Episode 36 – How to pick a programming language to learn for new developers – Part 2

David Molina’s Bio:
Dave Molina is the founder of Operation Code, an organization that helps army veterans become coders. Dave came on the show to discuss coding boot camps, the military, software education, and what it’s like to become a civilian technologist after spending years in the army.
 
Reuven Lerner’s Bio:
Reuven created one of the first 100 Web sites in the world just after graduating from MIT’s computer science department. Today, Reuven spends most of his time training programmers at companies such as Apple, Autodesk, Cisco, EMC, HP, SANDisk, and VMWare in four open-source technologies: Python, PostgreSQL, Git, and Ruby. Reuven teaches in Israel, China, Europe, and North America, as well as online.
His monthly column in Linux Journal has appeared monthly since early 1996. His latest ebook, “Practice Makes Python,” is aimed at Python programmers who want to improve their fluency in the language.  Two new ebooks, about Regular Expressions and technical training, should be ready in the coming months.
Reuven curates DailyTechVideo.com (offering a new conference talk about programming each day), and is a permanent panelist on the Freelancers Show, a weekly podcast for independent consultants. He also edits MandarinWeekly.com, a weekly collection of links and resources for anyone learning Chinese.
Reuven has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from MIT, and a Ph.D. from the Learning Sciences program at Northwestern University, where he created and studied collaborative online learning communities as the developer of the Modeling Commons.
Reuven lives in Modi’in, Israel with his wife and three children.
Please say hi to Reuven on Twitter.
 
David Gatti’s Bio:
David Gatti began his career in IT as a Systems Administrator. He learned how to code in PHP out of boredom, and made some simple internal tools to help him while managing the company network. He later became a blogger and wrote about mobile technologies before the iPhone came into existence and PDAs had cellular modems. David also wrote the CMS for the website itself when WordPress was first starting. Then, he began working as a web developer for a company that did simple Facebook games.
After his initial experience, David ported a Windows Mobile app to Android 2.3. He then became a Brand Manager for a mobile game company and a Marketing Director for another company and at that company – he transitioned to Developer Relations Manager and worked for two companies with this title. It was a job that he fell in love with.
But, while hunting for his next opportunity, he struggled to find the right company. Out of frustration he created Simpe.li (simply) so he could keep doing what he does best – Development Relations Management done right.
Episode Highlights and Show Notes:
Arsalan: Hi everyone. Today I’m bringing you part two of our discussion panel. The discussion is about choosing the right programming language. If you are a new or aspiring software developer, one of the challenges that you face is where do you focus your energy? So, today we are going to discuss this with our panelists, Reuven Lerner and David Molina. Can you guys introduce yourselves?
Reuven: I’m Reuven Lerner. I’ve been a developer for 20 some odd years now. I mostly do technical training now for high-tech companies. The languages that I most often use now are Python, Ruby, some JavaScript, and SQL.
David M: Hi everyone. Dave Molina, here. I am self-taught. I started here a few years ago with Ruby and building on Rails, and that ultimately led to building the bilingual hire app, and later the Operationcode.org, which is an open source project that helps military veterans learn to code. I mostly stick with Ruby, but being the Jack of all trades.

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