Another Programming Newbie Question:

Question

I have read many of the posts from programming newbies like myself looking for advice as to which language to start their programming journey. While helpful, my situation is slightly different and I would appreciate thoughts from those of you who have been doing this for a while.
On one level, like the others, I am interested in beginning programming for my own personal interest and hobby. I want to be able to poke around building stuff for my Mac as I see the need. The second driver however, is a professional one; I work as a management consultant within an IT company.
Much of my work relates to Business strategy and IT alignment. At that level I am expected to bring a business perspective to IT issues and to provide assessments that confirm proposed technology/software solutions are in fact going to add value for the company overall. Basically big picture stuff.
In this role I am not usually asked to bring the same "technical" perspective that a true business analyst would. However, I would like to better understand the methods, terms and concepts that my colleagues use in developing their software. On occasion I am asked to provide a high level requirements analysis, which draws largely upon my business knowledge, but given that that this information is then presented to my developer colleagues I would like to understand things at a more technical level.
So my question is whether I am free to choose any language to begin my learning quest or if there is a language that will better lead me to understanding and communicate the technical side of software development.
Also I know that a lot of the work done in my company is in Java - but there are obviously a wide range include various applications that sit atop various data bases.
I hope my various questions have been communicated clearly enough. I welcome any thoughts or advice that any of you may be able to share with me.
Thanks!
Power Book 12   Mac OS X (10.4.1)  

Answer 1

The case of the employee wishing to merge his own admirable desire to learn programming with the requirements of his position is an interesting case that shows, perversely (or so it seems at first--it's actually perfectly logical) that corporations do not necessarily benefit from the talents, drive and ambition of individual employees--and this is not a cynical or sinister notion. Etresoft's analysis and advice is spot-on and I only wish to add a footnote to it: Along with the "getting the job done quickly and simply as possible" fallacy, and the at first glance counter-intuitive proposition that the complex, fragile, and massive solutions actually benefits the corporation qua corporation, one must remember that corporations are not and never pretended to be pure meritocracies nor are they conceived of as sets of individual employees in competition with each other for rewards. That is to say, trying to make one's personal interests into job requirements is far too questing and individual a project to succeed in any corporate (in the neutral sense of "aggregate," not in the sense of conformist) environment The corporate nature of the incorporated business is, after all, its defining characteristic. This means solutions by consensus aimed as much at institutional self-perpetuation as at the maximization of profit will be favored over mavericks following instincts, absolutists assimilating all power to themselves, or the efficient yet eccentric (again, in the neurtral sense of the word) initiatives of earnest employees trying to unite where possible the requisites of their given post with their own private interests. The upshot to all this is this: the attempt to use pre-existing corporate structures and processes for the fulfillment of individual growth and personal satisfaction (which may as a by-product, or accident in the Aristotelian sense, generate corporate wealth) is to look past stated categories and definitions and to ignore historically-observed outcomes. Corporations will not appreciate or benefit from individualistic impulses not because individual satisfaction is suspect but because its ways are inimical to corporate ways--the friction of the indivduals trying to redefine mutually-agreed upon positions and outcomes for selfish purposes costs too much to be indulged. From the corporate point of view, it is a threat to be contained, not an asset to be exploited. Robinson Crusoe had to spend 28 years on an island alone in order to adequately enact his individualism as it relates to capitalism.* The adaptable, nimble, individual-identified employee with his productivity tied to his own appetites, cannot, at least in the abstract, help but work against the aggregate needs of the corporation.
*Excursus: Defoe's 1719 novel is the foundational narrative of capitalist self-production and its major offspring is Max Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1920).This is where 18th-century economic theory including Adam Smith, leads us astray today--it was formulated not before the Industrial Revolution--the transition to capitalism took place in the 17th century--but before the aqdvent of the modern corporate structure.