[eel]

This may be a bit tangential, but may I ask what led you to decide to learn web programming? My background is in web programming, though I have much less programming experience overall than you (~5 years). For me, I feel like learning C/C++ would lead to increased understanding of general programming and better career opportunities. It seems to me that C/C++ (C++ in particular) is still relevant, and is becoming even more relevant.

And by learning C/C++, I mean really learning C/C++, not just relying the three classes that I took in college that used one of them. Lately I've been working on a C++ Windows TFTP server which has caused me to learn TFTP (very simple) and WinSock (complex so far). So I'm just curious what your thoughts might be.

[steve8918]

To be honest, I first started out trying to learn iPhone programming, simply out of interest. Unfortunately I got caught in between the transition between Xcode 3 and Xcode 4, where the interfaces and some of the terminology changed and the books were all based on Xcode 3. It got frustrating and tedious trying to convert concepts from Xcode 3 to 4 and back, so I decided to jump to web programming, since I envisioned the back-end of many iPhone apps would be web-based, with the goal of returning back to iPhone programming. During that time, I made some pretty good progress with the web stuff, and it was pretty enjoyable so I just stuck with it. Pretty soon, I'll get back to learning iPhone programming.

Personally I think C/C++ is still relevant, and it's my language of choice, but I'm not close-minded about it. For example, in developing my OCR functionality, I discovered how wonderful Python was, because it was a sane programming language, and allowed for much quicker development and progress than C++. I'm now a Python convert, although I still have many more miles to travel before I can become a competent Python programmer. In addition, Javascript is a lot more powerful that I imagined, and it looks like a lot of people are turning Javascript into something a lot more powerful, ex. Node.js. If I had to put my money behind the languages that might really blow up in the near future, it's Javascript and Python.

As to the career opportunities of C++, I can't really speak for that because trends change quickly. The key is to be flexible and open-minded, and not get stuck in a particular pigeonhole otherwise you'll find yourself like COBOL programmers in the late 90s. You will definitely learn a lot by going the C++ route, and being "closer to the metal" as some people say, you can and will learn a lot of different concepts that aren't available to many other languages, like memory-management, etc. It might make it easier to take up other languages in the future, as well, so it's not something I would discourage anyone from learning.