Top 3 Programming Languages you should learn in 2021

Rusiru Abhisheak
6 min readDec 4, 2020

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Before we talk about the top 3 programming languages, let us identify what programming language is. In a simple term, a programming language is a set of instructions to a computer to execute. According to the Wikipedia definition,

“programming language is a notation for writing programs, which are specifications to a computer or algorithm”.

Now we know what a programming language is. So, why should you learn it. As humans, we always communicate with others using a language like English, Spanish, Italy etc. In real life, by using a language we can give instructions or we can get information from someone. Just like that, in computer science have to communicate with computers. As we know computers cannot understand human language. So, in order to give instructions or get information from a computer, we should know the computer’s language. So, that’s where programming languages come into play. The programming language is like a bridge between you and the computer so that you can give instructions and the computer can act based on those instructions. So, if you like to get into the computer science world or if you hoping to start your career in computer science, knowing programming languages is a great starting point for your journey.

Now we know what a programming language is and why should you learn it. So, let’s talk about what programming language you should learn in 2021 so that you can get a job in the computer industry or you can build applications by using these languages that will benefit for your resume.

Stack Overflow Trends

Google Trends

When we get programming languages, there are so many things to talk about. So we cannot talk about all programming languages in one place. Therefore, I take 4 languages that most developers used to build their applications. And remember, selecting a programming language is depends on what’s your use case or what you are going to build.

Python

Currently, Python is the most popular programming language in the world. I think Python become number 1 simply because it is really easy to learn and work with. With Python you don’t need to know memory management, don’t need to memorise lots of boilerplate codes because Python is a dynamically typed language. So, we don’t have to declare the type of the variable when we assigning values to a variable. Okay, let’s take a look at what can you do with Python.

If you like to get into data modelling, artificial intelligence(AI) or any kind of data visualization you should go with Python. But Python itself nothing do with data modelling or artificial intelligence. But you should learn Python because most of the AI and data modelling libraries and frameworks are written in Python.

Python is a really good language for web development because most popular web frameworks like Django, Flask is written in Python. So, you can use these frameworks to build very complex web applications so that you can add it to your resume. These projects will help you to get an interview with tech companies.

If you like to get a tech job in big tech companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, I think Python is the best language to go. We know most of the big tech companies give coding examination during their interview. You can use any programming language for these interviews. But I think Python is the best simply because with Python you don’t need to memorize lots of syntaxes in your brain so that you can take that space to memorize coding problem itself. So, this helps a lot during your coding interview.

And also, by looking at the StackOverflow and Google trends we can guarantee that Python will have grate support within next years. So, this is a really good point why you should learn Python in 2021.

JavaScript

In the modern tech world, most of the time developers do not create applications for desktops. Desktop applications slowly replacing by web applications because it is really easy to use and users don’t need to install anything to their devices. By clicking simple URL they can start to use the application.

So, most of the tech companies are now moving to web-based applications. When we talking about web applications, I think JavaScript is the best language to learn. Because most of the web frameworks like Express, React, Angular is written in JavaScript. I explain the importance of knowing JavaScript by using an example.

In web applications, we have frontend, backend and storage service to save the data. The frontend displays information to users and in the backend, we give business logic that what should applications display to its users base on the data that we have. Before JavaScript come into the story, most of the programmers use LAMP stack to build their web applications. LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. But then Google releases their V8 engine and also concurrently Node JS came along. Node JS is a runtime environment for JavaScript. This costs a bunch of web frameworks for JavaScript to popup. For example, Express, React, Angular. After that developers able to build their entire web applications using one language because of the supportiveness of the JavaScript libraries and frameworks. For example, you can create entire web applications using MERN stack or MEAN stack which are the most popular JavaScript technology stacks to create web apps.

So, if you like to create personal projects or even if you want to start a startup I think learning JavaScript is a really good starting point for your journey.

JAVA

By looking at the StackOverflow trends and Google trends you can see the usage of JAVA is start to decrease within the past few years. So, then why you should learn JAVA in 2021.

If you are a beginner to computer science or programming I think first you should learn JAVA instead of Python. Because Python is not a good language to start learn Programming. The reason I said that in Python we don’t need to worry about syntaxes and memory management etc. But these are the fundamental parts of a programming language. So, that’s one reason you should learn JAVA in 2021. And also, I think most of the institutes and universities don’t start to teach programming in Python because of the reasons that I have mentioned.

The second reason that you should learn JAVA, simply because you can build amazing web applications, desktop applications and mobile applications using this language. JAVA is a good language to create complex web applications because most of the popular web frameworks like Spring, jHipster, Spark is build using JAVA.

So, learning JAVA as your first programming language is a great way to start programming.

Conclusion

Now we know what programming language is, why should you learn it and what are the 3 programming languages you should learn. But remember these are not only the programming languages you should learn. There are so many languages to learn. As I said earlier, selecting a programming language is depends on your requirements. But I guarantee that learning these programming languages is a huge plus point for your resume.

So, these are the 3 programming languages you should learn in 2021.

References

Stack Overflow

Google Trends

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