Before we go into weighing programming languages against each other, it’s importing to make a notice for people who are just learning to program: It really doesn’t matter which language you choose. Do not spend too much time deciding a language to pick, what’s important is that you learn the concepts at play when you are programming in that language. Think about it, if you wanted to become a carpenter, you wouldn’t be concerned with becoming an expect in a certain brand of hammer and saw. Instead you would be concerned with the proper method of creating a dovetail. Languages are nothing more than tools, what’s most important is learning the underlying fundamentals at work. At to that end, they’re all just as good as the other. That said, here’s the 5 most relevant programming languages to learn in 2024:
#5 – Rust
Rust is a systems programming language developed by Mozilla, known for its focus on safety, speed, and concurrency. It provides memory safety guarantees without relying on garbage collection, making it suitable for building reliable and high-performance software, particularly in areas like systems programming, game development, and embedded systems.
Rust is a language with a lot of potential, but it’s at the bottom of the list because there isn’t a ton of usage in the labor market for it. While there are some major players like Coursera and Figma who do use it, the well of available jobs is not very deep, especially at the junior level. It’s worth learning to expand your skills, but if your goal is employment, you’re better off learning one of the languages below.
#4 – Go (Golang)
Go, also known as Golang, has emerged as a powerful language for building scalable and efficient software systems. Developed by Google, Go combines the simplicity of a scripting language with the performance of a compiled language, making it well-suited for cloud-native development and microservices architecture.
Go’s popularity is expected to continue ascending, with its robust support for concurrency, extensive standard library, and burgeoning ecosystem of tools and framework, it’s clear that Go is going to see continued growth in the near future. Major companies like Uber and Dropbox are already using Go on their backend, so it’s definitely not a bad idea to have in your tool belt. It’s still a relatively new language (if you consider 15 years old to be new), so it’s not as ubiquitous as the three below. Still, the job postings look strong, even for juniors.
#3 – C#
C#, a versatile language developed by Microsoft, is renowned for its simplicity, scalability, and robustness. With its strong integration with the .NET framework, C# is widely used for developing a myriad of applications from web to enterprise software. It’s also used for game development in Unity, which is the go to choice for a majority of indie developers.
Given the integration with .NET, you might as well say C# is Microsoft’s language, and those guys aren’t going anywhere any time soon. The .NET ecosystem is their baby and they talk to it in C#, so being able to build within that system is going to be a very valuable skill for the foreseeable future.
#2 – Javascript
Javascript has one of the weirdest and most interesting histories of any programming language. It likely should have died out not long after it was released, but instead it grows and continues to grow, and is basically unkillable now. Frameworks such as Angular and libraries like React were built on top of it. It can even do server-side development with platforms like Node.js. JavaScript’s versatility makes it an excellent choice to learn, and you will never be out of places to apply for work. If you didn’t listen to the above advice and were still worried about picking the wrong language, know that you can’t go wrong learning javascript.
#1 – Python
Python remains a powerhouse in the programming world due to its simplicity, versatility, and extensive ecosystem of libraries and frameworks. Widely used in fields such as web development, data science, artificial intelligence, and automation,
Python is king. For years it was the “fastest growing language”, and it continued to be so long after it took the #1 spot. Machine learning is a massively growing field, and python is right in the middle of it. It was already #1 before the AI boom, it’s only going to be more and more relevant as time goes on. Personally, I miss my brackets when I code in python, but that’s about the only downside I can level against it. If you are still worried about selecting the wrong language, while you can’t go wrong with Javascript, you are absolutely learning the “correct” one if you choose to learn Python.
Again, it doesn’t matter too much
Bottom line, if your only focus is getting a job, pick python or Javascript and get cracking. If you’re trying to expand your skills, then I would either look for open source projects with one of these 5 languages or start one of your own. The skills you will pick up while doing so are sure to stay relevant for quite some time. Ultimately, of course, the most important thing is developing good fundamentals.