[M4A1]

Hi, I am an EE student and I'm curious as to which programming language I should learn that would be most valuable later on.

I plan to continue on to graduate school, and hopefully get a job. As of right now, I've programmed in C++ (in HS) and Java (in HS), and I will be taking two C++ classes starting this fall. I used to program a lot on my own, for fun, but now I'm looking to expand. I don't particularly like Java. I have a decent grasph on C++, but nothing too fancy.

For any of you stduents/engineers/bosses/supervisors, what would you recommend/like to see in terms of languages? I know not all fields use the same languages, and it can vary a lot depending on what you want to do. But I want to get into robotics/signal processing/ and or the biomedical engineering field.

[Snake-Eyes]

A form of LISP is used in artificial intelligence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISP

Second oldest programming language, to boot!

[AMDSCOrPiO]

I have already takin 2 computer courses and in september im going to do one more, i have worked with c++ and found it interesting, i have only done little dos programs but the final one was hangman and for our exam he took a part of our code and made us explain it.

[The Future]

Well, Java is right now the most popular language in terms of number of users and compatability. Plus, learning Object-Oriented program design early on is a huge bonus to other procedural or event-driven languages, but if you're already proficient with C++ you probably understand OOP well enough.

[jaeusm]

For any of you stduents/engineers/bosses/supervisors, what would you recommend/like to see in terms of languages? I know not all fields use the same languages, and it can vary a lot depending on what you want to do. But I want to get into robotics/signal processing/ and or the biomedical engineering field.

If signal processing is your thing, then you'll be using MatLab. Personally, I despise MatLab, but it is the tool of the trade for EE's doing signal processing. Alternatively, you could use Python with the SciPy library.

For robotics, it really depends on your platform and area (i.e., AI, control architectures, multi-agent systems, etc.). C, C++, and Java have all been used successfully in this field. I have acquired a particular disdain for C++, due to the length of time involved in creating sophisticated software with it (I've been spoiled by Python and, to a lesser extent, Java). However, generally speaking, you should probably learn C and C++ if you think you'll be spending a significant amount of time working with robots.

In grad school, I was fortunate enough to be able to choose the platform for the mobile robot I worked on. I used a Systronix SaJe, which is powered by an Agile Systems AJ-100 processor. The AJ-100 natively executes Java bytecode, which eliminates the overhead of the JVM. The advantages of using Java is that it doesn't require as much time as C++, it is object oriented (C is not), and it has a built in threading model (neither C or C++ have any notion of threads). However, the majority of engineers in the field prefer C and C++, mainly because they already know it and it has traditionally been used for device control.