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Discussion on: Which language i should learn as a beginner ?

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Austin S. Hemmelgarn

Python is probably your best bet unless you have some specific goal in mind. It's dead simple to learn, exceedingly powerful, and has a mature ecosystem supporting it.

Other possibilities that come to mind include:

  • C. Not C++, not C#, just plain C. Despite being almost half a century old, C is actually still very widely used, and derivatives of it (either direct or indirect) regularly show up in lists of the most popular programming languages. Learning C makes it much easier to learn C++, C# and Objective-C, as well as providing a solid foundation from which to learn other languages, so you can quickly branch out as well. Setup of a development environment for learning is a bit of a pain though if you are on Windows or macOS (both platforms make you jump through hoops to get a working build environment for C).
  • C#. Very popular right now, and especially relevant if you want to go into game development (because Unity (one of the most popular game engines in the world right now) uses it). Also not super easy to set up a development environment for learning it.
  • JavaScript. If you want to go into web development, JS is the only practical option for a first language. The downside is that JS has quiute a few peculiarities that may make it harder to branch out to other languages in the future.