Picking Your First Programming Language

A Look at the Problem

Imagine you're driving in a car on a road trip, but you don't have a destination. You also don't have:

a map. 🗺️
experience driving a car. 🚗

Seems like you're going to have a rough time!

Picking your first programming language is similar:

You have likely never used the tools,
You may have no idea what kind of job you want,
You don't know the path to get to that job, even if you did have one in mind!

Well, it doesn't have to be that hard to choose a programming language. There is plenty of guidance available to help you make the right choice.

Software Industry Research

StackOverflow

Many reputable software-related companies perform surveys or research related to the greatest technologies/languages in use. These must not be taken as truth, since it is only a representative sample, but they can be a helpful guide. For instance, StackOverflow performs a survey each year among industry professionals and these results are incredibly helpful.

Check out the 2021 Developer Survey Results)

(the "Most Loved vs. Most Dreaded" language results)

(amongst "Professional Developers," the most commonly used web frameworks)

GitHub Research

GitHub is probably the most qualified organization to perform this kind of research because "the world stores its code on GitHub." As developers commit code to GitHub, they can then perform analysis on that data which helps all of us understand what is currently being used in the industry.

2022 GitHub Research: Top Programming Languages

Educational Institutions

Somewhat less helpful, but still must be considered, are the various schools and universities that gather data regarding trends in the software industry. The reason these resources are not as helpful is that oftentimes educational institutions can be one to two steps behind the trends of the industry.

Here are some resources to consider amongst universities and institutions:

Recommended Approach

Consume these resources above and make an educated guess at what languages are most popular. The fundamentals between languages are transferrable, so if you pick a language that is being actively used in the industry you will not be wasting your time.

Do you have a better idea of what your next step will be? Great! Get to it. 🦾

Maybe you are a little further along on the path and had some bad experiences learning new languages...

Which languages would you say new devs should avoid? Leave your reply in the comments section and follow along for the next story in the Charting a Course series.