Health informatics: Which language/script should I learn?

[anil_robo]

Hi everyone, I need some advice that will be constructive in shaping my career. I have zero programming experience, but am interested in health informatics. My strong area is designing websites in HTML, but I lack java, php or perl skills.

I'll enroll in a masters degree in Health Informatics next year. I understand that I will not be required to program much, but it'll be my leadership skills that will play more important role. Still I want to learn at least one programming or scripting language that will enable me to make web-based applications/applets/systems? Can someone tell me which programming/scripting language will be most beneficial to me?

(I have a mac and an ubuntu box at home, but no PC.)

[grte]

Hi everyone, I need some advice that will be constructive in shaping my career. I have zero programming experience, but am interested in health informatics. My strong area is designing websites in HTML, but I lack java, php or perl skills.

I'll enroll in a masters degree in Health Informatics next year. I understand that I will not be required to program much, but it'll be my leadership skills that will play more important role. Still I want to learn at least one programming or scripting language that will enable me to make web-based applications/applets/systems? Can someone tell me which programming/scripting language will be most beneficial to me?

(I have a mac and an ubuntu box at home, but no PC.)

I imagine you would get a lot of mileage out of Python, or Perl.

[anil_robo]

I imagine you would get a lot of mileage out of Python, or Perl.

Thanks for the reply. Isn't C or C++ more "universal" option? I mean, I've heard that if can write a program in C++, I can program comfortably in linux, mac or win alike. Is that true?

But there is one substantial truth in your statement - I should start with a scripting language, and then go on to a programming language. Thanks so much!

[ComplexNumber]

Thanks for the reply. Isn't C or C++ more "universal" option?

for what you want to do, don't even go there. you'll be wasting your time learning C/C++ unless you want to take programming much further. stick to something like python because it is enough for what you want. perl is rather convoluted, but is used quite a lot on server side web applications. you could also consider java. java, especially, is quite web orientated, but is not as easy as python to learn. i feel that python will be your best introduction to programming.

I mean, I've heard that if can write a program in C++, I can program comfortably in linux, mac or win alike. Is that true?

not really no. most of the languages are available for all OS's, so it doesn't make any difference.

[grte]

Thanks for the reply. Isn't C or C++ more "universal" option? I mean, I've heard that if can write a program in C++, I can program comfortably in linux, mac or win alike. Is that true?

But there is one substantial truth in your statement - I should start with a scripting language, and then go on to a programming language. Thanks so much!

Well, as far as I know, for what you want (web apps), python, perl, and java are used much more frequently than C/C ++. Also, as already mentioned, all three of those languages are also available for Linux, Windows, or Mac, so that's not a problem.

Of the three, python would probably be your best bet, for a combination of it's popularity and it's easy learning curve. I don't know Perl or Java myself, but I'm told perl is tougher to pick up than python, but it's still very much worth considering purely for the fact that it's quite popular.

A lot of people love and hate java, so I've never really got a straight story on it, and I don't feel comfortable commenting on it. All I know is it's used frequently for what you want.

[anil_robo]

Okay, I'll start learning python soon. I shall also begin learning php so that I can make my web-pages richer.

Thanks for all the replies!

[EdThaSlayer]

I know iam a bit late...but Python would be the best choice. Its a really great language that is easy to learn, and you get so many libraries with it that you can almost do anything.Linux should already have it installed(type Python in the terminal)but you should get a IDE...which in this case is called IDLE(you can download it in the programming section of the Add/Remove part of the Application menu)...Good luck ^_^