A lot of people ask me about what programming languages they should learn. 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 a decision, especially when it comes to which programming language you should learn.
Last year's video was very popular. A lot of people found it useful and they got pretty much value from it. Those who followed my advice definitely took benefit from it, being able to boost their careers in 2020 by learning those programming languages.
One of the easiest ways to decide which programming language to learn for 2020 is by listening to the market. #programming #programminglanguage #coding
The market will definitely tell you what will be the trending programming languages 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 2020 with a lot of new things coming up.
This video was not based solely on my opinion. I researched a lot and I came up with these 8 programming languages to learn in 2020.
Top 10 Programming Languages To Learn In 2020
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Transcript Of The Video
John Sonmez: In this video today, we are going to be talking about the top programming languages to learn for 2020. I've got eight of them for you and I guarantee you that the number one language that I'm going to say at the end of this video, we're going to count them down, is not on anyone else's list. It's going to totally surprise you, but I guarantee you this one is not on anyone's list and you'll see why.
I'm John from simpleprogrammer.com, and on this channel, we teach you soft skills for software development. We teach you what you need to know in order to develop your career, how to get a better job, how to get a better salary, how to learn how to market yourself, and to really increase your communication skills and abilities as a software developer. So make sure you click that subscribe button and join us. I have to say before I give you this list that it depends if you're a new developer or if you're an existing developer, that languages that you're going to learn are going to be really depending on that. But in general, I've ranked these in what I believe is the most important programming languages, the ones that would be most valuable for just about anyone to learn.
Coming in at number eight is PHP. I know this is the language that people love to hate. I do some work in PHP as I have a lot of WordPress sites and I don't like to do work in PHP, but the truth of the matter is that still 50% of the web still runs on PHP. So there's plenty of jobs for PHP programmers. It's a good beginner language to start with. It's something that is useful to you, especially if you're an entrepreneur. If you want to build your own business, one useful thing that you can do is create WordPress plugins. And if you know PHP and you can create some WordPress plugins, I know plenty of people that have started and made some very successful online businesses from a side job just doing some PHP and creating WordPress plugins. Even though it's not the greatest language, it's not the most friendly language and it's not the most elegant language by far. It still makes the list because I'm weighing this in terms of the opportunities that are available to you.
The next one up is coming in at number seven is Swift. I have not ranked this one very high simply because it is mostly going to be useful for an iOS developer. If you're not developing iOS, Swift is not really going to be that useful. I know there's some other applications outside of that, but it's definitely a better language than Objective-C. I've done plenty of Objective-C code and trust me, Swift is a lot better. It's going to give you some good opportunities to get a job working on iOS. The next one up is Kotlin, and this one could have been tied with Swift. I put Kotlin a little bit higher up in this case because it's coming in at number six because I felt like it's more applicable because it interrupts with Java and it is going to be available in a wider variety of devices rather than just iOS devices.
Kotlin is definitely a lot more friendly for developing Android apps than Java is. I develop Android apps and Java and I have to say, I just saw an article the other day how about how much boilerplate code we have in Java and C-Sharp and a lot of these languages, and it's true. Most of the stuff that we do is really ornamental. It's not really efficient, and so Kotlin eliminates a lot of that. It's a much easier language to learn. And especially also for both Swift and Kotlin, if you want to be an independent app developer and build some apps and put them in the app store, those are great languages to learn for that.
Next up, number five is C-Sharp. C-Sharp is probably my most favorite language of all time, of all the languages that I've learned, and probably the language I use the most because it's just so darn useful. It really does do pretty much anything. It's clean. I feel like it's elegant. It's gotten a little bulky over the years, but it's still just an excellent choice. You're going to find plenty of jobs because of the Microsoft ecosystem, and it's cross-platform now. With .NET, you can create Android, iOS apps, you can use Xamarin to do that. You can even create Mac applications using C-Sharp, Linux applications. It exists on all the platforms now, so it really is a versatile language.
And the thing about learning C-Sharp is that it's not as hard as let's say C++, but it is object oriented. It is a little bit more difficult than something like Python. So you're going to learn a lot of these really important concepts and you're going to have a deeper knowledge of some of these constructs that are important in order to build a really good system, a robust system, but it is amazingly flexible and you can do a lot of things with it. I just like it. I just like how C-Sharp feels when I'm typing out that C-Sharp code.
Number four here is TypeScript. Okay, now TypeScript is actually a precompiler for JavaScript. It is built by Microsoft or designed by Microsoft, and it basically gets JavaScript a little more structure. I've been hearing from a lot of the students I coach that TypeScript is becoming more and more popular. More and more organizations are wanting to use it simply because with JavaScript, even though JavaScript has evolved, it's still really hard to reign in things and to have that kind of structure that you might want to have. So TypeScript is great.
A lot of companies are going to start using TypeScript if they haven't already in order to preprocess or basically, precompile their JavaScript, however you want to call it. But essentially it is going to come down to JavaScript. It gets compiled to JavaScript, but it has a form and a structure to it and this is something that I perceive a lot of companies are going to find very valuable as a skill set for people coming into their organization, especially if they're implementing new TypeScript policies or they want to start implementing TypeScript. And if you know TypeScript and you can teach other developers and get that going on the team, that's going to offer you some lead positions.
Next up of course is JavaScript. JavaScript is just essential. JavaScript, pretty much every developer should at least learn JavaScript. So that's a good one to learn for this upcoming year and it's everywhere. From web applications, you can do everything with it using Node and using React and all of this stuff. It's one of the most popular languages and it's always going to be popular. I was hoping that JavaScript would die, but it just keeps on evolving and keeps getting better. So there's going to be plenty of jobs for it. And even if you have a job using another technology or language, if it's web-based at all, you're going to need to know JavaScript. That's always a good choice and it's a good one for beginners as well. It's not that hard to learn. It doesn't have as much structure. You can add TypeScript to it if you want to add more structure, but it is ubiquitous language.
Number two, I'm sure you guys have been waiting for this one, is Python. Now Python is really getting really, really popular. One, if you're just starting out, it's really easy to learn. In fact, I've been programming for a long time. I know many different programming languages and I finally this last year, decided, okay, I'm going to take a look at Python and see if I can learn it, maybe do a course on Python, and really it took me three hours to basically learn Python. To learn the basics of it, having known some programming language. So it's just so, so simple to learn, but it's elegant. It's clean and uses white space that some people don't like, but it uses it for, not just the formatting, but to be interpreted so that the code, cleanly formatted code, actually means something, which is nice.
But aside from that, there's so many jobs that are coming out in Python and really it's the future of things like machine learning and computer vision. Those technologies are really being advanced by mostly Python libraries, and Python now has expanded to the point where there's so much you can do. You can pretty much do everything that you want with Python and you'll find plenty of resources, plenty of jobs. Big places like Google still are heavy Python users. So Python is really a good choice, especially if you're just starting out. If you're a beginner, you're starting out, if I had to recommend a programming language to you, it would be Python.
All right, so you might be wondering what number one is if Python was number two. Well, this one is a shocker, it's none. Now, before you get all upset, I'm not clickbaiting you here. I'm serious, it's none because so many developers, if you're a new developer, obviously you need to learn a programming language. Pick one on the list of the other seven I talked about, but if you're an existing programmer who already knows the programming language, stop the urge to learn new stuff. Instead, go deeper in the existing language that you have because you probably are not as good at your current language as you could be. Instead, go really deep and learn it really, really well.
One of the best things I ever did as a developer was I went deep into C++. Not very many developers could program very well in C++. They knew C++, but I read all the books, so the Effective C++ books by Scott Meyers, I think, and I just went on Topcoder and I got a really good understanding of like the STL, all the libraries that existed at the time. I know some of you have no idea what I'm talking about. I did the same thing with C-Sharp when I moved to C-Sharp, and that set me apart. That actually made me a much, much more successful developer and set me apart from a lot of other developers out there because I went deep.
So it's great to learn new programming languages. I'm not trying to discourage you, but you should be learning a language for a purpose or you should be always… When you try to learn something, you should always say, “I want to learn X so I can do Y.” If you don't have a Y, you don't need an X. Instead, it might be better to just focus on a language that you're already learning. I know that's not the most popular advice, but if you already know a programming language, perhaps for 2020, my advice to you is to go deep. Let me know if I left something out that you would include on the list for 2020. Let me know what you think about this. Leave a comment below. Make sure you click that subscribe button if you haven't already. Go check out simpleprogrammer.com. I'll talk to you next time. Take care.
