There are hundreds of programming languages out there that you can learn and each programming language has its own strength and use case. I have personally been exposed to about four of the languages I am going to mention here.
You are not required to learn all of them but mastering one language can increasingly boost your ego in the field of programming and computer science.
Computer programming is important today because so much of our world is automated. Humans need to be able to control the interaction between people and machines. Since computers and machines are able to do things so efficiently and accurately, we use computer programming to harness that computing power.
Top 10 Programming Languages
Today, I will introduce to you the top ten most used programming languages by programmers in no particular order.
1. Java
Java was developed by James Gosling, who is known as the father of Java, in 1995. James Gosling and his team members started the project in the early ’90s.
It is a high-level, class-based, object-oriented programming language that is designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible
Use Case
One of the most widely used programming languages, Java is used as the server-side language for most back-end development projects, including those involving big data and Android development. Java is also commonly used for desktop computing, other mobile computing, games, and numerical computing.
2. Python
Python was conceived in the late 1980s by Guido van Rossum and it is a widely-used general-purpose, high-level programming language. It was initially designed by Guido van Rossum in 1991
It won the prestigious TIOBE Programming Language of the Year award in 2021. This was the second time in a row. The award is given to the programming language that has gained the highest increase in ratings in one year.
This language also happens to be my favorite chocolate and I extensively use it for web-scraping and web backend.
Python is mainly used in task automation, data analysis, and data visualization. It is a standard for machine learning and artificial intelligence because of its huge library and frameworks on top of an easy learning curve.
3. C/C++
The C programming language came out of Bell Labs in the early 1970s. According to the Bell Labs paper The Development of the C Language by Dennis Ritchie.
C++ was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Laboratories over a period starting in 1979.
C & C++ are some of the most difficult languages to learn. This is because they use a range of paradigms. You’ll need to familiarize yourself with different programming concepts before you can efficiently use them.
Both are used when a low-level programming language is necessary. Commonly used for graphics-heavy software such as games, photo, and video editing apps, and browsers, C is more widely used for embedded devices and OS kernels.
4. C#
C# (C-Sharp) is a programming language developed by Microsoft that runs on the .NET Framework.
C# is a general-purpose, multi-paradigm programming language. C# encompasses static typing, strong typing, lexically scoped, imperative, declarative
C# is widely used for developing desktop applications, web applications, and web services. It is used in creating applications for Microsoft on a large scale. C# is also used in game development in Unity.
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5. Solidity
Solidity is an object-oriented, high-level language for implementing smart contracts. Smart contracts are programs that govern the behavior of accounts within the Ethereum state.
It is a curly-bracket language designed to target the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). It is influenced by C++, Python, and JavaScript.
Solidity is an object-oriented high-level programming language which uses to write the code for smart contracts in the Ethereum Blockchain.
6. JavaScript
JavaScript was invented by Brendan Eich in 1995. It was developed for Netscape 2 and became the ECMA-262 standard in 1997. After Netscape handed JavaScript over to ECMA, the Mozilla foundation continued to develop JavaScript for the Firefox browser.
It is a lightweight, interpreted, or just-in-time compiled programming language with first-class functions. It is a language for the web.
JavaScript is mainly used to create responsive, interactive elements for web pages, enhancing the user experience. The majority of the users use it for the front-end and it has also a backend-Node JS implementation.
7. R
R is a programming language for statistical computing and graphics supported by the R Core Team and the R Foundation for Statistical Computing.
Created by statisticians Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman, R is used among data miners and statisticians for data analysis and developing statistical software. Users have created packages to augment the functions of the R language.
8. Swift
The development of Swift started in July 2010 by Chris Lattner, with the eventual collaboration of many other programmers at Apple. Swift took language ideas “from Objective-C, Rust, Haskell, Ruby, Python, C#, CLU
Swift is a robust and intuitive programming language created by Apple for building apps for iOS, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Watch. It’s designed to give developers more freedom than ever. Swift is easy to use and open-source, so anyone with an idea can create something incredible.
9. Kotlin
Kotlin originated at JetBrains, the company behind IntelliJ IDEA, in 2010, and has been open source since 2012.
It is a cross-platform, statically typed, general-purpose programming language with type inference. Kotlin is designed to interoperate fully with Java.
Kotlin was invented to solve the developer challenges of JetBrains. They needed a simpler tool than Java to work with their main product, called IntelliJ IDEA, totally written in it.
The designers investigated the alternatives, stayed unsatisfied, and decided to invent their own language.
Kotlin first started as a language for Android development specifically, it quickly spread through the Java community because of its features and has since been used for many types of applications.
By the way, it is one of my favorites.
10. Go
Go is a statically typed, compiled programming language designed at Google by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson. It is syntactically similar to C.
This language was developed by Google engineers to create dependable and efficient software and is mostly used in cloud-native development. It is one of the fastest programming languages out there.
Bonus Language
🔸 PHP
PHP was conceived sometime in the fall of 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf. Many say it is a language headed for extinction but many websites are still powered by this language including WordPress, Facebook, etc.
PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is known as a general-purpose scripting language that can be used to develop dynamic and interactive websites. It was among the first server-side languages that could be embedded into HTML.
Conclusion
As I aforementioned in my intro, getting started with one of these programming languages will introduce you to all concepts of Computer Science if you are interested in becoming a software developer.
There are other languages that are essential in software development like database/query languages, API-oriented, Scripting, etc.
Even though I have tried to match use cases, most of these are general-purpose languages and can serve all purposes listed above.
