On 13/12/10 17:32, Lamar Owen wrote: > On Monday, December 13, 2010 11:14:24 am Sven Aluoor wrote: >> What programming language should I learn? > > Python. You can find useful examples of python code throughout CentOS, beginning the yum itself. Get yourself a copy of 'Dive into Python' (can be had as a free download, legalling) and, well, dive into python! I completely agree! Python is really worth looking at. And a lot of the tools on RHEL/CentOS are written in Python. <http://diveintopython.org/> I see quite some people suggest Perl. I've been in that camp as well, but I personally find Python much more intuitive than Perl, and also a lot more consistent. Perl is truly like paint, you can splash the colours around just like you want. The learning curve for Perl is quite higher than Python in my experience. "Dive into Python" helped me to really get started, and it went fast with this book. Python enforces you to be more consistent, which is not a bad thing if you want to understand better what you are doing in the very beginning. Later on Perl, Ruby, C#, Java, C/C++ might be a good alternatives, as they probably are much stronger in a lot of fields for more complex tasks. But remember each tool has its own use case. You don't need a hammer when you have screws. It's the same with programming languages. And Python and Perl are often used as the "Swiss Army Knife". Useful for a lot of ad-hoc and not too heavy routine tasks, but you won't rely on it when going hunting in the wilderness. kind regards, David Sommerseth