Welcome to the Treehouse Community
Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.
Looking to learn something new?
Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.
Start your free trial
Kenton Kotsiris
6,130 PointsBest to learn after html/css: ruby/rails or focus on mean stack? Best for job in future?
For the veterans out there (and people that's have been in the field for a few years) if you had to start all over today, what path would you take?
Originally I was leaning with ruby, but the mean stack is showing up everywhere and a lot of people are saying it's the future. Is figured I ask the treehouse community.
Overall goal: I quit my job to focus on learning this as a career change, so a job and future employment opportunity is my goal, not just as a hobby.
1 Answer
Ken Alger
Treehouse TeacherKenton;
Ah, the question for the ages... "What's the best programming language?" The short answer is, there isn't one. It all depends on what you want to do. You can find employment if you are proficient in any language as there are jobs out there for Ruby, PHP, Python, Java, JavaScript, etc. You can find jobs if you know old(er) languages as well like Cobol or Fortran.
It all really ultimately depends on what you enjoy doing or are really talented at from a programming standpoint. If you stay up late at night thinking about how best to store e-commerce related data and then display it to on a website, the subtleties of CSS and SASS may not be as exciting to you as the finer points of the interaction between PHP code and MySQL. Similarly, if iPad app ideas pop into your head all of the time, then learning how to program in Swift is probably more appropriate than spending your days polishing your Ruby on Rails skills.
The development world has room for a lot of languages and it really depends on how, and what, you what to program that, in my opinion, should drive and gear you towards a specific language or track here at Treehouse.
I would also recommend taking Treehouse's Career Foundations course as it really helps to highlight some of the different career paths that are out there in the programming/development area.
Ken
Kenton Kotsiris
6,130 PointsHello Ken, thanks so much for taking the time to answer my question. It's funny, because I got so wrapped up in the what that I forgot about the why. Why do I want to learn x, y, or z.
I'm going to take your advice and do the Career Foundations course today so I can learn a bit more about the career paths and figure out what I want to do and why I want to learn a specific language vs trying to jump on ship because I think it's the most popular.
Patrick Cooney
12,216 PointsPatrick Cooney
12,216 PointsAs Ken sort of mentions, first decide what you want to do and where you want to do it. It sounds like you know the "what". That's web developer. The where is the next thing. Do you want to work at a startup? In enterprise? A high load application? If you want to work in enterprise or a high load application (like twitter) you should look into Java. Java is hands down the choice of enterprise and popular for applications that demand a high level of scalability (Twitter). If you want to work at a startup, I mean, throw a dart at a list of languages and frameworks. Ruby/Rails, Javascript/Node, etc. If your goal is a general "most likely to get me a job" then probably RoR.
This is all my opinion so take it for what it's worth. Except for Java being the king of enterprise. That's a fact. If you want to get into enterprise (a big bank, a fortune 500 company, etc.) you will have to be proficient in Java.