I just got A+ certified

I know you'll all scoff and regard me as a scrub, but I'm making /prog/ress towards achieving Satori. It's not much, but it's a start.

I've messed around with Ruby before, but what language would be good to take up seriously and learn in-depth? The most I've done with Ruby is make some shitty text-based games.

I'm not sure if this will impact your suggested language for me to learn, but I'm currently enrolled in CIS introduction classes for next semester, planning on getting into database administration later on. However, I want to learn how to program as a hobby.

I know I'll have to learn SQL some time in the near future, but I'm wondering if there's anything else I should take up.

In before elitist sages, conflicting suggestions, and inane comments.

>>28
What's wrong with >>27? I mostly agree with him, except that I'd say it like this:
* You don't need to know C to write high-level programs. Knowing C, a few CPU's assembly, their architecture, maybe some verilog/vhdl and lower, will help you truly understand computing and help you in various low-level endeavours. It will also give you a real test of the (performance/memory) costs of the code you write.
* Lisp is a very practical language and I've used it for real-life applications, and commercial companies use it for the same reasons. It may not be a popular language, but it's sure one of the best I've had the pleasure to use. For most of my personal work, I make use of a combination of: Common Lisp, C, x86 assembly. If CL is not to your taste, you might prefer Scheme, Python, Ruby, C#, Haskell or some other high-level language, but I've yet to see one that isn't a Lisp and offers you the same level of metaprogramming capabilities.
* Java and C++ are useful to know if you want to get hired by a modern software house that specializes in them(most do), but you don't need to know them to get stuff done.

I'm not entirely sure about the last piece of advice he gives about getting involved in open projects. Many open source projects are very useful things that I'm grateful they exist, but sometimes you can submit patches and it would take many months for them to get approved if the developer has little interest in said bugfix or new feature. I suppose these things depend on a per project basis.

>>28
Fuck your face. What did you find objectionable about my post?

I'll be completely blunt here, reading SICP to start off is a stupid fucking idea. It might be a fantastic text for anyone who's actually familiar with programming, yes; but it's really much better for re-learning and expanding knowledge of the field, than as a flat-out introduction. No one just getting into computers needs an introduction to all that shit, it's overwhelming and not helpful. Anyone starting off with SICP and little to no existing programming background, if they're not actually MIT quality, will surely be lost. And if they are, they're probably already going to MIT.

Go ahead and tell people to read SICP if they have the smallest shred of possibility that they'll be able to keep up and comprehend the text. Don't send people blindly off a goddamn cliff. You're doing a disservice to many potential future coders by setting them up for inevitable discouragement. Get them started with something practical, something they're able to experiment and learn with, and then bring up SICP.