Digital Skills Resource Guide

Ruby is an open-source object-oriented programming language which has a clean, elegant and intuitive syntax, with its most common use being for web applications. However, it is a general-purpose language similar to Python, so it has many other applications like data analysis, prototyping, and proof of concepts. 

Many Ruby developers find it fun to work with Ruby, and fun is a great motivator when learning to code. Ruby takes away most of the complex details of the machine for you. Thus, you can quickly build something from scratch with fewer lines of code. 

JavaScript is a cross-platform, object-oriented scripting language used to make webpages interactive (e.g., having complex animations, clickable buttons, popup menus, etc.) Simply put, it’s a programming language that allows you to implement complex and beautiful things/design on web pages.

JavaScript is what is known as a client-side script. Most web applications, such as search engine, work because of an interaction between the user's device (e.g. computer, phone or tablet) and a remote server. The software on the remote server sends information to the client (i.e. the user's machine) and the software on the client-side reads the information and renders a web page on screen.

C++ is a general-purpose object-oriented programming language which allows procedural programming for intensive functions of CPU and provides control over hardware. It is largely used in writing device drivers and other low-level system programming applications which require hardware manipulations.

C++ is closer to hardware than most other programming languages which makes it highly advantageous in those areas where the software is closely coupled with hardware and low-level support is necessary at the software level.

It also runs faster than most other languages and this makes it useful in those areas where performance is quite critical in high-load servers such as web servers, application servers, database servers and etc.

VBA is Microsoft’s common programming language for Excel and all the other Microsoft Office programs, like Word and PowerPoint. 

Beyond the power of scripting VBA to accelerate every-day tasks (such as getting your contacts from Microsoft Outlook into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet), you can also use VBA to add new functionality to Office applications or to prompt and interact with the user of your documents in ways that are specific to your business needs. For example, you could write some VBA code that displays a pop-up message that reminds users to save a document to a particular network drive the first time they try to save it.