An Interesting Programming Situation?

I am at a point in programming in which I do not know what I should develop as far as software goes. I have a good background knowledge in C %26amp; C++ plus some decent knowledge and experience in OpenGL Api programming .... but don't know what to do next. Should I learn another language or work on something that would be beneficial to the software/open source community?





Scenario 1: I work on something the open source community would enjoy .... what would I work on?





Scenario 2: I choose another language ... which one should it be?

An Interesting Programming Situation?
What you probably should do is find an existing open source project and contribute to it, have your contributions accepted and distributed - this will give you practical knowledge in the languages you do know, specifically c and c++





Hold off on learning more languages until you turn your background knowledge in to something you are able to jump in to without too much trouble.





After this you'll be in a much better position to start your own oss project, or learn another language.





Good luck.
Reply:(1) Something that I'm really missing is a decent video editing suite. Audacity is almost sufficient to replace Adobe Audition (and its predecessor, Cool Edit Pro 2), but no open source project compares to software like Sony Vegas. If the open source community would get a really good multi-track video editor, then yet another market opens up :)





(2) I'd go for Haskell or Scheme. I bet you've never seen any programming language that's not imperative (like C and C++). It's a good idea to try to think functional programming for a while to stretch your brains :P





Another good option is Python (or Ruby, but I really don't like Ruby). Though it might be a bit slow sometimes, it's a really versatile language. Great replacement for Perl ;)
Reply:Gear up for C#. It in zoom and a big areana for programming and development.most of the industries look for C# programmers.
Reply:I'd add SQL to that list. Then you can make some serious money which you can donate to Sourceforge.
Reply:Many of us have simillar situation.. As per me best way it to first decide where you want to see in field of Software , I mean you want to be in embeded programming, ERP domain, Internet based solution ..many more.. based on above domain you need to choose the technology to start...


Very soon you will realise it doesn't matter what you have chosen , there is always a new thing to learn and keep updated your self. Every technology has it's open source counterpart.. if you understood the concept you contribute to open source in parallal.





I hope it help you
Reply:I would recommend:





(1) learn Java-- Sun-style,





(2) get a contract (or full-time employment) to determine what to develop next!