What is the Best Programming Language for Beginners in 2022?
A job in software engineering is something that a lot of people look forward to, nowadays. In fact, it is remunerative, it lets you travel a lot, and gives you a lot of different paths and stacks to choose from. But, if you want to become a programmer, you have to learn how to code.
You can choose whatever language you prefer to start your journey, but there are some choices that can help make everything more enjoyable and more efficient. In fact, if you start from something too much hard or too abstract, you might not enjoy the journey (which also might not be the most peaceful in that case). So, in this article, we are going to discuss what are the suggested languages to learn first as a beginner, and why.
Suggested Choices
The suggested programming languages for a beginner are Python, JavaScript, Golang. Now, we are going to know a little bit more about these languages, and why to choose them. Let’s start.
Python
Python is a multiparadigm, interpreted language, released for the first time in 1991, by Guido van Russom, a developer from Netherlands. He created this language as a side project because he needed a simple syntax language that would be easy to learn but powerful and complete at the same time.
Python was specifically designed to be beginner-friendly, so it is for sure a meaningful choice. Did Guido reach his goal? Of course. The actual version 3 of Python is incredibly popular and powerful and complete. The only small con is the fact that it is pretty slow.
If you choose Python, you will learn how to handle data successfully, and make fantastic data science projects. Python is also, in fact, the most used programming language for Data Science, due to its simple and powerful data handling.
Also, Machine Learning and AI are fields that use a lot of Python, with libraries and frameworks like TensorFlow, Keras, scikit-learn. It is also used in backend development, with Django and Flask. There is also a simple and funny 2D game engine you can use to develop more experience in basic concepts and particularities of the language. There are a lot of different libraries for app development, like Tkinter, PyQt5 and Kivy, that also let you to create mobile applications, and publish them.
If you have to learn Data Structures and Algorithms, I suggest you use Python, for its big set of built-in functions will make it easier to learn, and help you ace your coding interview. Personally, I love Python. It was my first programming language, so I highly suggest starting with it, but I know that it doesn’t fit a lot of developers.
Anyway, it is the most loved and desired language to work with according to the 2021 StackOverflow developer survey. So, there is also a strong community that can help you in your journey in becoming a software engineer.
Official site: https://www.python.org/
JavaScript
JavaScript was published in 1995 by Brendan Eich, an American developer who, at the time, was working on enhancing the web, trying to make it simpler to access and to develop. He did it by first creating Mocha, which changed its name to JavaScript after a little while, to make it seem like the popular programming language Java.
JavaScript only runs on your browser (if you don’t use Node.js). It makes the development of a web page way easier and more agile, which was Brendan’s goal. According to the StackOverflow developer survey, it is the most popular language on the entire planet, making it the language with the most diverse and powerful community out there.
JavaScript is awsome for beginners because its syntax is relatively simple, and you can do almost everything you want. In fact, you can work on the frontend, with libraries and frameworks like React, Angular, Vue.js and Svelte. You can work on backend, with Node.js, Express, Next.js, and so on. You can make mobile apps with React Native and make Machine Learning models with TensorFlow.js. You can also develop simple games with Phaser.js.
If you are interested, you can check out this link for a full comparison between Python and JavaScript: https://javascript.plainenglish.io/python-vs-javascript-e8590d346c3b. As you can guess, JavaScript is everywhere. This is a good thing for beginners because you can try a lot of different use cases while learning, and then decide the one or the ones that you want to master and base your career on.
Obviously, frontend development is the main usecase of JavaScript, but is not the only possibility, as previously told. So, JavaScript is for sure another great language for beginners, and I think that almost every developer has, once in their professional lifetime, worked with it. Definitely a safe choice.
Golang
Golang, or Go, is a programming language created by Google in 2007, as a language for making backend development more agile and performant, improving the concurrency of the programs in an easy way. Go is a compiled language, so it is really fast, but also has a really simple syntax. Someone described it as “Pythonic". It allows for the most important concepts of programming, while also adding more complicated ones, like pointers and so on. Also, the defining type is supporters. It does not support OOP natively, but there are workarounds to this. Also generics are not yet supported, but a new update will allow them.
Anyway, these are concepts that are not for beginners, but you will come across them later in your developer journey, and at that time, generics will be implemented for sure.
The main usage of Golang is backend development and API design. It is a popular language for this purpose, because of its goroutine and performance. In fact, it has also been nominated as the most promising language out there.
It is also a young language, so frameworks and community are not that mature as JavaScript and Python. But, with time and the experience that you will gain, you may help both things to grow, thus gaining yourself even more potential knowledge in the end. As you probably understood, Golang is a bit more risky than JavaScript and Python for beginners, but it has probably slightly greater potential return. It is up to you to choose.
Conclusion
All in all, these three languages are great for beginners but they all have different specifics and usecases that they fit better. If you want to start coding for jumping into frontend development, JavaScript is a must. If you prefer Data Science and Machine Learning, I suggest you use Python. If you want to be a backend engineer, Go is a great choice, and is also indicated for developing services and software.
If you don’t have a path, I suggest using Python for its maturity and power. But remember, whatever language you will choose, you will not be wrong if it is one of the three that we talked about. I suggest you avoid languages like C/C++ as your first programming language due to their complexity. There are a lot of people that start from there, but the difficulty could destroy your motivation and make you give up. Everything is up to you.
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