21–30 of 70 posts
Computer Science. Not programming, or this-or-that framework, but CS. Most EEs didn't get all that much of it in college, and it is very helpful. Languages come and go, but CS is forever.
Ruby, JS, Perl, etc. can't really touch this. There are all sorts of "flavor of the moment" languages right now on HN but at the end of the day, if you want a mature, workhorse language that's easy to learn, has a lot of good libraries, and has a great community around it, choose Python.
depends what you will be doing as a job.
I'll throw my hat in here for learning Clojure. It's a modern Lisp that runs on the JVM, with a great community and awesome libraries. (For example, https://github.com/Engelberg/instaparse ) As others have mentioned, it all comes down to what you really want to do. I use Clojure both professionally (for web development, statistical computing/analytics software, natural language processing) and for fun on a daily basi…
1 - https://www.coursera.org/course/progfun 2 - https://www.coursera.org/course/reactive
With a PhD in Electrical Engineering, I'd think you could go far in the growing hardware market.
I think the key in selecting a technology to learn 'right now', you need to consider when you'll want to use this technology for.
The way I (kinda) do it, is to not look at languages specifically, but what I want to do with them, and how I can leverage what I already know.
For example, recently I've wanted to start playing with hardware (RaspberryPi and Arduino). But I didn't just jump in and start learning C, I looked at what I already know (javascript/ruby/etc.) and am looking at how I can leverage that in this new technology.
I've also got an interest in algorithms and data, I've done some work with parse-trees in Ruby and have tried umpteen times to get to using the Stanford Parser with Java, but it normally ends with me curled in a ball sobbing, so now I'm doing the Coursera class in Scala (how often do you get to learn a language from the creator of that language).
I learned RoR, not because it was popular that day, but because I was working on a project I knew I would be passing on to another team to manage long-term, they had some RoR experience, and the structure of an RoR project meant I knew would lead them to easily understand how to manage it without much knowledge transfer.
So, to me, the best technology to learn is the one where you match your interests, and your existing knowledge to become an expert in what should be a growing field. One thing to consider there (of course) is where that technology will land you in 1-5 years.