Which Programming Language is the best?
Everyone getting into software asks me which programming language is the best. It makes sense to want to know; when you start learning to write code, you want to make the most of your time.
It depends
The senior developer will answer nearly every question with “It depends.”
All of the general-purpose programming languages are “Turing Complete,” which means they are mathematically proven to be capable of calculating answers to the same problems. No language allows you to do something that another language could not do.
Which features does it have?
Functional programming, object-oriented, static or dynamic types, garbage collection or manual memory management, and more – all promise to be the crucial feature you need to create the best software. How can you decide which features make for the best language when each has its devotees and detractors, who will all make convincing arguments? If you are looking at these details, you are focusing on the wrong things. This is like deciding between a pickup truck and a top-speed dragster based on how many cupholders it has. The following sections are much more important issues to consider.
Which do your friends know?
Learning a new skill is much more challenging when you must do it all alone. Therefore, having people you can talk to will save you so much time or turn an impossible task into a possible one. For me, my skill level raised dramatically when I entered school. Of course, teachers and textbooks are a crucial component of any school, but it also gave me access to a peer group. For you, it may be people on the Internet. Find that peer group and learn from them.
Which language does the job market use?
If your goal is to use software to pay your bills, it is tempting to check for the top paying language and then only focus on that, but I caution against that. The top languages shift around every year, depending on who is responding to the survey. You want to avoid trying to learn a new language each time you see a new winner. Sometimes, a language is high-paying because it is not very popular, so it will be challenging to find a supportive community.
How big is the ecosystem?
Some languages are excellent for one specialized task, but when you start using them to build your solution, you may find that the only way to add a feature is to code it from scratch if no library is available. Unless your timeline is unusually flexible, this will be a dealbreaker. Well-established languages will have large ecosystems and many available libraries.
Consider how many established companies are supporting products for this technology. The old wisdom used to be, “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM,” meaning that large companies create stable and supported products. However, Google is now larger than IBM used to be, and they are willing to drop technology even after supporting it for years. In the future, choose technologies that have broad support from many companies.
How new is the language?
A language created a few years ago will need more time to develop an ecosystem. Even if there is a small core of fanatics building many programs with it, you must be sure your use case aligns with theirs, or you may find that your needs will go unmet.
How old is the language?
If too new is a problem, are older languages the answer? A language like C has none of the issues mentioned in the last section. Every tool supports it, many experts understand it, and libraries exist for every possible situation. However, the code is difficult to understand, prone to crashing and security holes, and slow to write. Newer languages provide useful features and tools that older languages do not have.
Master the fundamentals first
When you are just starting, it is crucial to keep things simple so that you can learn the basics before you tackle advanced concepts. Some languages favor ease of use at the cost of producing slower programs. For example, most modern languages now provide automatic garbage collection, which means the programmer does not have to understand how to manage memory. These include Java, C#, JavaScript, Python, Go, and many others, but not Rust or C++. Many languages, such as Python or JavaScript, do not require a build step, so it is ready to run as soon as you have written the code.
Starting with a language like Python, which handles many complex tasks for you, can significantly improve your efficiency when tackling new challenges. This approach allows you to focus on learning the fundamentals of programming without getting bogged down in technical details that the language can manage for you.
That is just a starting point. Once you have gotten used to one language, continue learning by branching out to other languages. The more tools you have, the more you will be capable of building. Never stop learning, and enjoy the process!