Looking to study, need advice

[Se7ven]

Hey guys, I need some advice.

I have a ton of spare time, so I am looking to learn something in terms of programming but I have no idea where to start.

The idea is I want to be able to put it to use to earn some money.

Although I have no idea what people are looking for, coders? designers?

I know this may not make much sense and it should be "do what you want" but I really don't know what I want and thats the advice im lookign for, I will be looking to get into the IT field eventually, but I dont want to study something where at the end there is no chance of getting a job.

Is there anything that people are crying out for?

 

[jimmymctavish]

I can think of a couple of basic distinct (not basic instinct) options

1. Probably the easiest language to get into, that would be of some commercial use, is Visual Basic .NET. This will put you on a path to program database applications and website backends in ASP - nothing very exciting.

2. Probably the language with the widest commercial appeal is C++, which will get you into just about everything else, from games programming to embedded systems, but at the expense of making you brain melt away. I never mastered it.

3. Maybe as a gentle introduction to the C++ way of doing things you can start with Java, which is used largely with mobile devices and web applications. The syntax and philosophy is very similar to C++, but it's just more friendly.

If you find out what people are crying out for let me know! I learned Java and C++ at University a few years ago, but the only job I could get at the time was using VB which I picked up easily, and I've been using it ever since. Not sure if I could even string a Hello World app together in any other language now.

VB is great though, you can knock out an application in next to no time and prototype your ideas quickly. I now work in data analysis which means a lot of number crunching which the computer could do much quicker if I wrote and optimised my code in C++, but its so easy to put something together in VB and get a visual result out that the slower execution of the program doesn't really matter.

Not much help I know, but thought I'd throw it in since you didn't have any other responses!