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What is the next language you want to learn, and why?

Ben Halpern on January 09, 2017

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Subbu Lakshmanan

Kotlin I was following up Kotlin from the initial days. Now Since Google announced as official language for android, I am putting more focus on learning it. I have a good experience with javascript, I believe I can quickly grasp the functional programming aspects of Kotlin. I love it :)

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Hrishi Mittal

I just started doing this free tutorial yesterday. You might also find it useful - iwillteachyoukotlin.com/

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Ben Halpern

That's great.

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Sivaraj

I started Kotlin. I love it

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Succhi

I want to learn Python. I believe that this is the language of the future. You can kickstart your AI, ML or data science journey in a sec, if you know Python.

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Ben Halpern

Python's wonderful

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Oras Al-Kubaisi

It is great, easy to learn and you can do alot with few lines of code. I have started learning it recently and I'm totally hooked. For ML, you can use jupyter notebook and evaluate (run) each cell individually to get immediate result rather than writing the whole program and run later.

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Adnan Kičin

Rust - I've heard a lot of good things about it (like for example that Rust is everything Go wanted to be), and since I've been programming in C/C++ earlier, I think the learning curve won't be as steep.

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Bernardo

you would love to read rust book second edition! I think Rust's learning struggle is the borrow checker.

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Adnan Kičin

Wow, thank you!
Just the thing I need :)

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fred

C, because the Linux kernel is written in it, and i want to understand how it is build. Also it´s a clean and powerful language in my opinion. Later on maybe c++, because of game development.

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Charles Francoise

I often say that: as long as kernels and their primary interfaces are written in C, there's good reason to learn it. It's not going away, and it's the most fundamental way to interact with your operating system.

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Bryan Baldwin

You don't have to switch off pure C to write games. I'm writing a fully featured game in C. There's just a minor overhead wrapping C++ object methods so you can call them as C functions. That should only be required in the platform code anyway.

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Martin Betz

PHP because it seems to have grown mature – and has Laravel with its fine ecosystem for business apps.

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Ben Halpern

Wasn't expecting to see PHP, but I feel like maturity does get so overlooked as a quality of a language. Lack of maturity in so many ways is my absolute biggest frustration whenever I work with JavaScript.

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Daniel Lo Nigro

Personally I'd rather use a stack that's tried and tested, and that I know will still be around in a few years time. I've had heaps of issues getting Node.js sites working after server upgrades, whereas PHP sites I created 10+ years ago are still happily running on PHP 7 with no issues and only minor updates required. For new sites I'd stick to PHP or ASP.NET, the server-side JavaScript ecosystem is just too volatile for me to even consider using it for any serious development.

Also see: Happiness is a Boring Stack: expatsoftware.com/articles/happine...

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Martin Betz

I wasnt't expecting to learn PHP, actually. Python has been a dear friend for quite a few years, but for my projects often Django and even Flask felt like an overkill. And I often struggled with packages for functionality that seemed very important to me, especially user management. I had a very bad opinion about PHP, mainly because of Wordpress' wild source code, some very strange plugins from its ecosystem and documentation that is so scattered around the web and often not reliable. But Composer, Packagist, Symfony and also the great learning resources (Laracasts, Laravel-News.com) really are my go-to learning places right now.

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Sina K

After 15 years of PHP, Python/Django was a breath of fresh air... sandwiched in there was Ruby. I could never see Flask as overkill for anything, it is pretty much a framework with nothing - how did that become overkill?

Django with Rest Framework allows me to create backends in an instance with full admin CRUD for whatever front-end of the week (been through Angular, React and now Ember) I would do a bakeoff any day of the week against PHP and Laravel (I could even bake-off against myself, hehe...)

PHP has it's merits, but I am so glad to be rid of a the toolbox with too many dysfunctional hammers and screwdrivers.

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Zeke Gabrielse

Same. I often find myself getting frustrated with JavaScript's volatile ecosystem.

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billperegoy

I want to learn a functional language that I can use for backend development. At one point I thought that would be Elixir/Phoenix but now that I've written a lot of Elm code I've become very partial to strongly type languages. But then I look at Haskell and it doesn't seem nearly as practical is Elixir/OTP so it's likely I'll be learning Elixir this year.

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Carsten

OCaml is very similar yes and you can also have a look at F#

Also: Why does Haskell seem impractical? IMO it has quite strong support for Webbackends - have a look at Servant / Servant-Elm for example

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billperegoy

From my point of view, Haskell seems less practical because there is very little writing on Haskell web frameworks written for regular folks like me. Phoenix and Elixir seem much more approachable for a relative newcomer to FP.

From my limited poking around, F# looks really cool.

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Josh Burke

Have you had a look at OCaml? It is very similar to Elm and in use at Facebook as part of the toolchain for Flow/Reason/Infer.

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Robert Hencke

Erlang (and Elixir). Despite being 20 years old, Erlang seem strikingly suited to many modern challenges (high availability, distributed processing, fundamentally concurrent, network transparent, live upgrades, etc).

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Roman Liutikov

Clojure, because Lisp is the only true programming language :P

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Josh Burke

I've just picked up "Clojure for the Brave and True" and its a wonderful introduction to the language.

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Bryan Baldwin

l̶i̶s̶p̶ Java.

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Integralist

You might find this useful leanpub.com/programming-clojure/

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Zeke Gabrielse

Elixir and Phoenix. I'm a huge Ruby/Rails fan and seeing Elixir/Phoenix resemble those makes me happy.

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Pystar

Can you learn Elixir without knowing Erlang?

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Josh Burke

Well, you cannot use Elixir outside of the Erlang VM because it is required as part of the language. But you don't have to dive into Erlang and write it as part of your day to day. One thing you will find after writing a bit of Elixir is that Erlang becomes more approachable and understandable. Elixir just expands out to Erlang using macros, and then compiles to Erlang VM byte code to be executed by the VM.

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James Byrne 🏹

Absolutely, it's definitely a boon but far from a requirement

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Ben Halpern

Yeah. Elixir doesn't really resemble Ruby as a language fundamentally, but the whole ecosystem was clearly designed to be friendly to the Ruby community's expectations.

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Adam Horak

I'd love to pick up Elixir, but I think realistically speaking it is going to be C# for me this year. My employer has a large percentage of back-end code in C#.

I've resisted getting into .NET because I didn't want to be a "windows developer" but with .NET Core maturing it looks like there is finally a reasonable cross-platform development story emerging.

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rchallme

What's wrong with being a windows developer? The majority of enterprise systems are .NET. I know it's not the coolest thing, but I've been thinking of learning C# this year because there always seems to be very good paying jobs for it.

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Adam Horak

Nothing wrong with it at all. Many of my co-workers are .NET devs.

For me:

  • I've always preferred working with Linux/OS X. Just personal preference.
  • .NET jobs seem to trend toward large companies. "Enterprise systems" as you noted. I've tended to enjoy working for smaller companies which (generally, not always) don't do as much .NET. The place I'm at now is more mid-size (about 600 total employees).

I actually think C# is a pretty nice language from what little I've done so far.

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Sebastian Tenezill

Idk why but I prefer c# over Java

I work as a Java dev for a mid sized company which uses all the oracle stuff.

My recommendation is stay away from oracle and have a good time :>

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daveclarke

I like C#. I worked as a C++ developer for a long time and there is so much ceremony associated with C++ just to avoid wandering into the wrong bit of memory. Moving to C# was a relief. I followed that with a stint as a Java developer and found it a bit of a leap backwards although I did like Java enums. Now I can develop .NET Core on my MBP without having to boot a VM and deploy to docker. I'm currently looking at Elm for some frontend dev.

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Cubicle Buddha

C# is gonna get a lot nicer sooner when non-nullable reference types are introduced in C#8 and the next .NET Core. Then all my C# brethren can experience the joy that we've had in TypeScript and Kotlin for a while.

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Kwaku Eshun

This was me before I got into enterprise development from a purely iOS background. C# is probably my favourite language now. And oh, apart from backend development, I am having fun learning Unity 3D.

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Rasmus Larsson

Check out Akka.NET in that case, it's more or less the Erlang/Elixir OTP model on .NET. It won't be Elixir from a language perspective but it will let you work with similar concepts.

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Dina Gathe

I want to dive deeper into Elm. I did some tutorials a year ago, but much has changed in Elm-world so I need to revisit. There was much to be excited about with Elm, and it was refreshing compared to the JS ecosystem.

I'm kind of python-curious, too. ;-)

I spent the past year learning Elixir/Phoenix/VueJS, and I've learned so much. It was my first experience with functional programming.

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Srikanth A V

What resources did you use for elixir/phoenix/vue? I'm planning to learn these now after dipping my toes in web dev (built an app for a client with nodejs/express, MySQL, bootstrap/jQuery). Thanks!

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Dina Gathe

I kind of went deep....I read Programming Erlang (Joe Armstrong) -> Programming Elixir (Dave Thomas) -> Programming Phoenix (Chris McCord), because it was really my first experience with functional programming and I wanted to really grasp the the underlying language/concepts before tackling the web framework.

I was also curious and wanting to understand OTP further, so I read these two awesome books, too: Designing for Scalability with Erlang/OTP (Cesarini/Vinoski) and The Little Elixir & OTP Guidebook (Benjamin Tan Wei Hao).

It's possible you could be OK and up and running with just Programming Phoenix, though.

As for Vue, there were really just a few blog articles and the Vue guide when I was starting with it, so there are probably better resources now. Here's some dialogue on various ways to work with Vue/Phoenix...there are a few approaches whether you want to use Brunch or Webpack, or just have the Vue client completely separate and communication to Phoenix backend via API only. My app is using Brunch+Vue within the Phoenix framework.

elixirforum.com/t/how-to-get-phoen...

Have fun learning that stack...I know I did! :-)

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Srikanth A V

Thank you so much for the detailed reply! I have been thinking of buying Dave's book for a while. It's time I pulled the trigger ;)

Will also check Programming Phoenix.

I'm looking at some video tutorials for vue by Traversy Media, Eric Hanchett and others. It's good to know what build tools and setup others are using.

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Dina Gathe

One more thing: while the Programming Phoenix book will be great for getting to know the framework, Phoenix 1.3 will be introducing some changes that you may want to just keep an eye on. Here's a write-up (and the video is the best overview): swanros.com/phoenix-1-3-is-pure-lo...

:-)

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Srikanth A V

Thanks once again! You should write a post about your experience learning Elixir/Phoenix and Vue. It will definitely help a lot of people :)

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Bryan Baldwin

Jon Blow's JAI is aimed at programmers who care about low-level, performant code, and want to escape the friction of working with languages whose standards have spiralled out of control. If he ever releases it. ;)

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Liam Barry

This isn't what I am waiting for too!

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Muhammad Saad Khan

I am a growth marketing manager. I have set a goal to learn Python this year as I am starting a project for Python programmers/developers. So, to understand them as potential customers I decided to learn it from scratch as I have no programming background (I am a geologist by education).

I am taking help of friend who is a pro python programmer. I will also be using the book "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python: Practical Programming for Total Beginners" by Al Sweigart.

I am looking to connect with Python programmers too so I have subscribed to /r/learnpython/ and /r/Python/ on Reddit.

I am listening to TalkPython podcast to understand what's going on in the Python world and selected some newsletters as well to follow the news like Pycoder's Weekly, Python Weekly.

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Sebastian Tenezill

Check out the Coursera.org courses they are free and very good for beginners

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Muhammad Saad Khan

Thanks Sebastian. Looking at it right now.

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Emmanuel Obogbaimhe

PHP and/or Python.

PHP because my potential next job uses it and although I am not a fan of it I'll have to learn it by default. I just wish it was more relevant in this modern day.

Python because it is just an interesting language and it seems fun. You can get a lot done in few lines of code so that intrigues me.

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Tamás Szelei

Rust, hands down. Go would also be a nice candidate (and a bit more mature), but I feel that some of the design choices in Go (like no generics or exporting names via casing) are weird and limiting. Rust on the other hand is shaping up to be really, really great.

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rrackiewicz

Elixir to take the next step in learning functional programming. I'd also like to dabble in assembly because I want to have a better/deep understanding of how computers work. I'll probably head to C again after that for the same reason. It's been a few decades wince I've used C.

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Wes Dunn

Been playing with swift a bit and I think I'm starting to "get it." I'm still very new to programming, but have largely focused on Node and have enjoyed it, but I am really attracted to the tools that swift offers around building interfaces. Front end frameworks have really bummed me out this year and CSS feels like a major chore, so swift and iOS/tvOS/macOS it is!

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Kwaku Eshun

Good choice. You can now write REST API code in Swift as well so you should totally go for it.

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jam

Haskell or Elixir. Have dabbled in both, but I'd like to go deeper. Functional is my jam lately, though I've found it changes how I have to think about the problem (which can be a challenge in of itself).

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Justin Marrington

Haskell.

Not because I see myself writing practical software with it (I'm a Node/React/Ruby dev by day right now), but because I'd like to go beyond the dipping-my-toes in phase of thinking functionally.

JS is a perfectly usable functional language, but only if you treat it that way. Being able to drop into OO and write procedural code easily has been holding my self-education back. For example, monads are a simple enough concept that I have been using for years but only actually understood this week due to stubborn subconscious refusal to read about them.

It might be just because learnyouahaskell.com is such a great resource, though.

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Nizar

C++, I'm interested in applying my AI concepts into c++.
While most might suggest to go with Python, I don't wish to focus just on the AI.

Not to forget how much I've learned about code syntax and computer due to it, and still learning.

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Mr Bee

I've learned many programming languages, though I'm mostly a Pascal programmer, and a Pascal fan too. I used to be a Borland Delphi user but then I switched to Free Pascal and Lazarus IDE.

I'm starting to learn Apple's Swift programming language because…

  • it's a new language with rich dev tools around it (especially in Apple's platforms),
  • it's native and compiled language but with modern programming features,
  • it's general purpose and cross platform with multi-paradigm programming,
  • it's open source, backed and supported by big companies (Apple and IBM),
  • it has solid, helpful, and mannered community,
  • it's fun to look and observe a growing language,
  • it looks interesting (and promising) to join into Apple's app store. :)
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Valentin Silvestre

C is good to learn because most of modern language are C-style.

Talking about work, PHP framework are good. Symfony (but long to learn) or Laravel are good one.

Think about make your own framework to understand what happen behind framework's magic.

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Iren Korkishko

JavaScript. Several reasons for it:

  1. I tend to work with styles and design. So it could be the best choice for me. (Probably)
  2. I know that its easy to start with JavaScript for the beginners. At least, I've heard this form many people who do programming.
  3. My boyfriend works on a project and he needs a JavaScript specialist for some parts (so he encourages me to enter)
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Kelly Vaughn

Ruby/Rails. I'm starting to get into Shopify app development and while I could use a language I'm already familiar with to build the apps, I'd rather use the Shopify API gem to help with building out the apps. And it's a good excuse to learn a new language!

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Brian Driscoll

I'm hoping to learn F# next. I'm primarily a C# dev, but I'd really like to get my hands dirty w/ functional programming. F# seems the most accessible to me since it would allow me to transfer my knowledge of the .NET framework from one language to the other.

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Aaron ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm finally getting really deep into C/C++, which is honestly really fun and informative. Memory management, functional programming, and low-level engineering is fun, educational, and really quite empowering. DGMW, though, I love C# and python.

I'd I had to pick another language it would probably be Go or JAI - but more importantly, I want to be a better master of the universal skills: algorithms, software architecture, software and code interoperability, etc. I think we too often get hung up on specific languages and leave these skills unappreciated

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Aaron ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Oh yeah, also Scala, because $$$

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Jabran Rafique

Java

Because I know it a bit from my MSc and want to work with it more. Also having worked with PHP for last few years it seems not do different.

C++
Because it is powerful, base of most powerful things out there. Also because I never advanced in it more than hello world intro. 🙃

Swift
Because I want to learn to build native mobile apps.

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Jacob Moen

I program in C++ and PHP, and know other languages, but this year I am going to learn Python, JavaScript, C (C11), ObjectPascal (because I started my serious programming with Delphi), Rust and Racket.

I want to create larger projects in each of those languages and progress beyond the 'hello world' stage.

I think the six languages above are a good mix of different paradigms, so hopefully that should make me a well rounded programmer. :)

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Bryan Baldwin

Delphi still lives :D

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Anurag Mathur 

I would like to learn Python as my next programming language. I am currently a Java programmer. I have two reasons for the same:

  1. Most of the MIT Open Courseware lectures use Python as the language of demonstration and being a Computer Science graduate, it makes it easier to me to keep myself updated / refreshed with the courses / basics.
  2. I am planning to understand and learn Machine Learning as a off-time project. Many samples and code snippets that I see are implemented in Python.
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Jonathan Boudreau

Rust. System language seems to be a bit more approachable than C or C++ when it comes to making a useful project. Dependency management, documentation system, etc. I've actually already done a small project using the language but I'm still very much new to it. Will be gradually working my way to lower level programming.

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Chris Bennetts

Something old and mainframey like Cobol or M204. Those systems are archaic, but they were usually designed by incredibly bright engineers and surprise you with their well thought-through architecture.

Of the modern world, definitely Swift and Dart.

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lepinekong

Definitely you should learn nodejs. It's the hottest language for now and will continue to be so tomorrow. Big startups are using it, big corporates are still using Java but will probably be switching to it for the front end keeping java for the back end because otherwise they won't be agile enough.

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Denise Nepraunig

Python - because I want to dive into Machine Learning and it seems to be the most suitable language for that and has a lot of packages specifically for Machine Learning. Currently I am reading the book "Data Science from Scratch".

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Martin Beentjes

I want to learn Go. Currently working on my graduation. After that I finally got time to learn with some small hobby projects which are laying on the shelf now.

I think it is a language you can learn for all CLI based application on the server side. The ease of cross platform building is so nice.

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Er Galvão Abbott

Python, because it's an interesting language that is not limited to a specific platform.

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Integralist

Heya, this might be of interest to you leanpub.com/pythonforprogrammers

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Srikanth A V

C# /.Net

With .Net on all 3 platforms and Microsoft's push towards better tooling and Open Source felt like the right time to learn the excellent language and framework.

Want to also learn a functional language. So that might be Elixir or F#

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Henré Botha

Lisp in general, Clojure specifically. I've started doing a little reading and I can already see that this is changing how I think about code. I'm interested in Clojure in particular because it is old enough to be robust, but new enough to be modern; and it runs on one of the most stable, efficient VMs out there.

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Roger

Go, Elm, Kotlin, Swift, Rust. No particular reason except people I trust have recommended them, and I could use a change.

I haven't jumped (back) into JavaScript because keeping up with the hottest new trends is a full-time job, and I already have one of those doing other things.

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stevensonmt

Javascript and Go. I'm a hobbyist working through Ruby and Rails for the time being, but in another couple months I'll pick up JS and then hopefully Go. From what I gather the rules enforcement of Go helps develop good habits.

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Cédric JUNG

I know well and use Javascript when I want to do something. But I think I will have to learn Python to do some Maths with good libraries.
Sometimes I want to learn Rust, but it is really tiring so I prefer Javascript 😁.

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Thomas Lang

Italian or Chinese :o) sorry couldn't resist.

I don't think I will be learning a new programming language this year, That doesn't mean I'm done learning.

I feel like I'm currently much more into getting design patterns, security and code structure right, and I think more people should do the same.

Besides my own code (which mainly is php, c#, javascript), I like to review other code from mobile & web applications and review API Security.

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Saudi Knight

I'd like to learn Swift to be honest. While I'm not necessarily interested in iOS app development, I discovered it has major audience here in Saudi Arabia due to how profitable, and popular apps are in terms of software development in general. However personally I'd like to get more familiarized with scripting languages such as PHP and JavaScript. I just feel like it's a pretty important skill to have as a Software Developer.

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Bogdan Galiceanu

Idris, because type driven development sounds promising when it comes to the "if it compiles, it's correct" holy grail. I just hope it has practical applications in various types of software, not just formal protocol definitions and things like that.

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Daw-Ran Liou

Javascript. I'm a Python developer and my thinking is that cross learning another dynamic language could be a good way to understand the good and the bad parts in both languages. Also, Javascript is one of the most widely used language. Lots of great libraries or frameworks are built on it. It's good to have them in my toolkits.

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Juan Maia

Rust, for sure. Everything I've seen so far looks really great. I always had Go in my mind for a modern, safe, concurrent language. They both seems great but for some unknown reason Rust has got my attention.

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Integralist

Both have great learning resources, but Rust's online book is amazingly good doc.rust-lang.org/book/README.html

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Tarek Deeb

Swift. I feel like this language is gaining pace and learning it would be an asset. Plus android is said to adopt it over java. One code base (more-or-less) for native android and iOS apps? Yes, please!

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Dhanush Gopinath

Elixir. Because I want to learn a functional language.

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Attila Magyar

Either Rebol, APL/J, Erlang or IO. Because "a language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing"

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josh rhoads

I'm going to try to get back to learning Python. I've started learning it before but I keep getting side tracked by work and life. I plan on spending more time with it this year... or at least trying to.

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Adam Brandizzi

Right now diving deep into Haskell, but I would like to learn Rust, it seems to be promising! I'm curious about Elm as well.

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yeedle

What resource are you using for learning Haskell? I started out with LYAH but now I'm considering buying Haskell from First Principles.

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Adam Brandizzi

I'm following LYAH so far. After that I'm thinking about working on some real-world project.

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Artem Golovin

I really wanna learn Swift and finally get into iOS development.

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Claudio Rodriguez

Haskell, I've been learning it slowly, doing good, loving it to model data and understanding it. Makes Scala and other Functional Languages easier to digest. I'm not a fan of Haskell's ecosystem though, but that's not why I'm learning it.

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d3rrila

Rust and Chinese.
Rust because it seems fun and Chinese because why not!
I've been a terrible developer for a long time now and I think it's time that I up my game a little and learn some new tricks.

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Josh Cheek

I guess in a practical sense, Elm and Rust. I know a little of each of them already, but not well enough to reliably use. I think all the work done to make JavaScript better is basically just trying to make it like Elm, and I think Elm does Elm better than JavaScript does Elm. For Rust, it's in the neighbourhood of C speeds, but C has some serious flaws (IMO) around its memory management, so I think that something like Rust's type system is very important. Plus, that type system is powerful and once I understood the type system better, I wouldn't be surprised if I could approach being as productive in it as in Ruby. Thus, anything that isn't in a browser (and isn't a web service) feels like Rust is the way to go, and anything in a browser feels like Elm is the way to go. I suppose the third question is "what about services?" to which everyone who does services, when they talk about what they want, it sounds like Erlang to me, so I assume Erlang / Elixir are the way to go there. But I don't see myself putting myself in a situation to need that unless hired to do so, so that's lower on the totem pole.

For fun: Crystal seems totally awesome (though it'd be nice if it would start faster), mruby should be a small and useful jump, there's apparently some streaming language that Matz is looking at, I'd be willing to play with it. SpaceX is using some visual programming language, that sounds like a fun paradigm. Python would let me play with Tensor Flow. Idk, maybe Idris or Prolog just to get an extreme exposure to their respective paradigms. OCaml could be fun for a certain subset of playing around (namely parsing). Common Lisp, Chicken Scheme, and Racket all have interesting aspects that make them seem like potential choices within the Lisp world, and I find that world to be fun.

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Zafer Gurel

I started to learn Python (3) to develop an application on Linux that includes a web api as well as stuff about the OS. I used Flask as the web framework which satisfied all my needs.
There are lots of free open source packages, tutorials, and videos about Python. Also, it has a strong community. Tools like pylint and pytest make development really fun and also you learn a lot while developing.

Maybe this year, I think of learning Go for another project to develop a system which needs to be scalable and perform good under lots of concurrent connections.

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Damien Bry

Rust. I've been coding in high level languages like javascript for too long. Time to master the performances of my code, and build programs on steroids, with more safety check on compilation than C/C++.

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Eljay-Adobe

Now that it is 2018 (and I've been reading old posts for fun, and being a b**tard and necro'ing threads)...

2017 consisted of me learning C++11 (and C++14 and C++17). I've learned a lot, and there is a lot more to go. C++11 is work related.

2018 my goal is to learn Swift 4. This one will be for fun.

I learned Swift 1, and was aghast at how unfinished it was at that time. (Swift 1 was like alpha quality, Swift 2 was like beta quality.) I was going to learn Swift 3, but got side tracked by C++11. In the meantime, Swift 4 came out.

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Tyler Rollins

CoffeeScript - syntax sugar / hacking hipster (it's cool because it's not cool anymore JS is so mainstream)


Swift - keen on using it for web development.

Elm - functional front-ends.

Elixir - functional back-ends.

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Federico Ramirez

I want to REALLY learn Clojure

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Integralist
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Nimmo

I'm going to spend 2017 learning Elm in depth, rather than learning little bits of lots of things like I normally do.

Why Elm? Because it's the first programming language in years that's really grabbed me, whilst making me smile. :)

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Vinicius Soares Batista

Rust - Not sure. I'm a seasoned java developer and would like to learn something with performance in mind. Have looked around for a candidate, and I believe rust will be my choice.
If you have suggestions, I'm all ears :)

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Owen Thompson

I'd like to familiarize myself more with bash, given that I work with debian-based systems decently often. It's not that I've heard good things about it, but it's probably the most practical language for me to learn right now.

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timetraveler90

JavaScript and GO.

The reason why i want JS is that will help me and improve my writing of automated end-2-end tests in NightwatchJS and will provide me some benefits for the actual market, since i am automation QA engineer.

And the reason why i'll focus on GO is that i want to gather as much as possible knowledge from backend based language such as GOlang is.

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Antonio Radovcic

Go (Golang)!
Just starting out and I love it. Syntax rules quasi-baked-in to the language. Lots of features for Server-development, and so many bindings to Qt and SDL2 for Gamedev. And super-easy to deploy on my Uberspace-Server. I made a Spotify-Token-Fetcher for a React-App, and a Favicon-to-Ascii-Converter so far. But barely scratching the surface, so this is my next big thing.

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Valentin Baca

Python and SQL

I've been recommending Python non-stop for the past 4 years to new programmers but haven't gone deep into the language myself. I'd greatly appreciate any books or websites that teach Python for people that already know how to program another language.

SQL is just something I've managed to avoid so far but cannot any more.

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ImTheDeveloper

Not so much a language but I've spent the last 2 weeks working with ansible to automate the provision of my development projects. It's a great little tool and there is something very satisfying about wiping my server and auto building with a single command.

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Ghost • Edited

I want to learn more of Scala, I already did some basic things in the language, but it's a big language and I do believe that I'll take a long time to be productive on it.

My main reason to take a look at Scala is Akka. Scala + Akka seems like a awesome environment for large distributed applications.

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David Brewer

Python. I only have experience in Java at the moment (at least professionally) and it seems like Python has some cool little features. I feel like if I knew Python more I could utilize it at work and in my career going forward.

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Theofanis Despoudis

I would say Forth.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_(progr...

Its simple and powerful and I would like to create an interpreter so it will execute Forth programs for learning purposes.

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Gagandeep Singh

Kotlin : actually I have to(but I was planning in future), because as google made it official in IO for android , everybody has started writing blog posts in kotlin .
But it is good with lots of extra stuff and removal of boilerplate code. But java is near and dear to my heart and will be.

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Aymeric A

Python, cause I've learnt to much C languages (C, C++, C#...)

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Anthony Candaele

Elm, because it makes functional programming understandable

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Yakunichev Alexander

Clojure, to get more familiar with FP and lisp-like languages.

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Integralist
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James Hood

Clojure or Scala because I really want to get a deep understanding of functional programming and I work with the JVM.

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Lokesh Dokara

Golang because its fast, concurrent, cross-platform, and many open source projects are developing in Go these days.

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Max Antonucci

Ruby and Ruby on Rails, for app development

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andrewingram

Clojure, Elixir and Scala. Because they all seem to be competing for my brain right now.

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Artem Sapegin

Any functional language to try something very different from JavaScript I use almost exclusively in the past few years.

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Erick Acevedo

PHP in first place, then more Javascript.

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Emmanuel Obogbaimhe

Just curious. Why PHP?

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Michael Lefkowitz

Python. Mainly because I want to mess around with my Raspberry Pi.

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Alex Burlacu

Smalltalk - Because Java and other modern OOP languages are quite far away from what Alan Kay meant it to be. Also Prolog or some other Logic programming language, maybe I can find some interesting patterns in there.

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Dean

Elixir and Rust for a project I'm starting. Feels like the right combination and it's going to be lots of fun.

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Jean-Loup Adde

Haskell for me. I heard a lot about it and would love to get into functional programming

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Sean Matheson

Reason - Functional programming with an approachable syntax. 💖

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Ben Halpern

Reason is fascinating. Do you have any plans to release anything with it, or is it purely for learning at this point?

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Josh Burke

Elm because it makes programming for the front-end fun and safe in a way I've never experienced. Plus the compiler error messages are actually helpful.

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Dave

Python - it's gaining/has significant traction in areas of interest (machine learning, 'AI', science, mathematics, etc). The syntax and language as a whole has intrigued me for a while, as well.

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Lorenzo Pasqualis

Python is a great language with a huge following and very interesting open source projects. I always recommend it as one of the first languages to learn.

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Ben Wolf

Kotlin. It sounds interesting and it's from jetbrains. 😃

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Gregor Petrin

I started with Kotlin this year (backend, not Android) and I'm really happy with it!

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Wade Williams
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Integralist

Good choice! This might be useful to you integralist.co.uk/posts/go.html it's just code examples, but sometimes this is just what you need

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W. Brian Gourlie

Haskell, because I've become proficient enough with Elm that the transition wouldn't be as jarring as coming into it with little to no experience with pure FP.

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ガブリエル

Rust because of safety and speed.

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Nivesh

Go, cause I want to know what made TJ leave Node.js and jump to Go. Besides, it's built for heavy real time applications like node.js

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James Byrne 🏹

Elixir and erlang. Using both in work and for side projects. Havn't worked in a functional language before these two and It's nice to stretch the mind in different ways

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Joshua Bemenderfer

I'd like to get serious with Rust sometime. I'm still trying to get it compiling to WebAssembly properly.

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'''⌐(ಠ۾ಠ)¬'''

Go and Elm.

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_aar0n_

Node JS. Because it sounds awesome

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Brian Driscoll

So... you want to learn javascript?

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_aar0n_

... yes

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Kim Kulling

I guess learning rust would be a good choise for me.

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yeedle

Haskell (and Elm), because I want to learn the (purely) functional paradigm.

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Ghost

if you want to be a ML engineer I guess you should skip go and node, and instead learn Scala (because of Spark) and/or Python.

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K

Reason, because it seems to be rather modern while having a mature core.

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Aravind Putrevu • Edited

Go and Kotlin - happen to know beauty of them, and anxious to learn

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John Paul Ada

Clojure! Specifically, ClojureScript. I'm gonna try and see how I fare with Lisps :laugh:

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Oleg Lustenko

OCaml/Reason.
Becouse facebook preparing migration to Reason and I want to know how OCaml working.

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Leandro García

This year I want to learn Go, and become more proficient in Android

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Faragó Tibi

I just started to learn Python. Not sure if this is a good idea but it has been fun so far.

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Ghost

Swift because I a) Use a MacBook Air b) Love the look of XCode and c) Think that it's a great language to know.

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Ian

Scala - runs on the JVM so has privileged access to Spark, Elasticsearch and Neo4j. Not as verbose as Java. Functional, so a different paradigm to my usual Python.

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Børge André Jensen

Haskell! Clojure has been my go-to language the last 2 years, and I want to dive deeper into the FP world.

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Dan Lebrero

"The most important language a software developer can learn is the one the customer speaks" by Jason Gorman

twitter.com/jasongorman/status/865...

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Rasmus Larsson

Just for the sake of the language: something in a paradigm I haven't tried before or which will push a paradigm I'm already using further towards its extreme. E.g. logic programming, Idris etc.

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Wilson Campusano Jorge

I would like to learn Ruby. just Ruby!

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James Audry Spencer

Python because Data

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Charles Francoise

Swift. I know the basics but I need to master it.

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Nathan Heffley

I've been looking to get back into more "traditional" programming and have had my eye on Python for a while. Just need to find the free time to do so!

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Paula

I'm getting interested in Haskell as I'm told is very mathematical and I got curious, also I want to try functional programming.

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Hrishi Mittal

Elixir because... I want to be like the cool kids!

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Alex Zolotko

Ceylon, because it learned from others' mistakes and got defaults right.

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Raja Simon

Long time with Python creating web apps. My next choice is NodeJS. Large community with super cool package managers to install frontend frameworks. And I can write the server code in JS, Awesome...

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Théo

I guess I would like to learn a functional oriented language because I'm too used to object oriented languages

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Vetle Leinonen-Roeim

Kotlin - it's just the right amount of expressive and powerful without going full Scala

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David García

Kotlin because I want to be an Android developer

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Allan Daemon

Rust. The low level language that's really elegant and cozy

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Maik Manthey

Go, because it is so fast. And as a PHP Developer it could be a good addition to my work.

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Enno Rehling (恩諾)

Perl, because I find myself writing too many bash scripts where a "real" programming language would be appropriate, and I've come to loathe Python.

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josh rhoads

I want to get back to learning Python. I keep starting to learn it and then get side tracked by work and life. I think this year I'm going to spend more time on it.. or at least try to.

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Integralist

Give this a go leanpub.com/pythonforprogrammers it's designed for quick learning

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Ezinwa Okpoechi

Elm because it looks fantastic

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Anton Frattaroli

Powershell. Sysadmins, DBAs and operations people seem to prefer it and I need to work with them. It has such a cludgy syntax.

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Aidas Bendoraitis

C#, because it is the main scripting language in Unity3D and that is one of my recent interests.

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supaSheva🌐

React JS because their release seems more stable in comparison to Angular. I can't keep up with the changes they keep making on that framework

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Amit Erandole

Elm, Elixir and the functional side of javascript because of the multicore and concurrent universe we live in

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Thymo

C. Because I want to get more into low-level/embedded programming.

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Schomma

Started with C/C++, worked with about another dozen of languages, so my next one will be - Japanese. Because I'll go there in 2019 😊

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напівлиса голова.

elm. because js is overheated, overrated and sometimes ridiculous.

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Aalind Gupta

Confused between NodeJS and Python. I know both have different uses, but I can only start with one at a time. Any advises?

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Afsoon

Rust, but after learn how ErlangVM works. I expect to use Rust with Elixir through Native Implementation Interfaces.

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Aalind Gupta

A little confused between NodeJS and Python. I know both have different uses, but I can only start with one at a time.
Thoughts?

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Michał Wilczyński

As a C# dev I want to learn F# to understand more functional way of thinking and Go, to better understand web-driven, coroutine-driven, multithread-first language design.

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Erhan Kılıç

I want to learn c/c++. I want to learn because I'm interested in robotic and desktop programming except web programming. But Rust is in my mind too. I don't know :)

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Pystar

I want to really learn Vue and Nuxt.js and Go.

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Anil Das

Ruby because I'm a backend guy and exposure to frontend language and framework would be great.

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Daniel

Javascript, because of the many capabilities it has showed lately.

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niinzir

I really want to learn Rust. I've never done anything that low level, it's mostly just been Ruby and Javascript

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Integralist

I'm in the middle of learning it. Once you get the 'scoping' rules it starts becoming quite fun. You might want to have a quick read up on C first as it'll help with the system level concepts such as pointers and memory allocation (this might help: integralist.co.uk/posts/c.html)

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paul schaefer

Python - for building small scripts to help with local development, or for server-side rendering of HTML

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Integralist

Heya, this might be of interest to you leanpub.com/pythonforprogrammers

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A.D.

Go - getting a lot of traction, seem to be very relevant in big data/fast data market.
And assembly. Never too late.

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DevMaurice

Ruby because I want to have a better foundation with Ruby on Rails.

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Ben Halpern

I enjoy Ruby Tapas as a source for continuously learning new things about Ruby. It's a funky language with lots of neat features hidden away.

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Michel Perez

I want to get a solid stack with go, python and typescript

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Pystar

Why typescript and not pure javascript?

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Stephen Senkomago Musoke

Angular/React - Javascript client side libraries because they seem to be the rage for development and do not want to be left behind

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Bojan Tomic

Elixir. Because of Erlang's crazily smart concurrency model (no callbacks, no promises, no locks, no problems) and Elixir's epic explicitness.

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Alex Zolotko

Rust because it deals with important problems.

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Sebastian Tenezill

JavaScript/Typescript
Because I want to create a browser game in js/ts.

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rainteller

Elm and Elixir/Phoenix. The future is functional |> :=]

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Ricardo Bánffy

Irish

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Albrecht Scheidig

LUA, because I want to tweak my Awesome WM without being totally blind.

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luigi

Rust, because I already know well web development, but now I would to learn Systems Programming.

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Ghost

There are people building backends successfully in almost every language ;)

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Jimmy Song

Go(Golang) for kubernetes

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Ian Wallace

French - cos there is more to life ...

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Andreas Mueller

Haskell. Because I want to see what I can learn about language design from it.

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Zhenting Zhou

c++ because all the cool kids know it and like that's programing street cred

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hash

I think I'll learn Python. It seems interesting and it is also trending.
But I am a coder much closer to C universe and Linux, and Python kind of fit well in the jungle.

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José Quintana

GoLang because it's powerful, fast and has an intuitive syntax. Definitely a nice and modern Backend language that is growing up.

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Ron Popov

C , it's a low level language , and by learning it i expect to also learn about low level stuff like memory allocation and how operating systems are built.

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Integralist

You'll get that in a more enjoyable sense from Rust doc.rust-lang.org/book/README.html but check out integralist.co.uk/posts/c.html and integralist.co.uk/posts/syscalls.html which might be of interest to you

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Daniel Albuschat

I'm learning Elm and F# this year because they are a perfect match (Elm got inspiration from F# I think) and FP is perfect for my project: Create a web based programming language and IDE.

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Batman

GO...it's an interesting language and can have many practical applications especially when kick ass concurrency support is needed.

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Victor Herasme Perez

I want to learn Scala because I think (so far) that functional programming is more intuitive. I would learn Haskell I it was easier to apply it to the project where I collaborate

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narala558

Hir How can i contact you shell i have your mail address i have a query in Cloud function to cloud SQL

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Python maybe... someday...
coming over from PHP(it seems to be hated oddly...) dont really know why python but why not i guess?

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kolexinfos

Kotlin, it has a lot of promise and because the JetBrains guys are behind it

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Harry El Mugriento

After being a professional programmer for 30 years now I'd love to start from scratch in videogame modding. So I think some kind of gamengine scripting language will be my interest.

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Thiago Vieira 📰

Javascript, in depth. Now that Angular 2 is out of beta and is written in TypeScript, I expect enough stability on the ecosystem. NodeJs is on my list, also.

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Aalind Gupta • Edited

Confused between NodeJS or Python. Both have their uses, I know. But I need to start one at a time. Any advises?

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Julien Calixte

Still learning C# with ASP.NET core for backend and Vue2 in frontend. Quite happy with them in side projects

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Onur Karacalı

Kotlin, because i am a JVM guy and it looks interesting to me. And also it seems like it will be popular in the near future

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Dmytro Pylypenko

Maybe – Ruby, just for wide syntax mind.