With a new year upon us, it’s a time to examine the big questions: what is the best place to buy lottery tickets? Should I buy a puppy? But seriously, the sands of tech are changing rapidly so everyone should be looking to expand their repertoire, as in ‘what programming language should I learn next?’
H3rald.com has a great article on 10 programming languages worth checking out right now: Haskell, Erlang, Io, PLT Scheme, Clojure, Squeak, OCaml, Factor, Lua, and Scala. This is no halfhearted end-of-the-year “10 best” list, it’s a thoughtful and informed overview of the pros and cons of each language. The author is opinionated but frank, admitting that in the case of Haskell for instance, some of the more difficult concepts such as monads are still beyond his grasp. Very lively debate in the comments as you might expect from those wounded by the idea that their favorite esoteric languages would be left off.
Each of these top programming languages has a “To get you started” set of links; this is definitely an article to refer back to over the holidays, assuming you get any time off. I know I always appreciate meta- commentary and this is extremely well done.
Also, here’s something interesting: what about creating your own programming language?
The article gets bonus points for using the word “didascalic”. Who knew? (Wow, that word damn near exploded my voice activated typing software…)
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
HEllo…
this is devendra…
i have just taken admission into B.sc I.T … i want to become an software developer…
which language will u prefer me to select … please give me some details..
want to hear from u soon..
thank you
Python, PHP, Perl, & java
Also Ruby on rails
C#.NET if you want to be a desktop (MS Windows) developer
Java if u wanna b a mobile application developer (for mobile phones,PDA, .etc)
Web developer ?
ur choice, either java or .NET
Java seems losing the bussiness these days.
Specially on client side, JavaFX failed in front of Silverlight (.NET)
But for mobile, java is what u want
C# is growing fast, i bet it has the potential to top java. Its good for web, windows, and zune. Some IDEs you can creat multiplatform applications.
Consider C#.
The whole world is moving to Web Application i think in few years there won’t be something called desktop application, So focus on Web.
PHP, Java is the best in Web Development, specially PHP it’s very fast, free, easy and you love it from the first look :).
JavaScript with ruby on rails, php
i reccomend learning C++. It is a high level programming language ideal for the serious programmer.
for web development just go for php
and for desktop apps go for C++ using QT creator and deploye your apps on every platform…………
PHP,C# for web development
Java also good
C# for windows application
I would go with Scala as the best language to learn in 2011.
It has incorporated the best of several languages and in my opinion a great language to start programming with.
C# for .net.
its growing bigger and bigger with silverlight, for both Phones, xbox, web, form applications.
you need to learn xaml too. but it’s a very easy language to understand very fast.
The best is still C, the mother of all modern programming language. C++, Objective-C, Java all borrowed from C, so an understanding of C will make it easier to learn other language.
The cornerstone of most languages, especially Java and C# is OOP as in object oriented programming. So starting with C which is functional will not give you any advantage, besides it takes years to master C, if you wish to learn syntax only, go ahead but what’s the point.
If you’re not into electronics or driver programming you will have no use for it.
You cant go wrong with C#, Java, Python. Well you cant actually go wrong with any language since coding is a “state of mind” not syntax. Just pick one and start solving tasks, switching later on is more or less trivial.
I think that the best languages to learn are :
1. Web-Development: PHP, JAVA (JSP) and maybe ASP.NET(VB, C#)
2. Mobile Apps Development: JAVA
3. General Software Development: C++, C#, JAVA, VB.NET
4. Query Languages: SQL
— For basics and easy understanding –
Python, Pascal, Ruby, Pearl