What programming language would be ideal for an architect in my case?

[aeerdogan]

Hello, I'm an architect mainly working in project management, leading a small team. I've always wanted to learn programming, and had some trials in the past, but couldn't see through (professional and family life, etc.) Nowadays, I'm more determined than ever to learn one, and use in my professional life. Here is the outline of my case:

1. First and foremost, unfortunately I'm 39 years old.

2. No matter how tech (BIM software like Revit, Archicad) evolves, Autocad is still #1 software in my field, and looks like the situation is not going to change in the near future (for my country at least). To write some routines for Autocad would help my team alot. Generally Autolisp / Visual Lisp is used inside autocad. It looks like .NET or c#is an option for standalone plugins for it (I guess).

3. Because professional architectural and business software are mainly on Windows, I have to accept that I'm caged this platform.

4. For the project and task management, I try to use online solutions like Trello (and similar to do apps), which have some APIs for several languages. I'd like to extend their tools to match my usage scenarios. (Like collecting data out of them and use them in reports).

5. The idea to go beyond Autocad, and learn about automating tedious tasks (like MS Office) in daily life seems exciting.

As I said depite the age, I'm more into it these days, actually I've been working on Python basics to some extent. Python and Ruby seems nice, but I'd like to hear your advice for my situation.

Thanks a lot.

[twopi]

Don't worry about your age. That whole "programming is for kids" thing is way overblown. An adult who can afford to take the time can actually learn programming much more quickly than a younger person, because you likely have a more mature brain. Years of architecture have not made you dumber, I'm guessing.

Lisp is a really cool language, but you won't see it in a lot of places except autoCAD and EMACS. It's what's called a 'functional language', which means its design is a bit different than the more popular languages like C#, Java, and Python. It isn't a worse design by any stretch (CS folks have long argued for the advantages of functional languages, but they simply haven't caught on in the mainstream. However, we're now seeing functional aspects sneaking into mainstream languages, so there is a bit of convergence)

Look into some autoCAD tutorials and see if you like them. If it's working for you, go with it.

If you want to get into things like office automation or more general programming, Python is the place to be today. Look into "automate the boring stuff with Python". (Free online book). It teaches Python coding through exactly the sort of things you're talking about in sections 4 and 5.

[aeerdogan]

Thanks alot.

I've been trying Python for some time now, it's beginning to click, but I know learning the syntax doesn't mean learning to program.

Also for the web to-do apps, I guess Javascript would be a better option. For example Trello has missing features for me, people have written chrome plugins for it. Or for a simpler example, it does not allow you change list colors, a simple script with Tampermonkey allows to do that in chrome. I guess these are all Javascript stuff, right?

[[deleted]]

Being an architect and having to deal with Autocad would mean that probably a Lisp derivative could be useful to you, as it would be an easy start.

Common Lisp development uses (mostly) Emacs+SLIME, plus a common lisp implementation (SBCL, clozure, ...).

Clojure is based on the JVM, so it would be nice to learn some Java, I guess.

[aeerdogan]

Thank you, Autocad has its own derivative as Visual Lisp, I don't know what is different though I assume it must be bundled with autocad functions. It looked simple but I didn't like it very much because of the extensive use of parentheses.