OT: Should I learn bash/C/python/perl/other

[Thomas Springer]

=== Thu, 11 Aug 2005 13:10:38 +0200
=== Dotan Cohen <dotancohen at gmail.com>

> Paul Howarth <paul at city-fan.org> wrote:
> > You do know that PHP has a command-line mode, and you don't need a
> > browser or server to use it, right?
> > 
> > Paul.
> 
> Yes, I know that. But I am looking for something more flexible,
> something more oriented for file manipulation and similar stuff, not
> for creating just text output, which is the goal of php.
> 
> I 'could' get away with what I am doing now in php, but I intend to
> use linux for a long time, and I want to know how to give it my own
> instructions, not just run a program that someone else wrote to solve
> her specific problem. I find that to be able to really _use_ the
> computer I must know how to speak it's language, to give it commands.
> I went googleing to figure out what language I must speak to the
> computer, and found many. So I thought that I'd ask here, what is a
> prefered language? I want something that I will be able to use on
> other machines as well, which is another reason why I don't want to
> use php, as not many home machines have it installed.
> 
> Furthering my research, it would seem that perl is good for this, as
> it appears to be installed in many more machines than python. Or
> should I go with C? lso, as I understand it, if I write in C I can
> compile for both windows and linux. Is that correct?
> 
> Dotan
I think you have to figure out for your own what you are really
interested in, but i will try to give some advise.

Remember that C is used for os-programming.

I want recommand to _use_ a simpler scripting pl first.
Python is really good for such a purpose.

You can make use of it in yoor daily exercises and have
a lot of fun.

Definitly you should know about shell-programming which will
only take you a bit of time to get the basics, so that you are
able to do simple task at your prompt, modify your initscripts and
some others sh-executable files on your linux.

Now just type :

$ info bash
$ info python
$ info libc

find some interesting stuff and ... t r y  i t  o u t!


Thomas

(So.. sometimes my english is really worse)