In this post I'm going to talk about the best programming languages to learn in 2018.
A lot of people ask me about what programming languages they should learn when becoming a software engineer. I found myself in a difficult situation because this is a very hard question to answer. There are a lot of things that need to be taken into account before making this decision.
One of the easiest ways to pick the best programming language to learn for 2018 is by listening to the market.
The market will tell you what the trending programming languages are for the future. We must be aware of the trends and watching the news and the rise of new technology so we can adjust the sails on which programming languages to learn, especially in 2018 with a lot of new things coming up.
This post was not based solely on my opinion. I researched a lot and I came up with these top 10 programming languages to learn in 2018.
JavaScript
The first one on this list is JavaScript. Now, I have a love-hate relationship with JavaScript if you know me. I've written some nasty articles about JavaScript in the past and I don't really like the language. But when I look at the surveys it's pretty clear that Javascript can't be all that bad. The first one I'm looking at here is the stack overflow survey they did and by far and large, JavaScript was the most popular programming language with 65% of people using it and they have this thing divided up. We'll put the video or the graphic up. Basically, using it regularly 65% and then like 5% of people were going to adopt or migrate to it.
I mean if you're looking to become a software developer today, a web developer, you're pretty much going to be using JavaScript. If you're thinking about learning a new programming language, you don’t know much JavaScript or you're a new developer, you're probably going to find a job if you know JavaScript. Therefore JavaScript is a really good language to learn.
Now, I would argue to say that JavaScript alone is sort of like SQL. It's not enough. There are some pure JavaScript. Obviously, you can use like node.js and you can do pure JavaScript type of programming, but it's not a language that I think in a lot of corporate environments is going to be used exclusively. You probably need to know another programming language as well.
With that said though, also as I've said some nasty things about JavaScript in the past, I'll admit it, it's become better. The newer version of ECMAScript has really improved it and it's actually a decent language to use now. JavaScript is definitely a top programming language to learn in 2018 and I would recommend it. I mean if you don't know JavaScript and you're just starting out, 2018 might be a good time to actually learn JavaScript.
I actually do have a course on this that I sell, but I didn’t actually create the course. A really good expert on JavaScript created it. It's called JavaScript LaunchPad and that will help you to really gain a good understanding and grasp of JavaScript. I'd recommend that. Check it out if you want to really get in depth knowledge and really understand it. Get the Launchpad here: Javascript Launchpad.
Python
The next one might surprise some people. It's shown up on a few surveys. I've gathered data from many surveys and this one has shown up quite a few times, but I'm not basing it just off of the survey data. It's definitely not at the top but it's close. It's number 5 according to the survey data, but I wouldn't really call it number 5. It's more like #2, and here's why.
I think we should throw out SQL. It's “technically” a programming language but you're not likely to get a job with just SQL. I'd call it more of a necessary skill that a language. So that would put Python at #4. But here's the really interesting thing on the stack overflow survey. There's a section that says: “To be adopted or migrated to be—or to migrate too soon”, and Python is 12%. It's the highest number by a pretty good amount. So let's suppose those people actually do migrate to Python in 2018. That means Python would be sitting around 42% – making it #2!
There's a lot of good things going for Python here for 2018. One of them, like I said, is that a lot of companies, a lot of teams are migrating to Python and they're already using Python. It's already a popular language. There's already plenty of jobs out there. Not only that, but here's the thing, when you look on Amazon, when you look at the books, the most popular programming books, most of them are Python. I know this because I have books. I look. I've got The Complete Software Developer's Career Guide. And I've got Soft Skills: The Software Developer's Life Manual and those are pretty high-ranking books. I'm always looking at the book rankings, and I can see clearly that the books that are ranking the highest in many categories are Python books, especially beginner Python books. That's interesting.
Most of the new books that are coming out that are popular that are doing well on Amazon, which is a really good indicator, are beginner books or beginner books on Python. Most of those are beginner books. Those are actually the most popular programming language books. That's a real good indicator of the future, because if all these people are reading Python books and learning Python, there's a reason for it. That tells you that there's going to be a high demand. That tells you that that is also a good language for beginners. If you're considering learning a new programming language for 2018, Python makes a lot of sense. It's a really good language, high adoption, high movement in that space. There's a lot of stuff that's going on in that space.
One of my good friends has a machine learning. He does like image recognition and stuff with Python. There's a lot of applications, a lot of different companies are using Python in different ways, and it's expanding, I think. Companies like Google really use Python a lot. If you're interested in getting a job at somewhere like Google, that's always a good choice. I'm actually recommending like—I would almost say today, if I were a beginner starting out, I would probably learn Python and some JavaScript. That's probably what I would do. I'd probably start out with Python because it is really good beginner language. There's so much information out there. Check out these two blog posts: