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Ben Halpern
Ben Halpern

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How many programming languages do you know?

Feel free to offer a personal definition of "know" ๐Ÿ˜…

Top comments (93)

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy ๐ŸŽ–๏ธ

Taking 'know' as being 'languages I've written a program in'...

  • ZX Spectrum BASIC
  • Z80 Assembler
  • C
  • Pascal
  • Haskell
  • Lua
  • Visual BASIC
  • AMOS BASIC
  • PowerBASIC (is it cheating listing so many flavours of BASIC? ๐Ÿ˜‹)
  • C++
  • C#
  • PHP
  • Lua
  • Ruby
  • Go
  • Python
  • Shell
  • JavaScript
  • Prolog
  • PERL

Also wrote my own scripting language for creating "wizards" to guide users through common tasks in a system... does that count?

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turry profile image
Turry

Dayum

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thomasjunkos profile image
Thomas Junkใƒ„

(c) 1982 Sinclair Research Ltd

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eljayadobe profile image
Eljay-Adobe

I now remember that I had forgotten AMOS BASIC on my list. :-D

I just punted anyway and said "several flavors".

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy ๐ŸŽ–๏ธ

The creators of AMOS have a new project that is very similar - AOZ Studio

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wolfhoundjesse profile image
Jesse M. Holmes

No TI-BASIC? lol

I have two books here next to my desk for writing in BASIC. One of them is for games. It was such a different world back then!

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rushannotofficial profile image
Rushan S J

what's the name of the language your created ?

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy ๐ŸŽ–๏ธ

I didn't name it - it was only ever used internally. I built interpreters to run the wizard scripts both on a desktop app (Visual Basic), and on the web

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baenencalin profile image
Calin Baenen

Well, I know C++ (to a moderate extent), Java, JavaScript (and TypeScript, if you'd like to distinguish the two), and Janky (the not-popular popular programming language I want to make).
If you include HTML, there's that, too.
Oh, and there's Python, but I rarely code in that now days, so I just say "I forgot, I know nothing.".

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lukeshiru profile image
Luke Shiru • Edited

I used this ones to craft some software:

  • Bash ๐Ÿ™‚
  • Batch ๐Ÿคข
  • C ๐Ÿ˜
  • C# ๐Ÿ™‚
  • C++ ๐Ÿ˜€
  • Elm ๐Ÿ˜
  • Haskell ๐Ÿ˜€
  • Java ๐Ÿคฎ
  • JavaScript ๐Ÿ˜€
  • Pascal ๐Ÿ˜ž
  • PHP ๐Ÿคฎ
  • Python ๐Ÿ˜ž
  • Smalltalk ๐Ÿ˜
  • TypeScript ๐Ÿ˜

But TBH I don't like some of them, and nowadays I mainly just use JavaScript and TypeScript. So if your definition of "know" is to be "a master of..." then that list would be far shorter x'D

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sherrydays profile image
Sherry Day

I'd say 5: JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Java, Swift. There are a few more I could hack my way through, but probably couldn't really right a solid program without a solid amount of learning.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Similar to my list

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deepu105 profile image
Deepu K Sasidharan • Edited

Know as in I can read it and write descent code in it

  • Java, Kotlin, Groovy, Scala
  • JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, CSS/Sass
  • Rust
  • Golang
  • C# Can read and write code but probably not the best code
  • Python, Ruby, Shell, C, C++, PHP and probably few more
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twoshrubs profile image
Shrubs • Edited

Well it's an odd one.. I'm an electrician by trade who moved onto industrial automation.

I'm constantly being thrown in the deep end and need to pickup a new language at the drop of a hat. So here is a list that I have covered over the last 20yrs..

PLC programming , C++ (current role), VB, C#, Java, PHP, SQL, Pascal and some strange lisp hybrid .. plus the odd industrial equipment (gcode , robots etc)

It's like my current role, took on as a PLC programmer then a 3rd party embedded OPC UA server they were using had terrible performance and there was no alternative in the market for there application.. so I ended up writing an OPC UA server in C++ that needed to be functional within a few months to meet project deadlines... 2 years later, I met the deadline and still adding features to this day.

Before this job I never touched C or C++ before this kind of thing happens all the time to me don't know if it's common place or I'm just a stress junkie ๐Ÿ˜‚ but I feel I can pick up any language quite quickly when under pressure.

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jonlauridsen profile image
Jon Lauridsen • Edited

Hm, I guess TS/Js, Python, C#, Ruby. It'd be too weird to write MEL here, it was an obscure 3D authoring scripting language.

Should we count SQL too? :)

Do you think more languages are automatically better? I felt I became a much better programmer (more confident, more aware) when I broadened out from just Python, but I don't think adding 1 or 2 more now would give me any real boost. Maybe if I tapped into a truly functional languageโ€ฆ hm.

I just remembered, when I put Ruby on my skills the recruiters came rushing at me, it was just a crazy uptick, so there are more marketable languages than others!

I'd generally recommend developers learn one or two other languages if possible. Would you recommend devs to broaden out?

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cerchie profile image
Lucia Cerchie • Edited

I can use JS and Python, also can hack my way around Golang and TS as of right now.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Which was the hardest to pick up?

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cerchie profile image
Lucia Cerchie • Edited

Great question! JS was my first coding experience, so that was the most difficult for sure. Golang has the most 'different' syntax and rules re assignments and mutability of all of them, so that's proving to be my biggest obstacle right now, but TypeScript is deceptively difficult in that it's an entirely different language from JS (not a framework) and I didn't realize that fully before diving in. Python's been by far the easiest.

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cerchie profile image
Lucia Cerchie

How about for you? We have a couple in common I think.

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cerchie profile image
Lucia Cerchie • Edited

oh and I guess I forgot to include SQL, JSON, and GraphQL. I think of those less as programming languages (disclaimer: do not know the official def for a programming language; I know folks like to get technical with it but who am I to deny someone CSS or whatever they code in) and more like ways to represent or request data.

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eljayadobe profile image
Eljay-Adobe • Edited

BASIC (a dozen different flavors), Assembly (6502, 65816, 68000, 68030, 80386, SPARC, PowerPC, Alpha), LISP/Scheme, FORTRAN, Pascal, C, C++ (from 2e to C++17), Object Pascal, Objective-C, C#, Perl, Python, Perl, F#, Lua, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, Prolog. Peripherally programming languages (depending on one's definition) would include SQL, WPF/XAML, Eve 0.8, Eve 2.0, HTML & CSS.

I'm only including languages that I've worked with a lot for a year or longer.

I'm not including language exposure for fun. Like with Logo, Squeak, Boo!, Groovy, CoffeeScript, Swift, Elm, Rust, GLSL, and many many more. I'm not including command scripting languages or shell scripting languages, that be another few dozen.

Next year I plan on learning Clojure. It'll be interesting to see what you get if you add functional programming to LISP.

On my future list also has: Haskell, Scala, Kotlin, (more) Rust, (more) Swift, and Go.

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salah856 profile image
Salah Elhossiny

4

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Are you happy with the list as is for a while or do you intend to broaden?

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salah856 profile image
Salah Elhossiny

of course i will broaden but according to a plan

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

What's the plan?

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fennecdjay profile image
Jรฉrรฉmie Astor

I second that, what's the plan?

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berviantoleo profile image
Bervianto Leo Pratama

Maybe more than 10. ๐Ÿ˜

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern • Edited

Which?

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berviantoleo profile image
Bervianto Leo Pratama

C#, Elixir, C, C++, Java, Typescript, Python, Javascript, Kotlin, Dart, Haskell, etc.

But, well. I only use C#, Typescript and Python for my daily task.

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cicirello profile image
Vincent A. Cicirello • Edited

My Current Preferred Programming Languages: Java, Python

Other Programming Languages I Know: Assembly, AWK, C, C++, Common Lisp, Fortran, JavaScript, Pascal, Perl, Prolog, Scheme, SETL, Tcl, Visual Basic. Some of these I haven't used in a long time.

Other (data, query, markup, etc) languages: CSS, GraphQL, HTML, LaTeX, Markdown, SQL, SVG, XML, YAML

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ravikrishnappa profile image
Ravi Krishnappa

The next iteration of this survey should focus on the languages used by the dev.to member in the last 5 years to build something. And to also get another feedback about the approximate number of users using that application.

I know Python, Java, Go, Rust, Julia, SQL, PL/SQL, C, C++, C#, COBOL, JavaScript, R,TypeScript and Assembly. But I have used Python, JavaScript and SQL to build custom business applications.

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servusdei2018 profile image
Nate

I would define 'know' to be a language in which I'd confidently embark on a journey to build anything from a small script to a new social media platform, and with that definition, I know:

  • Go
  • Python

With that said, I have a working knowledge of:

  • C, C++, C#
  • Java
  • JavaScript
  • Bash

And although I don't consider these languages, I also am familiar with the following formats:

  • Markdown
  • HTML
  • XML
  • JSON
  • CSS
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lgrammel profile image
Lars Grammel

I've worked extensively with:

  • Java
  • Kotlin
  • JavaScript
  • TypeScript

I've written code in:

  • Prolog
  • GW BASIC
  • QuickBasic
  • Visual Basic
  • CoffeeScript
  • Go
  • Scala
  • Pascal
  • Delphi
  • Smalltalk
  • Haskell
  • Perl
  • C
  • Python
  • Shell
  • a tiny bit of assembler (forgot which one)

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Sorry for the callout ๐Ÿ˜†