What is the best programming language for telecommunications?

Hello dear Experts.

May you suggest what is the best coding language to learn, apart from VBA (that i use in my Excel Macros)?

Is any language focused on Telecom?

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Hi @marcelofb, itโ€™s common to confuse which coding language is best - ๐—–/๐—–++/๐—๐—ฎ๐˜ƒ๐—ฎ/๐—ฃ๐˜†๐˜๐—ต๐—ผ๐—ป etc.

What you need to first understand is that each language has its own benefits and use cases.

  1. ๐—– : When time and memory are very important (Ex Dealing with hardware). Optimal if you want to work at ๐—น๐—ผ๐˜„/๐—บ๐—ฒ๐—บ๐—ผ๐—ฟ๐˜† ๐—น๐—ฒ๐˜ƒ๐—ฒ๐—น and want full control at each level.

  2. ๐—–++ : Very much related to C but have many benefits (๐—ฆ๐—ง๐—Ÿ,๐—ข๐—ข๐—ฃ๐—ฆ)

  3. ๐—๐—ฎ๐˜ƒ๐—ฎ: High Level language where developer focus is on building ๐—ฝ๐—ฟ๐—ผ๐—ด๐—ฟ๐—ฎ๐—บ๐—บ๐—ฒ๐—ฟ friendly frameworks not machine friendly.

  4. ๐—ฃ๐˜†๐˜๐—ต๐—ผ๐—ป : Generally used for ๐—ฎ๐˜‚๐˜๐—ผ๐—บ๐—ฎ๐˜๐—ถ๐—ผ๐—ป, ๐—ฑ๐—ฎ๐˜๐—ฎ ๐—ฎ๐—ป๐—ฎ๐—น๐˜†๐˜๐—ถ๐—ฐ๐˜€, etc.

Because ๐—ฎ๐˜‚๐˜๐—ผ๐—บ๐—ฎ๐˜๐—ถ๐—ผ๐—ป and ๐—ฑ๐—ฎ๐˜๐—ฎ ๐—ฎ๐—ป๐—ฎ๐—น๐˜†๐˜๐—ถ๐—ฐ๐˜€ for example are expected to grow a lot in Telecommunications (with 5G), then most of telecom professional are choosing Python, thatโ€™s why you have probably heard a lot that Python is the coding language for telecom professionals.

But there are also important points to consider:

  • Developer should have some idea of ๐—ฒ๐—ฎ๐—ฐ๐—ต ๐—น๐—ฎ๐—ป๐—ด๐˜‚๐—ฎ๐—ด๐—ฒ so that requirement based language can be used efficiently.
  • In most of the DS and Algo interviews, language ๐—ฑ๐—ผ๐—ฒ๐˜€๐—ปโ€™๐˜ ๐—บ๐—ฎ๐˜๐˜๐—ฒ๐—ฟ unless its specific to some specific position.
  • Every developer should know one of the ๐—ข๐—ฏ๐—ท๐—ฒ๐—ฐ๐˜ ๐—ข๐—ฟ๐—ถ๐—ฒ๐—ป๐˜๐—ฒ๐—ฑ Language where design principles can be applied.

These are some of the use cases. There are much more and the best way to find out the best answer is by starting it.

One good way to start is to be part of a good programming language Community. But as your intentions are towards Telecom automation, data analytics, maybe Python is a good start.

And Python is the main programming language you can get support by some guys here in telecomHall Community, check Data Science category (Data Science - telecomHall Forum) althoug i think itโ€™s time to create a dedicated category, donโ€™t you think @leopedrini ? :wink:

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Very good answer from @rafaeldamasio .

In my work, Python fits my requirements quite well. Python has many built in packages, also 3rd party packages that are very useful (e.g. paramiko, selenium etc.). If you have time for only one language and your focus is on automation, rather speed, I suggest go for python.

One thing I would add is Bash (Linux). Many telco devices are now built up on Linux environment in the era of cloud, so learning BASH also gives a lot of advantages in some works. But keep in mind that, Bash is little complicated and I think you canโ€™t do many OOP in Bash.

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Very good answer @rafaeldamasio .

One question, probably that has been asked countless times, do you think itโ€™s possible to learn ๐—–++ without learing C first ?

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I believe thereโ€™s no problems, you can go straight for C++. :wink:

Some points:

  • C++ is superior to C (and more used);
  • C++ was created to further expand upon C;
  • And If you have learned C language first, it will be easier to learn C++ language!

But of course, and appy to all: both languages can be used in independent way, and also for different purposes. So the choice of whether you should learn (C, C++ or both) is up to you.
After learning you can compare and have your own conclusions - that will be about the same. :wink:

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Hi @marcelofb!

VBA is a good language and you can do many good tools. But the data size are limited by the number of excel rows.

Python is much more flexible, you can work easily with data automation, modeling, also you can travel between databases (MSSQ, MySQL, Postgres, etc)โ€ฆ

Try to read more about python libraries like pandas, matplotib and scikit-learnโ€ฆ

Of course, programing languages are tools and each tool has its own usage case, but python is very flexible on Telecomโ€™s world.

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Python simply the best for telecom engineers