What programming languages have helped accelerate your career?

[Nicholas_Hajdin]

What programming languages have helped accelerate your career in digital marketing? If you were to recommend investing time into learning one new language in 2018, what would it be?

[Gerard_Donnell4]

Hi Nick Hajdin​,

That is a vast question.  Are you including HTML, CSS in that?

I'f say first and foremost, HTML, CSS and Javascript would be the must haves.  They will give you a good foundation in the web and would definitely help your digital marketing skills. I really want to up my javascript game as I know it can allow you to do so much more.

I also learned Ruby and Ruby on Rails which was great as it taught me about version control (Git), MVC architecture as well as other programming fundamentals.

After upping my Javascript game, I'm going to move onto Java.

I guess it all depends on what you want to do with your career.  I think if you want to stay as a digital marketer first and foremost then HTML, CSS and Javascript are all you really need.

Thanks,

Gerard

[Nicholas_Hajdin]

Thank you, Gerard. I should have clarified that I meant beyond HTML/CSS as most of us Marketo users have at least foundational experience. I too need to up my Javascript game and plan to dedicate time to strengthening my skills.

I plan to grow my career in digital marketing but am becoming more interested in data science and AI.

Are there any particular websites or courses you find useful, such as Code Academy, GitHub, Coursera?

[Casey_Grimes]

With all due respect: you don't exactly learn a programming language and you're "done." I've been studying HTML, CSS, JS and PHP for at least a decade and the amount of change that has happened in each of those since I began (HTML 4 -> 5, CSS 2 -> 3, ECMA 3 -> 6, PHP 4.4 -> 7) has been incredibly dramatic. If you want to keep your skills sharp with respect to your career, you'll need to continually invest in skill development.

That said, what languages make the most sense for you is going to depend on what you want to do; for instance, one of my goals over the next year is to start rounding out my Python skills while learning Scala, but that's because I'm interested in data science. Are you looking at email, web, apps, data, or something completely different?

[Nicholas_Hajdin]

Hi Courtney, I did not mean to suggest that you "learn and are done". I completely agree that as with anything in the digital world, a new skill requires investment and continual development.

I'm specifically interested in learning more about data science and AI. I am inexperienced in Python and understand I need to develop this skill. Would you recommend starting out with Python, or are there any pre-requisite languages that help?

Do you recommend any specific training resources, such as Code Academy, GitHub, Coursera?

[Casey_Grimes]

Python's a good general-usage language to know either way, and most data science/AI platforms are going to have some level of support for Python. You may run into some issues where R or Scala will make more sense (and you'll likely want to know some SQL if you don't already) but I think it's a decent place to start.

Some of the resources I use and like (as someone who needs to actually do things to understand them):

• Team Treehouse​
• enki​
• Exercism​
• edabit​
• Codefights​
• Subscribing to relevant topics on StackOverflow

As far as books go, if you're looking for a ramp-up the Head First series is pretty good, and then from there it gets more into individual preferences.

[SanfordWhiteman]

To me it's not really a question of languages but of technologies and platforms.

Gaining a beginner's knowledge of an integration platform like Apache Camel is more valuable than spending that same time dipping into Rust.

Knowing how to request an API from a vendor (not building it yourself) is a tech skill you need in martech, where neither side talks about "languages" other than XML vs. JSON (never ask a vendor what they develop in if you want to stay on their good side!).

In terms of applied code, being able to fearlessly and quickly get a webhook in prod is 1000x important than whether you wrote it in Java, JavaScript, or PHP, or whether you used a cutting-edge web framework or no framework at all. (Heck, you can even write a webhook using AWS API Gateway, with no code behind it other than VTL in a mapping template! If it gets it done, exempting scalability concerns, any language will do.)

Within Marketo in particular I feel it's hard to serve as a technologist unless you can build or (intelligently buy!):

• LP enhancements in JS, including pulling in remote content if necessary
• email power-ups in Velocity
• webhook enrichments in whatever you want

Most of our contracts involve these 3 areas simultaneously, often turning from one to another as requirements evolve. (For a couple of examples: when it's discovered that a certain data must be/would be more efficiently stamped on the lead, it's webhook time; if something turns out to not have a {{trigger.token}} equivalent, it's time for JS to punch up a form post.)