What programming language should you learn first?

 4 minute read

       My short answer would be- pick either Python or JavaScript. Throughout this blog I'm going to explain you why I picked those two particular languages and walk you through the process of choosing the right one for yourself, in accordance with your particular situation and preferences.

In this process, one thing to keep in mind is that that once you know one programming language, being it C++, Java or any other, it's going to be much easier learning every additional one because all of them are sort of related and similar.

Therefore I would advise, if you have already started learning one language- and you like it- just keep going with that one, and then upgrade.

Other than that, there are THREE key points you should consider as you pick the right first language for yourself.

The 1^st point would be…

The Job Market

This is actually a tricky point to consider because it highly depends on your location and the industry you want to get into. To give you an example, if you want to get into a startup in San Francisco, good languages to learn might be Javascript, GO or Python, whereas if you’re interested to go into gaming or banking a better option might be c# or Java.

A good clue are also job postings on websites like Indeed or LinkedIn- there you’ll get a good insight of the requirements for your desired job position that could give you heads up on what you can expect and how much time and effort you’ll need to invest in the beginning.

Now, the second point to consider:

What do you want to build?

As a starting point, I'm just going to give you a quick list. There are a lot of different options and directions you can follow, but essentially it all depends on what kind of product you are looking to get.

• If you want to build IOS apps you need Swift
• If you want to build an Android app then you need Java
• For websites it will be Javascript, HTML and CSS
• Data engineering science would be Python, R, MATLAB
• Game development- C++ or C#

Last but not least…

The ease of learning?

If you are looking for a comparison, I’d say Python is easier to learn than C++, C#, whereas Javascript is easier than Java, R and MATLAB.

Finally, your choice highly depends on your particular situation, but the chosen language ideally should fulfill all of the 3 criteria given above.

In my personal research, finding something that's in demand in the job market and that lets you build the desired product actually brought me to Python and Javascript, because they are both relatively easy to master and they both tend to be in demand in the job market as well.

So, Python or Javascript?

If you are interested in the logical side of things rather than visuals, then I would say go with Python (find out more about Python here and here). Python is often used to build server side code or backend code of websites, which is basically the code that runs on your servers. Many companies also use Python for their analysis, data science and machine learning, among them being also Google who uses Python to visualize and analyze some of their data. You can learn basics of Python here.

Building websites interests you more than dealing with data? Go with Javascript.

Choosing this option means learning HTML and CSS beforehand. They determine how your webpages look like, while javascript allows you to add functionality to those webpages.
Discover more about Javascript here or on innumerous other places on the web.

If you like it, learn it step by step here.

To illustrate Javascript better, you can add a piece of functionality that says: “when I click this button, the dropdown menu will smoothly appear on other side of navigation” and you’ll be able to see HTML, CSS and javascript as a set of code that runs on your device or on your browser- that’s called frontend.

Code and that alone is actually not enough to make a complete website like Facebook.

Why?

When you go to facebook.com, Facebook needs to know who your friends are, and that information is not stored on your device or browser.

It’s stored somewhere on Facebook server. So what you need is a code that runs on Facebook’s or your own website’s server and that’s called backend code, which I mentioned earlier as opposed to front end code. To make backend developers use languages like nodejs, based on Javascript or Django, which are something called web frameworks, that deal with logic problems and visualization. Now, when you heared nodejs, you thought “oh man I need to learn another language”? Luckily for you, the answer is no.

When I say framework it only means that it’s a tool, a list of rules, that in most of cases has  problems such as logging, security etc. already solved.

An another good, well, a great thing about nodejs is that it runs on Javascript, so all nodejs that you will write will be pure javascript, which practically means that you will need to learn only a list of rules and behaviors that you can trigger with your javascript code.

This brings us to the final conclusion: if you are building a website from visual side, just start with HTML, CSS and Javascript. In order to make a complete website you’ll also need at least one web framework, and you’re ready to go!



Author:
Miloš Šešić,
Java Developer and Udemy Instructor

Datum objave: 01.02.2018