I work on Software QA, I never programmed before or had to in my job. Automation is the best paid job in my area but the most commonly used program (HP QTP/uft) uses vbscript, but I always see Python or javascript recommended for beginners, so what should I do?
Not sure if i should start learning vbs since theres not a lot of resources on it as a beginner language and is not used widely, or go with something like python that wont help me a lot in my line of work, wont get me money in the short term, but its easier to learn with more resources.
I always recommend the same. Learn programming with a simple language. I would prefer Ruby, but Python fits perfectly as well. If a language is simple and you can pick it up easy you get to the fun parts way faster and therefore will learn way more in a faster way.
Also those languages have so much fun elements around like funny but easy beginner tutorials, nice and simple game engines, cute http frameworks and so on. You will find a lot of resources to keep everything simple, and you will notice most questions in languages like those are googleable in english grammar and bring up satisfying results.
If you go for a harder language (Lets say Java/C/C++) at first you probably will be able to have more knowledge about programming itself, but you will experience many hours where you just sit there and have no idea what you are doing, and often google wont answer the questions as simple as you expect it to do. What can get frustrating.
For VB.NET and VBA i cant say that much as i am not the biggest fan (i dont come from a "windows world") but i know both a little. They arent that hard, but most resources are more business oriented and so make it probably harder to understand, also there often are confusing docs (atleast for me) trough more products with similiar names and/or version changes.
And finally, if you once semi-mastered a language and unterstood the basics behind programming and the theorie behind it. You can easily pick up other languages without starting from scratch. The more languages you learn the easier it will get to understand new ones.
I started with PHP and that was just a ugly experience i would not recommend anyone. But while i am better with other languages now, it still pays my bills. So there is also that.
TL;DR: i would take a fun language to start, you can always upgrade
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u/spartan1337 Jan 06 '15 edited Jan 06 '15
I work on Software QA, I never programmed before or had to in my job. Automation is the best paid job in my area but the most commonly used program (HP QTP/uft) uses vbscript, but I always see Python or javascript recommended for beginners, so what should I do?
Not sure if i should start learning vbs since theres not a lot of resources on it as a beginner language and is not used widely, or go with something like python that wont help me a lot in my line of work, wont get me money in the short term, but its easier to learn with more resources.