Should i continue learning C# or start learning Python?

[jasterwongck]

Hi All,

I’m from banking background and just started to learn programming on myself 1 month ago because wanted to switch career in future. My first language is C# but my goal is wanted to become Data scientist or Software engineer which involve in ML and Automation.

So i would like to ask should i continue learning C# to build my foundation on my programming knowledge or straight away start learning Python for Data Science/Machine Learning/Automation ?

[Ollie]

Hello, J.W.

My suggestion: learn both Python and C# as your time allows. Why?

1. Knowing two languages is much better than knowing one, because you’ll have a sense of the differences between languages, and the commonalities. That’s good.
2. C# can be very useful if you want to work developing “line-of-business” applications for various companies (e-commerce, ordering, and so forth). Working on a few such applications is great training. And you will probably get exposure to real-world data.
3. python is good for many things, including ML and data processing.
4. Many of their concepts are complementary to each other.

Which one first? You’ve started on C#, so keep pushing on that until you can solve problems involving hundreds or thousands of records of data. Then figure out how C# datasets and python / pandas dataframes solve similar problems.

Please keep this in mind: languages and frameworks don’t last as long as your career will. They’re good material for your early job applications, but your language choices do not (hopefully) define you as a developer.

Keep learning!