterns.

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/kim/publicity...torial.pdf

No, I think the future lies with higher level languages and partial compilation, with each language sporting projects that make it more of a domain-specific-language for particular purposes.

Java is nice for somethings -- like long lived database arbiters with many immutables. For things like web services, not really. That niche does exist, but it is a small one, where memory is not a premium.