A question for this learned group on software engineering...

If you were to recommend a programming language to a young engineer-to-be 
(maybe software engineer or maybe hardware) to study before college, what would 
it be given the following criteria? The selection shouldn't be based on 
educational merits per se, but on usefulness to one's career, conformance to 
current programming philosophies, availability (open, free, etc), ease of 
picking it up (good dev environment), and it's ability for rapid development 
(prefer something that will do console and windowed apps). The programming 
environment and language should be free/open and can be run on Linux AND 
Windows. Ability to create an exe as opposed to interpreted is preferred, and 
stability ranks high too.

Some of those criteria may not seem important in an educational setting, but 
they are to a young self-educational setting... ;)

Just to start the thinking off, I'll comment on a few choices.

C - while good all around, is long in the tooth and not the easiest to pick up 
and use, especially in a windows env.

C++ - better, but more complex and like C, not a rapid dev env.

VB - rapid and easy to pick up and do something useful, can make exe's, but 
Windows only, now only .NET (.NET=bad), and the language isn't exactly mainstream.

I was thinking the field might consist of Perl, Ruby, Python, etc, but will 
leave it to you to choose. I've used Fortran, C, Pascal, Basic, Smalltalk, 
LISP, and a few others and I would also not suggest them (nor COBOL ;). Think 
in terms of keeping him on the right track from a programming/engineering 
perspective and when he gets out in 5-6 years ;) whatever it is will still be 
'current' and the 5-6 years he's played with it will be useful experience and 
good for the resume...

TIA,
Skip

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