Next, learn a language like Java, C#, or TypeScript to build enterprise-level software systems, so you can understand and contribute to business programming by mastering design patterns and OOP fundamentals. Learn Go or Rust for the future
There are thousands of programming languages in the world, but only about twenty programming languages are competing with each other in the modern software development industry. Also, some programmers developed esolangs like Emojicode and COW for entertainment and experimental purposes. Nowadays, popular programming languages, like Go, JavaScript, Python, Java, C#, and C++ dominate the software development market.
Programmers typically master various programming languages during their software development careers. For example, if you start working with a Flutter-based mobile project, you have to learn Dart — if you got a task to write a native Flutter plugin, then you have to learn Swift/Objective-C and Kotlin/Java. During the software development career, every programmer thinks about questions like, Is it okay to learn only one language all the time? What’s the best programming language to learn? How many languages do I need to master? We will explain what type of languages you need to learn to become a good software developer — by staying up-to-date in the dynamic software development industry.
Learn a Language to Understand Computers
We all work with computers when it comes to programming. A computer is a digital device that can only understand a set of binary patterns defined by the CPU manufacturer. Every code line you write eventually gets executed as ISA (Instruction Set Architecture) opcode statements.
Nowadays, almost all popular programming languages hide hardware-specific concepts with human-friendly grammar. For example, you will never get low-level programming experience with Python or JavaScript. Low-level programming experience helps us to learn how computers work and how operating systems expose kernel functions. Understanding internals is the secret behind every successful programmer.
Learn a low-level programming language to understand the internals. The Assembly language is good, but it doesn’t offer enough abstraction for theoretical computing algorithms. The C programming language isn’t a very low-level language, but it is the best language to understand how a programming language touches the physical hardware layer. Most universities start computer science syllabi with C due to this reason. C++ is the next step if you need to touch high-level programming from a somewhat low-level programming aspect.
Select a Language to Do Almost Anything You Need
Programmers work with various software development projects. For example, we develop mobile apps, desktop software, web apps, CLI programs, utility scripts, and DevOps workflows. You don’t need to learn many programming languages to do all these things. Thanks to modern open-source innovations, now you can select one programming language to build anything. These open-source projects helped programming languages to enter different software development industries.
For example, the Node.js project helped JavaScript to come out from the browser sandbox. Also, the Kivy framework made Python popular among mobile developer communities. Select a language that you can use to build anything, so you can confidently work on any software project.
Python and JavaScript are now universal programming languages — they can run on any operating system and help you to build any software development project.
Learn a Language to Build Enterprise Systems
The majority of programmers work with enterprise-oriented software projects that automate business processes. For example, you may work with an e-commerce application that serves millions of users. Software architects typically select stable, statically typed, high-performance, developer-friendly, natively object-oriented programming languages for building enterprise-grade software systems.
Enterprise software systems are undoubtedly complex and require stable technical dependencies. Therefore, many software development teams typically go with either Java or C# because of stability, business-oriented design, security, and memory safety. Nowadays, many web-based enterprise development teams tend to use TypeScript and make JavaScript a candidate for building business-level apps.
Learn Java or C# for building enterprise software systems. Learning Java or C# is a great way to improve design patterns and OOP (Object Oriented Programming) skills.
Find Your Favorite Languages and Master
Remember your time at university or time when you were learning computer science concepts for the first time — you had favorite theoretical topics. Similarly, we all have favorite programming languages. We feel confident, entertained, and happy — when we write code with those programming languages. Programmers typically like several specific programming languages due to their coding style, friendly development environments, grammar, standard libraries, features, efficiency, and community support.
First, learn a language to understand computers. C is undoubtedly the best language to become friendly with computers. Learn C++ if you need a high-level language that has no limits. Next, learn a language (or two) that you can use to build any software program. It will help you to work on whatever you need to build productively. You can indeed put Python and JavaScript into this category.
Next, learn a language like Java, C#, or TypeScript to build enterprise-level software systems, so you can understand and contribute to business programming by mastering design patterns and OOP fundamentals. Learn Go or Rust for the future — both languages were designed to exist for many years like C++. Finally, if you count these categories, you will notice that you need to learn at least four languages to cover every aspect we discussed. But, there are no limits — learn multiple languages and become good at everything.
