Help with deciding on the right programming class

[Mark Pierce]

Originally Posted by SuperBK

Hey squirrel, I learned Fortran on puchcards too and that was as late as 1979!

ME too!

I'm currently teaching a class in VB.NET and am impressed with how quickly you can put together useful programs. It's a useful skill to have ready when you need it, but relatively easy to learn with tutorials or readily available books. As mentioned above, a better tool for a lot of engineering is Matlab or something similar.

If the C++ class is an entry level class, I doubt that you'll get into the most difficult concepts of object based programming. I think that it will probably give you the most useful knowledge base to understand programing basics. Try to get as much as you can from it. In my experience, one of the most troublesome traits of many professionals is their lack of understanding of fields outside of their specialty. I know a company looking for someone to do prototype installations, troubleshooting, and software modifications. That's just one challenging job which requires a much wider breadth of knowledge than a pure mechanical, electrical, or software engineer has.