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5 Programming Languages That Every Developer Should Learn

Programmers write code in various general-purpose programming languages. Most programmers who work with enterprise software typically work with one programming language until they retire. However, some programmers get opportunities to work with multiple programming languages during their day-to-day jobs. For example, if a programmer works with a Flutter native module, there is an opportunity to work with Dart, Kotlin (or Java), Objective-C (or Swift), C/C++, etc.

But, unfortunately, most programmers limit their technical skills by working on one language for decades. We often meet .NET, and Java experts. But, we rarely see programmers who master multiple languages. Learning multiple programming languages brings more benefits. But, learning every trending programming language is not indeed a wise choice.

In this story, I will show you the five programming languages that every programmer should learn. Also, I will explain the benefits of learning these programming languages with practical examples.

C/C++
The C programming language is the foundation language of almost all low-level software components. C’s abstraction is closer to hardware, and C provides a minimal syntax for programmers (with 32 reserved keywords). C’s syntax is closer to Assembly compared to other modern popular programming languages. Therefore, C compilers translate C source code to machine language efficiently and produce lightweight and blazing fast binary executables.

C++ is an extension to C — so you can use C++’s features for C’s missing modern language features (Eg: classes, namespaces, etc.). Learning C/C++ has a lot of benefits for any programmer. C/C++ motivates you to write optimized code because C/C++ doesn’t provide automatic garbage collection. C improves your problem-solving and basic computer science skills because it doesn’t offer prebuilt data structures and a full-featured standard library. For example, if you need a stack in C, you have to build your own.

Likewise, learning C/C++ helps a lot to improve computer science knowledge and skills. The following story explains why programmers should learn the C language first.

Why Every Developer Should Start Programming With C
You can start programming with any language — but starting with C has more perks!
betterprogramming.pub

Bash
Bash is a command language and command-line interpreter built for Unix-like operating systems. The Bash interpreter program is pre-installed into almost all Unix-like operating systems. Also, many GUI Terminal software typically uses Bash as the default command interpreter. Therefore, we can write portable Bash scripts for different Unix-like operating systems.

Programmers follow different practices to boost their daily programming productivity. Many programmers typically write their own Bash scripts for repetitive manual processes. For example, I wrote a simple Bash script to build and copy a TypeScript project’s output. Learning Bash is undoubtedly the first step to learn process automation. Process automation is indeed the way to enhance your productivity.

Bash natively support processes. In other words, you can run another program just by mentioning its name. Therefore, you can write automation scripts so fast to boost your programming productivity. The following story explains how to add GUI elements to Bash scripts.

How to Modernize Your Bash Scripts By Adding GUI
Tired of displaying raw text on Console? Try Zenity & notify-send.
medium.com

JavaScript
WORA (Write Once Run Anywhere) is now JavaScript — not Java. Now you can use JavaScript to build literally anything. You can build websites, web services, desktop apps, mobile apps, CLI programs, IoT solutions, robotics-related programs, and smart TV apps with JavaScript. There is even a runtime (NodeOS) that natively supports JavaScript and npm modules. If you learn JavaScript, you get an amazing opportunity to work with various software projects.

Learning JavaScript opens a new path to build literally anything with one modern programming language. Internet-oriented enterprise software companies use mainly JavaScript or maintain at least several sub-projects built with JavaScript.

Web browsers natively understand JavaScript and offer a lot of JavaScript-based web APIs to build modern feature-rich applications. Every programmer in the world undoubtedly uses a web browser daily. Programmers typically like to learn internals. JavaScript is indeed a mandatory skill to understand web browser internals.

The following story explains the importance of JavaScript further.

Sorry Java, Write Once Run Anywhere (WORA) Is Now JavaScript
Java started its journey with the slogan: Write once, run anywhere. But now, It’s JavaScript — not you, Java.
medium.com

Python
Python is a developer-friendly, simple, and dynamically typed interpreted programming language. Many web developers, data scientists, machine learning engineers, and system administrators work with Python in their day-to-day programming tasks. The Kivy project supported Python to reach the mobile developer community too. Sometimes, writing a Python source code is faster than writing a pseudo-code to implement a specific algorithm.

Python offers a lot of built-in functions to process data structures. Also, Python is one of the easiest programming languages to process data records. Learning Python has benefits for all programmers. Bash is great for automation. If your automation script wants to process data, Bash is not suitable — because it’s a command language. On the other hand, Python can process data with minimal syntax and call other processes with a minimal syntax as Bash does. So you can write clean and full-featured automation scripts if you learn Python.

Also, Python is great for online coding challenges and technical interviews to solve problems quickly. For example, see how easy to remove duplicates of a list in Python without even using any import statements.

Go has only 25 keywords, but it offers all features that you need to build any software system. Most programming languages out there add tons of language features to make developer’s life easier. But in reality, new language features outdate your codebases so fast. Also, many experienced programmers typically don’t care about the language’s latest syntactical tricks and tips.

Go language’s design teaches us how to solve engineering problems with minimal and complete solutions. Just think, 25 keywords are enough to design a full-featured programming language. On the other hand, now C++ has 97 keywords, and Rust has 54 keywords — probably the development teams will add more. Go supports object-oriented programming without even defining class as a keyword. When you learn Go concepts, you’ll always tend to solve problems with simple and efficient solutions. The Go language’s ecosystem is a great way to learn better software design patterns.