In the future, programming skills will be one of the most valuable skill for business and career.
The first reason is because industries need more programmers to develop their digital presence. We live in a world where technological and digital innovation is so important, that if a company doesn’t innovate enough or doesn’t follow the current innovation market, this company cannot survive. That’s why these companies hire programmers massively to support their innovation processes.
The second reason, and the more important for me, is because it has never been easier to build things nowadays. By programming you can build tools, websites and apps. And you can reach the entire world with your creations, with a nearly zero starting investment in money. Anybody can now solve small or big world’s problems. It was unbelievable 30 years ago.
If you don’t know any language yet, you should wonder what programming language to learn. This a question a lot of first timers ask, and that’s not an easy one.
The most populars
In 2018, Github, the largest code sharing platform used by millions of developers, did a survey about the programmers social and technical environment. And the results are interesting, particularly the programming languages. Let’s see the trends.
- Javascript
Javascript is the most popular language according to Github and Stack Overflow. There are many reasons for its massive adoption:
- It can be used both on front-end and back-end when you do web development
- It’s the only language supported natively by all browsers
- The language have new versions regularly
- It offers a wide range of frameworks and libraries (a funny joke is that you can pick any word and google it with “.js”, and there is a great chance a javascript library exists with that name)
Javascript is used everywhere and in every field, it’s the most used programming language. If you learn Javascript, you can be sure to be able to contribute to many projects, and have a job.
But learning the most adopted programming language doesn’t mean it’s the more simple one; the ecosystem is very rich, and it’s moving fast. The things you learn today will certainly be irrelevant next year, so be prepared to be a constant learner.
- Python
Python can be used everywhere, but it’s mainly used as scripting language to automate simple tasks, but it can do a lot more.
If you are a software developer, there’s a great chance you have started with Python when you were student. The language is very easy to understand as a beginner. When I was a student one of my teacher told me “The reason Python is so popular is because you can read it like you read a book in a natural language”.
Python is also used in hot fields, like Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. If you want to learn about one of this field, you will certainly need to learn Python. For a few years now, we can see Python salaries growing up quickly because of these new trends.
- Java
Java is the most used programming language in the corporate world. 90% of Fortune 500 use Java programming language. Because:
- Java Virtual Machine (JVM) – makes cross platforms Java applications
- Tools – Java have powerful tools to make the developer life easier: IntelliJ, Eclipse, Android Studio
- Frameworks – Spring Framework is a game changer in the Java world, especially for web development. Spring provide tools to build a powerful and complex applications easily in Java
- Android – Java is the Android official language
Java is used everywhere, in IOT, Web, Finance, government and many more.
It’s also a mature language (first released in 1995), for every problem you have, someone else had the same. Many resources are available to help you if you are stuck.
The emerging programming languages
- Kotlin
Kotlin is an object-oriented programming language developed by Jetbrains as an attempt to enrich Java, which become old and complex. Kotlin has been officially supported by Google in 2017 as the default Android native language.
Based on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), it benefits from all the Java ecosystem. Kotlin has all the features of Java 8 and is also fully compatible with Java, that means you can paste your Java code into a Kotlin code.
Nowadays it’s mainly used for Android native application, but it has more and more influence in the backend space.
Why the language doesn’t matter
Something I learned from a few years of software development is that language doesn’t really matter.
You need to focus on problems, not tools
Programming language is a tool. A tool purpose is to solve a problem.
You need to ask yourself:
- What is the problem I need to solve?
- Which programming language would be the more efficient to solve this problem?
And by « more efficient » I mean:
- Resources – Are the resources easy to find if I need, for example, some documentation or frameworks?
- Community – Is the community can help if I have a problem?
For example if yours problems are data mining or data processing, Python is the best choice.
If you need to build a basic web application quickly, you’ll easily go on Javascript.
If you need to build a big complex, backend application, you better go with Java.