Most helpful programming language in respect to the electronics/electrical job market

[Robbinz]

Wow thats a fair few replys lol. Ok so C is a given. Can I be a pain and ask your opinion in the NEXT handiest haha. I know a fair bit of C as I am doing my coursework in it.

 

[BrownOut]

I guess the next handiest would depend on exactly what type of EE you're considering. In SOC, I probably do alot more programming than ,say someone doing nlalog. The analog EE probably doesn't need to go past C, while the SOC EE needs to know different scirpt languages as well as C++.

 

[Robbinz]

Cool thanks. Ive a fair bit of experiance with C, C++ and C#. I am looking to branch out into maybe something different like Cobalt, Pascal, Python or maybe even something like MatLab.

But I think after the replies I have had ill maybe look more into the C language
Thank you all

 

[crutschow]

It's a niche area, but National Instruments Labview language is widely used to generate test protocols for custom testing of electronic systems. It allows the generation of a virtual control panel on a PC screen that has the appearance of a physical panel with knobs, switches, meters, etc.

Any type of electronic system that's built needs testing. They used to do it with dedicated physical hardware and control panels. Now it's often done with programmable instruments and Labview.

 

[arunb]

Pascal was quite popular before, its more readable and easy to understand than C. Now Pascal is available as FreePascal. There is even an RAD (Rapid Application Development) tool for FreePascal called Lazarus. Lazarus - News

In embedded systems Assembly and C dominate the market.

 

[kamdy]

I use C language when writing applications for embedded systems and Microcontrollers and Labview for PC-Based applications

 

[Lake9398]

Yes I agree with this. I have a little labview experience, but when I was going to my co-op interviews, almost every company used labview.

 

[harrimarks]

While comparing the top most languages. I think that PHP is the right one to use. It is an open-source, interpretive, server-side, cross-platform, HTML scripting language, especially well-suited for Web development as it can be embedded into HTML pages. It is particularly widely used one.


**broken link removed**

 

[Ratchit]

To the Ineffable All,

I am an assembler fan myself. I believe those higher level languages are Pablum processors; just another layer of software that gets between the programmer and the problem. Their saving grace is that they are somewhat portable between different computing platforms.

Ratch

 

[3v0]

I know this is rather stale but...

I think most reasonable programmers could learn C in a few hours.
...
What seems to confuse a lot of people is the use of braces. These simply group commands together so they are compiled as if they are one instruction.

Braces are common to and work the same in most modern languages: python, java, php, C#, and etc. Pascal used BEGIN END; If you can program well in any one of these languages it is not difficult to program in the rest.

The braces do two things.

First {} is command grouping.

if (some condition or test)
{
  conditional code...
}

The other thing {} do in c is provide scoping for variables. A variable can only be read or written when it is in scope. This allows us to reuse memory and hide or isolate variables. This is a huge advantage for larger programs.

 

[CraigHB]

A couple opinions posted here about C where I thought I was alone. I find C too cryptic. That's one language I've learned and forgot then learned again more than anything else. The best language I've used IMO is Pascal. It's easy to remember once you've learned it and easy to learn in the first place. Good to hear it's making sort of a comeback. I've also done stuff with Basic and Fortran so I wouldn't say I'm a novice programmer, but I'm far from an expert. I don't do much with general computing, just embedded stuff where my language of choice is Assembly. I think Assembly gets a bad rap sometimes. It has its down sides, but it's easy to use (although tedious) and all you need is an instruction set on a couple pages of print to remember everything you need to know about it.

 

[3v0]

To the Ineffable All,

I am an assembler fan myself. I believe those higher level languages are Pablum processors; just another layer of software that gets between the programmer and the problem. Their saving grace is that they are somewhat portable between different computing platforms.

Ratch

High level computer languages are all about expressing the problem to be solved. ASM is simply an expression of the underlying processor's instruction set.

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

C can be either. Programmer dependent.

 

[misterT]

I find C too cryptic.

Bad programmers make it look cryptic.. and many programmers even think that "pro C program" should look cryptic. It is a shame.

Another thing that makes C look cryptic are libraries written for compiler portability. There are so many compilers out there for C. And all of them add some compiler specific features to the language. That is both a good thing and a bad thing.

C language itself is not cryptic. You just have to program lasagna, not spaghetti.