Discussion: What is the best programming language to learn in 2024?

I think Python might win for its ubiquity in ML/AI circles and likelihood to get support in this arena.

Lots of ways to take this question and reasons that might not apply but that’s my first instinct.

JavaScript is still the most widely used going into this year, according to Stack Overflow. Python is incredibly hot on the job market and probably continuing to rise this year. But I think JavaScript remains at the top because it's entrenched and it still provides the best overall ecosystem for quickly launching and growing a software startups.

C# and Java are dark horses because they're so strong in enterprise use cases. Not likely to overtake, but will continue to be strong. Decent candidate languages to learn for those interested in enterprise software development.

I think Rust and Go are still too niche to rise to the top. Definitely growing but probably not at the rate of Python given the acceleration of ML/AI (as @ben pointed out). But either would be a great option to learn if you already know JS and Python.

It depends 🫣. Are you in ML/AI? Are you building cloud native tools? Are you into IoT?

For me, I will bet Rust and Python as dominating the next wave due to the increase interest in Generative AI.

As a data scientist, I feel like Alice. Always chasing the rabit

The big names are JavaScript/TypeScript and Python, then come Java and C# and these 4 combined make up for the vast majority of the market.

However, people who are eager to learn a new language and ask for advice usually already know or work with one of the aforementioned top 4. In that case, I'd suggest Go without a doubt, it's the best "still niche" language to learn by far, because

• It's simple
• It's powerful
• It has a standard library
• With only ~20 keywords and almost no magic, you clearly see what's going on in large and/or foreign code bases
• It provides guaranteed stability across versions (go.dev/doc/go1compat)
• It scales both up (cloud services) and down (small projects, CLIs, embedded) seamlessly
• It has an amazing developer experience, since the single package you install from the official website already provides subcommands for building, testing, benchmarking, formatting, documenting, generating code, managing dependencies, checking race conditions and more: no more guessing which library to use to have some core feature or which coding style to follow

JavaScript is the Master of All :) That said, Typescript is inclusive.

Hard to find a clear no. one 🤔
I think Javascript is the most versatile and still getting a wider stage to work on - even Oracle put it inside their new 23c database.
For DevOps it’s maybe still Phython or GO!?
And for solid software and processes development I am interested in Rust a lot.

But that’s all from my very personal perspective …

The enterprise is ruled by only 1 programming language. Have been working on a lot of old, legacy migrations to Cloud in some of the largest orgs globally - all of them are end-to-end Java houses. And within Java, SpringBoot and Reactive Programming is the most in-demand... will be around and relevant and ruling the Enterprise space for many many many years to come... at least for the natural duration of our lives.

I would then put C#, and later Python.
Go and Rust etc. are good to know... not relevant till anything is widely accepted by the Enterprise.

I think Swift should be right next to kotlin. Like Kotlin/Swift depending on what you want

I think golang is a solid option most jobs nowdays ask for current knowledge

i think kotlin