Which coding language should I prioritize for these objectives?...

[Reality]

I'm trying to learn coding for personal use. I'm not a coder at all by trade, but work regularly w/ software engineers and managers. I know basic SQL for work but am looking at taking things to the next level in terms of automating reports and crawling external information (social, search)

I'm looking at self-guided learning for a new language and wanted input on where to start.

Broadly, use cases I'm interested in building:
*Automating report pulling (e.g., replace my human actions with automation - go to an internal company file, pull this data; merge data from internal company report published from SQL query, format data XYZ way)
*Custom reporting for stock / crypto that is gaining in social media mentions - eventually some kind of sentiment analysis
*Custom reporting for crawling YouTube videos to pull the following data: videos with a term in the title (e.g., company brand name), creator, # of subscribers for creator, video title, video link, video view count
*Search term trends (imagine Google trends, but more flexibility in output, using external data)


I think Python is where it makes sense to start with the above as my primary use cases - but curious. Maybe these aren't even the right questions.

 

[Mike809]

I also believe python is the right choice. I mostly have experience in Java , but python always seems to be the go-to language when it comes to automation.

 

[Secure Da Bag]

sql (of course)
tableau or power bi
python + beautiful soup.

 

[Obreh Winfrey]

Python by far, PowerShell or Bash to a much lesser extent. I accomplished tasks similar to your first and third point in Python.

 

[BaileyPark31]

My niece is 10. What language should she start with that will be a good foundation for coding?

We were thinking Java

 

[Obreh Winfrey]

My niece is 10. What language should she start with that will be a good foundation for coding?

We were thinking Java

Java, python, JavaScript, should be good enough paths.

 

[Secure Da Bag]

My niece is 10. What language should she start with that will be a good foundation for coding?

We were thinking Java

Java, python, C#.

 

[TRUEST]

Python by far, PowerShell or Bash to a much lesser extent. I accomplished tasks similar to your first and third point in Python.

If you intend to use ur automated script on multiple systems, bash is better. Sure python is more advanced but there’s the likelihood you’ll need to download/install packages on a system u don’t have full privileges on. So for portability, bash/shell are better. If portability is not a concern then python. Not sure why java is even considered here. It’s not a scripting language.

 

[Serious]

sql (of course)
tableau or power bi
python + beautiful soup.

sounds like a data analyst

 

[Macallik86]

@Reality did you ever get into automating everything? I'm going down a somewhat similar path right now

 

[null]

did someone really say "Powershell" and "Javascript" (to start?)

 

[Regular Developer]

My niece is 10. What language should she start with that will be a good foundation for coding?

We were thinking Java

I'd lean more towards python. I think python it has a good balance of forcing some best practices (being aware of your white space), while having enough structure to not be a mess. Then once she's used to that, moving on to Java or C# (Or I hear Rust is the new C# alternative?) would be good. And if she decides to go to college (or read a lot about programming) she'll learn about data structures, algorithms, and programming philosophies.

 

[Regular Developer]

Some additional python libraries for the OPs post:
SQLAlchemy might be useful here so that you don't have to spend time creating stored procedures (or coding explicit sql) to interact with your tables in python
PyTest so that whenever you make changes you can automate your testing. Your pytest cases should never fail, so when they do, you know there's an issue with the code

 

[Obreh Winfrey]

did someone really say "Powershell" and "Javascript" (to start?)

I sure did, with a mind toward use cases. You can always point out where you think I'm wrong.

 

[null]

I sure did, with a mind toward use cases. You can always point out where you think I'm wrong.

Javascript is not a language to learn best practice programming. It's missing variable scope, it's is weakly typed, its object mechanism is not classical objects composition/inheritance, it has serious ambiguous parses. syntax is a self-contradictory after thought.
I should not have to point this out to you.
If you think JS is a suitable beginners programming language then you yourself have not been properly trained to program.
Even crockford had to demarcate the useful parts of JS in "JS the good parts" and even then people would be better off using typescript or ECMAscript.
How are you going to learn about encapsulation or objects in a language which doesn't implement either properly?

Powershell is a piece of crap. Do you know how to tail -f in powershell?
Powershell is so bad that microsoft had to add bash to windows.
Using shell to describe powershell is a misnomer because shells on windows are not plug and play and even after you install them the very nature of the underlying system renders them unsuitable for anything complicated. windows importing of -nix concepts leads to contradictions such as links not being first order objects, locks controlling file access and presence, path types being incompatible, commands outputting random space, command output being unstructured and too talkative, no default error stream, inconsistent interpretation of space in scripts

Powershell and Javascript are not good entry points to programming