What's the next programming language you want to learn?

Choose from the top 10 programming languages in 2018. Or add yours to the comments.
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In July, IEEE Spectrum released their fifth annual interactive ranking of the top programming languages. They have a pretty cool and complex process for ranking 47 chosen programming languages because saying which really is the most popular is complicated. As they put it: "Different programmers have different needs and domains of interest."

The report is decent attempt, and we agree that Python is hot right now. R and Go are others we hear developers, sysadmins, and engineers talk a lot about. And, you'd be remiss to leave off the tried and trues that start with Cs and Js.

We want to know: Which language will you learn next? And why did you choose that one? 

Maybe it seems like everyone else is learning it and you should too. Maybe your boss hinted at the need to learn it. Or, maybe it's all you... you've got that side project or hobby that needs tending to with just the right language to build that cool thing.

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Jen leads a team of community managers for the Digital Communities team at Red Hat. She lives in Raleigh with her husband and daughters, June and Jewel.

14 Comments

I want to learn Rust, but I have no real use for it other than tinkering around at home. Might pick up Ruby again since we are using Chef more at work now.

I also want to learn Rust. And Swift. These languages seem to have interesting advantages.

In reply to by Matt

Rust, Swift and Go seem like nice targets for a new language to learn, certainly 3 of the most hyped lately.

I'm more inclined to learn Rust in the near future.

And I'd also like to dab in Lua some time, maybe at work we could use it with PowerDNS.

Cheers!

In reply to by Carson (not verified)

Python because it's used in machine learning so that should pay pretty well and provide some job security.

Nim language (https://nim-lang.org)! It's one of the faster growing language communities. Great language (crudely speaking: a statically typed language that compiles to C, C++, JS, and looks like Python, but is very portable). Great language, and great community!

Racket + Rust for me

Elixir:

Expressiveness of Ruby
First class toolchain
First class documentation
Speed of Java
Scaling & Concurrency power of erlang virtual machine

Web Applications
Distributed Systems
Embedded Software

Please include LISP in the list

Depending on the goal of the programmer (whether (s)he wants to build app for mobile, server, web, or embedded), the popularity changes a lot. The IEEE Spectrum article has a nice breakup by that.

Thanks for creating this poll here Jen!

Well, none of the ones on the list ;)

The next one for me will be more of a math-y / functional language like OCaml or Haskell.

At some point I want to learn a stack based language like Forth, mainly just to understand how such languages are put together.

I would also like to spend time to investigate using guile and/or e-lisp to solve 'scripting' problems.

So much to learn, so little time. ;)

I currently use the too level languages so I've had my eye on go for a while. I just wish google would settle on one language for their platforms. For example, android dev went from java, to kottlin, now flutter with d driving underneath.

D. C on steroids. I've been saying for years that C++ adds a lot of complexity to get not a whole lot of useful additional function. D fixes that.

Elixir and Kotlin are on my list.

Elixir for web development (with Phoenix)
Kotlin for Android development

Julia is next on my list of languages to learn. I've fiddled with it enough to know that I like it better than Python or R for doing math-y data-y stuff, as a programming language.

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