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What Programming Language Should a Beginner Learn in 2017?

For anyone just starting out to learn programming, just the large number of languages itself can be confusing. Where do you start? The answer may differ, depending on what you want to do with your new programming skills – build a fun app, become a professional developer, run a startup, etc. Whatever that may be, however, you will want, to begin with the simpler, more basic languages and, once you have a conceptual understanding of coding, you can then move on to more complex languages. Here will be a good start point for you.

Method of Choosing Languages

There are dozens upon dozens of programming languages. However, we wanted to limit these languages to those that met one of the following criteria:

●       Relatively Easy to Learn

●       Easily Accessible When it Comes to Community Support And Education

●       In Current High Demand or With Rising Demand

●       Knowledge of The Language Would Either Increase Marketability or Failure to Learn The Language Would be Detrimental

In addition to this, we wanted to cover a variety of languages that offered up a range of functionality.

HTML5/JavaScript

These two languages are the basics of the web. They work on all browsers and are great for interactive websites. And both are pretty easy and friendly to beginners. HTML5 is the best way to get “grounded” in programming by learning the principles. Then adding JavaScript will complete your beginner status.

You will be able to program basic stuff with your initial mastery, but you will then reach a mastergrades level where things will get harder. JavaScript becomes much more complex as you move forward, but it you stick with it and keep up, you will have a skill that will last. It is constantly evolving, so you do need to stay on top of changes.

Community Support

Fortunately, there’s a huge online development community for HTML5 and JavaScript. Here are your resources:

●     StackOverflow: This is a Q & A site that will provide lots of support. It is the largest JavaScript support community.

●     MeetUp: JavaScript has the largest support community on this site. You will find amazing help and support.

●     GitHub: There are over 3100 projects here that have 5-star ratings. Lots of help.

Career Benefits

For learners whose career goals include anything web-based, having JavaScript and HTML5 will mean that you will be employable for as long as you are interested in pursuing web development, or as an alternative programming for e-commerce or other marketing platforms.

What About The Future?

Both HTML5 and JavaScript are here for the long term. In fact, as people begin to demand and expect more from websites these languages will be further developed. As a result, as long as you are willing to keep your skills updated, you’ll be just fine.

PHP

You may have noticed that many of the websites that you visit have a URL that ends in ‘PHP’. This means that is the development language used to drive that web page. It is used to write scripts that make websites function and as a web app development language. Some programmers use it for general software development as well.

PHP is not a difficult language. In fact, it is commonly used by novices who want to add very simple features to their own websites. Because of this, it is considered to be a bit of a beginner’s language. However, that should not discourage anybody from learning it. Because it is so common, anybody pursuing a career in any form of coding will likely have to maintain a lot of PHP code.

Community Support

This is pretty much limitless. The regular players such as StackOverflow, GitHub, and MeetUp have forums with lots of Q&A advice. Questions submitted to Quora should get fairly quick responses as well. For learning the language, W3Schools offers some free courses as well.

This is pretty much limitless. The regular players such as StackOverflow, GitHub, and MeetUp have forums with lots of Q&A advice. Questions submitted to Quora should get fairly quick responses as well. For learning the language, W3Schools offers some free courses as well.

Career Benefits

PHP is a handy little language that allows coders to add some great functionality to websites with little to no effort. It’s also extraordinarily common. Knowing PHP may not land you a great job, but not knowing it can certainly exclude you. If marketability is one of your key success principles, PHP is perfect for you.

What About The Future?

There is some noise about languages such as Ruby on Rails replacing PHP. However, the fact remains that Facebook remains committed to PHP and the most recent release of the language has some decent features. Considering the low learning curve, this is one that is worth getting to know.

Go

Go or Golang is a language that was developed by Google and it has really been gaining popularity for a while now. Many are predicting that 2017 is the year when it truly moves into the mainstream. It is described as being simple, easy to learn, and as can be expected from Google, the support is amazing.

Community Support

Google is behind this. Enough said. In addition to this, there are two forums that offer community-based support. These are the Golang-Nuts Google Group and the Golang.org help forums.

Career Benefits

Learning this language now can lead to a real job search coup for anyone who wants to increase their worth by learning something that is considered to be cutting edge.

What About The Future?

There are many startups who have banked on Go for their app and software development needs. One of these is TImeHop. Bitly is another adopter of this technology. Obviously, Google is using the language on several projects as well. This along with the upswing in popularity that has happened in the last few years makes the future look bright for Golang developers.

Conclusion

Each one of these languages is relatively easy to learn and can serve as a jumping off point for any beginner who wishes to learn to code. Of course, it will be interesting to see how things shake up next year. It could be that an entirely new set of languages will be on trend then.

Written By

Steven Mehler is an experienced writer, blogger, SEO specialist and social psychologist that works as an editor at Top Writers and a freelance writer. Steven also runs his own content agency and is writing a book. He has a long-term experience in writing articles based on blogging, marketing, SEO and social psychology.

1 Comment

1 Comment

  1. Lacerda

    May 10, 2018 at 6:51 pm

    Great post and well explained, very good list, PHP language is a bit easier for beginners and the to insert in HTML, this is legal and advantageous

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