Top 10 Programming Languages to learn in 2021
There are a lot of programming languages currently available in the IT industry, some of them are famous among all such as Python, JavaScript, Java, etc., and some of them were not able to get that much fame such as OCaml, ActionScript, Racket, F#, Groovy, and many more.
The trending language in IT industry keeps on changing based on the framework available, and many other factors. Staring your career in the IT industry or learning a new language can become hectic when it comes to choosing which language to start with.
To choose the perfect language to start with, we need to keep some things in mind, such as the market trend, community support, salary, the growth rate of the programming language. The market trend and rate changes every year, accordingly.
Today I’ll be showing you the top 10 programming languages to learn in 2021, based on personal experience, stack overflow, and GitHub survey.
In case you are not aware, Stack overflow is an online community full of developers and learners like you and me, Who are ready to help you with any possible query regardless of the programming language.
Every year StackOverflow also conducts its own survey of the most popular programming language. Last year no surprise Python and JavaScript were on the top. So without any further delay lets get started with our top 10 programming language
10. C#
According to Wikipedia, C# is a general-purpose, multi-paradigm programming language encompassing static typing, strong typing, lexically scoped, imperative, declarative, functional, generic, object-oriented, and component-oriented programming disciplines.
In a survey on Stackoverflow if you are a software developer there are 59.7% chances that you are using C#. It's one of the most versatile programming language, easy to learn and have large community support. C# can also be used in game development, C# is mostly used with the famous gaming engine Unity.
C# comes with bunch of libraries, which makes compilation and execution very fast.
It can use framework like Xamarin and .Net to build mobile and web applications respectively.
C# is mostly used with Microsoft’s framework called .Net to develop web applications
According to GitHub, there are more then 56K active repositories which are using c# as primary programming language.
9. R
According to Wikipedia R is a programming language and free software environment for statistical computing and graphics supported by the R Foundation for Statistical Computing. The R language is widely used among statisticians and data miners for developing statistical software and data analysis.
According to Stack overflow more than 5.5% of developers/analyist are using R programming language. R is a powerfull language when it comes to statistical analysis, data science, and machine learning. R provides a wide variety of statistical (linear and nonlinear modelling, classical statistical tests, time-series analysis, classification, clustering, …) and graphical techniques, and is highly extensible.
One of R’s strengths is the ease with which well-designed publication-quality plots can be produced, including mathematical symbols and formulae where needed.
According to GitHub, there are more then 34K active repositories which are using R as primary programming language.
8. Kotlin
According to Wikipedia Kotlin is a cross-platform, statically typed, general-purpose programming language with type inference. Kotlin is designed to interoperate fully with Java, and the JVM version of Kotlin’s standard library.
Kotlin is the Google-endorsed cross-platform language. When it comes to Android Applications Kotlin is most beloved language. In a survey in 2019 on stack overflow 72.6% of users loved Kotlin.
Gradle is introducing Kotlin as a language for writing build scripts.
Coursera Android app is partially written in Kotlin.
Evernote recently integrated Kotlin into their Android client.
Kotlin has great support and many contributors in its fast-growing global community. Kotlin works great with all existing Java libraries, frameworks and runs with the same level of performance as Java.
Kotlin is statically typed and has better developement experience.
7. Ruby
Ruby is a dynamic, open source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity. It has an elegant syntax that is natural to read and easy to write. Ruby sky rocket it’s popularity after the release of its framework Ruby On Rails. Rails is a server-side web framework built on top of Ruby.
Rails is a model–view–controller framework, providing default structures for a database, a web service, and web pages.
According to Stack overflow survey, Ruby is loved by 42.9% of developers.
Ruby is straitforward and easy to learn.
Unlike other programming languages and frameworks, Ruby on Rails does not need complex configurations that add little value to the main application. This saves developers from writing large pieces of complex code.
Airbnb, Bloomberg, Dribbble.com, GitHub and many more are using Ruby on Rails
According to GitHub, there are more then 132K active repositories using Ruby.
6. C++
C++ is a general-purpose programming language created by Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language. C++ is now the fastest-growing programming language in terms of popularity.
Generally C++ is used in operating systems because of the speed and strongly typed nature. C++ is closer to the hardware level and is a low-level language. That is why, it is used in many compilers as a backend language.
C++ is soo strong, that many popular data base are written in C++ such as MongoDB, MySQL, MemSQL, etc.,
As its an old language, it’s having a large online community support. According to a survey on Stack overflow C++ is liked by over 43% of developers. It does not depend on anything or any other language you can learn it directly.
For a beginner it might be a bit tough to understand it’s concept and syntax, but once you get familiar, you’ll definetly love C++. It is also used in game development as well, mostly used with Unreal Gaming Engine.
I personally love C++, as it is fast and way too power full language, we can build any thing using C++ from console application to High quality graphics game. If you love to build console application and or love video games, and want to start your career in game developement, I highly recommend go with C++ and Unreal engine .
Learning C++ by a book which is published in 90’s will not give much of it. There are a lot of updates and new feactures in C++ 11 and further, C++ 17 has soo many features about memory mangement and more.
One of the famous JavaScript runtime environment Node.js is build using C++, Chrome’s JavaScript compiler V8 engine is also written in C++.
According to GitHub, there are more then 86K active repositories using C++ programming language.
5. PHP
We can’t complete the top 10 list without mentioning the PHP. It is one of the most famous and widely used server side language, used in web development.
PHP is a popular general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited to web development.
Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.
PHP is a domaniting language. In developing conturies it’s a tool to many people to do their business. PHP has a lot of open source tools, one of them is Word Press. It is most widely used in developing small business websites and blogs websites, as it is easy to use.
PHP has one of the largest online deelopers community, to help you if you got stuck any where in the code, and there are a lot of third party libraries available for PHP for almost every purpose you want to accomplish.
PHP has a wide range of open source web frameworks such as Laravel, Symfony, Codelgniter, Magento and many more. In a survey conducted by Stack overflow over 33.7% of PHP users loved it.
Just learning PHP won’t help much, as raw PHP is not that much used now a days in the Industry. I highly recommend to learn atleast a framework of PHP. My recommendation Laravel, as it is getting popular and is widely used, and comes with almost every thing we need to build a full fledge web application.
PHP is soo easy to start with, even a beginner can easily understand the syntax
PHP has a greate documentation, easy to understand
According to GitHub, there are more then 138K active repositories using PHP language.
4. Swift
Swift is a general-purpose, multi-paradigm, compiled programming language developed by Apple Inc. and the open-source community, first released in 2014.
Swift is a powerful and intuitive programming language for macOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS and beyond. Writing Swift code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and Swift includes modern features developers love. Swift code is safe by design, yet also produces software that runs lightning-fast.
Swift is a fantastic way to write software, whether it’s for phones, desktops, servers, or anything else that runs code. It’s a safe, fast, and interactive programming language that combines the best in modern language thinking with wisdom from the wider Apple engineering culture and the diverse contributions from its open-source community.
Swift eliminates entire classes of unsafe code. Variables are always initialized before use, arrays and integers are checked for overflow, memory is automatically managed, and enforcement of exclusive access to memory guards against many programming mistakes.
Swift can open doors to the world of coding. In fact, it was designed to be anyone’s first programming language, whether you’re still in school or exploring new career paths.
The only drawback to learn Swift is, you need to have an Apple device to run XCode to compile Swift. There are some online tools available to compile swift code, but we cannot build an entire application using these online tools.
According to GitHub, there are more than 11K repositories available of Swift.
3. Java
At position 3, I would like to put Java, of course there are some issues in liciencing, in last couple of years. But Java is soo much deep in IT industry. Yeah Java do have a bit wierd and a bit long syntax to work on but, it is worth it.
Again just learning java isn’t giving much, I highly recommend to learn at least one of it’s framework.
Java is also widely used in Android mobile application developement, Java has an enormous online community, for all of it’s framework. There was a little bit decline in the popularity of java but Spring Boot (framework of java) is getting enormous popularity these days because of some of the refinement in the frameworks done recently.
Java application are platfrom independent because of JVM
It has high security and top performance
According to GitHub, there are more than 222K repositories available using Java.
2. Python
Picking the languages for second position was not that hard. Python is an interpreted, high-level and general-purpose programming language. Python’s design philosophy emphasizes code readability with its notable use of significant whitespace.
Python is an excellent choice for the beginner to learn as their first programming language, because of its easy syntax. Python is widely used programming language.
You can build almost everything by just python, from desktop application to web application and even games. Mobile application development in python is not that popular nowadays, but yes we can build mobile application as well using Python.
Python is also famous for analyist, data science and machine learning as well. Python has a whole lot of libraries to work on Data Science and Machine learning. In a Stack overflow survey 66.7% users loved working on python.
There are also some famous web development framework built on top of Python Django, Flask etc.,
Learning Python alone will not help you much, it is recommended to learn atleast one of it’s framework, my recommendation is Django.
According to Github there are more than 1M GitHub repositories.
1. JavaScript
We are going to keep JavaScript on the top of all the languages in the list. JavaSscript is spreading as wild fire. In it’s initial day’s, JavaScript was only used to make a web page dynamic.
But now there is nothing we can’t do with JavaScript, We can create backend server, Frontend for web application, mobile application an even machine learning and AI.
The industry is moving very fast in world of JavaScript, there are a whole lot of web framework’s available currently in the industry and almost each of them is widely used.
According to the survey on Stack overflow JavaScript is the mostly used language in the IT industry in 2020.
JavaScript is easy to understand.
It has a large community support
JavaScript offers event-driven programming using Node.js, which is especially suitable for I/O heavy tasks.
There are a lot of frontend web framework built on top of JavaScript, some of them are React.js, Vue.js, Angular, Ember, etc.
After learning JavaScript basics concepts, I highly recommend learning one of these framework or any other backend run time environment Node.js or any other backend framework.
Some Honorable Mention
Rust
Rust is a multi-paradigm programming language designed for performance and safety, especially safe concurrency. Rust is syntactically similar to C++, but can guarantee memory safety by using a borrow checker to validate references.
Rust is blazingly fast and memory-efficient: with no runtime or garbage collector, it can power performance-critical services, run on embedded devices, and easily integrate with other languages.
Rust has great documentation, a friendly compiler with useful error messages, and top-notch tooling
Rust is getting famous among developers. Here is the indepth Stack overflow link of why its getting famous.
According to a survey on Stack overflow Rust is most loved languages by the developers, over 86% of users loved working on Rust
TypeScript
TypeScript is a programming language developed and maintained by Microsoft. It is a strict syntactical superset of JavaScript and adds optional static typing to the language. TypeScript is designed for development of large applications and transcompiles to JavaScript.
TypeScript is an open-source language which builds on JavaScript, one of the world’s most used tools, by adding static type definitions.
Types provide a way to describe the shape of an object, providing better documentation, and allowing TypeScript to validate that your code is working correctly.
TypeScript is strictly typed language, where we need to define the type of the data which we are using in the variable that allow us to validate our code better.
It is also used in JavaScript web framework Angular.
TypeScript is also getting famous with time, now we also use TypeScript to create Node.js applications as well. In the upcomming years it will shine like a start.
Dart
Dart is a client-optimized programming language for apps on multiple platforms. It is developed by Google and is used to build mobile, desktop, server, and web applications.
Dart is an object-oriented, class-based, garbage-collected language with C-style syntax. Dart can compile to either native code or JavaScript.
Dart is created by Google, initialy for Angular. But their plan got faild and it didn’t worked well with Angular, So they have to change their plan to use TypeScript instead with Angular.
Now Google has come with a new idea of using Dart with one of it’s mobile application framework called Flutter. Flutter create native, 2D , materilized UI mobile application both for IOS and Android.
And recently it is getting used by many companies. As Flutter is built on top of Dart, it is worth mentioning.
GoLang
Go is a statically typed, compiled programming language designed at Google. Go is syntactically similar to C, but with memory safety, garbage collection, structural typing, and CSP-style concurrency.
It is an open source programming language that makes it easy to build simple, reliable, and efficient software. This language is pretty much already popular and scaling quite a lot at the backend services. Go language is more efficient than C++ and it provides features to write concurrent programs that are difficult in other programming languages.
It gives excellent support for multithreading.
Ideal for building SPAs (single-page applications).
GO can also be used in Distributed system, Big data, Cloud Computing and for other large scale or complex applications.
Thank you. Happy coding! 😉