5 programming languages to look for in 2021
By: Eric Walker
Tags: Programming Languages, Programming, Go, Typescript, PHP

5 programming languages to look for in 2021

The TOP 5 programming languages that I think will trend in 2021

Overview

Today exists hundreds of programming languages. And the top (most used) can change along with the market demand because each year new trends and problems emerge. One language can be more suitable for a specific task and others could fit better in another. It is difficult to choose one language over another without knowing the context of the problem that will solve.

In my opinion, as long as the language solves your problem it doesn't matter which one you choose. I think the more important it’s what you do with the language (write clean, readable, and performant code) as you can write good or crappy code with any of them.

I know this is a controversial subject (not like iPhone vs Android but still a little provocative) and probably you will not share the same opinion on which one is the most popular.

Fifth: Kotlin

“Developers love clean, concise code. Less code takes less time to write, less time to read, and is less susceptible to bugs. But with Java, you must write a lot of code to get even the simplest things done. You’ve probably already experienced this if you’re an Android developer.” Aritra Roy, techbeacon.com

Kotlin first appears in 2011, was designed by JetBrains and it is a cross-platform, statically typed, general-purpose programming language. It became so popular that, according to google, since 2019 it is the preferred language among Android developers¹.

Because it requires less code to do the same thing as other programming languages projects can be developed faster. It also supports using existing Java libraries which is a big plus as Java has an enormous ecosystem. Another reason to justify his popularity is the fact that is officially supported by Google for Android development.

It’s a programming language to keep an eye on especially if you work with android.

Fourth: GO

“Go is not meant to innovate programming theory. It’s meant to innovate programming practice.” Sammuel Tesla

Go was introduced in 2009 and is now supported by Google. Is described itself as expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. One of its strengths is the concurrency mechanism that makes it easy to write multithread applications.

It’s no surprise that it is popular. In 2019, an article on dice.com said it was one of the best-paying top tech skills².

Third: TypeScript

“By understanding JavaScript, TypeScript saves you time catching errors and providing fixes before you run code.” https://www.typescriptlang.org/

Typescript is a programming language that appears in 2012 and was designed by Microsoft. His mission is to allow the development of applications at a larger scale and transcompiles (compiler source-to-source) to JavaScript. All javascript programs are also typescript valid programs.

Is loved by many actively supported by Microsoft as it continues to add more features and today is in version 4.1. Each day JavaScript apps are migrated to Typescript because it is more scalable and maintainable.

I’m sure we will hear a lot from Typescript in 2021.

Second: JavaScript

“The strength of JavaScript is that you can do anything. The weakness is that you will.” Reg Braithwaite

JavaScript is the language we love to hate. You can do almost everything with it and it is everywhere (servers and clients).

Created in 1995 it is a lot older when compared with the above programming languages.

To this day millions of websites still depend on third-party JavaScript libraries and I believe the list will continue to grow in 2021. With the introduction of other frontend frameworks, that are almost always attached to JavaScript, the applications using JavaScript could be even more in the future.

Honorable mention: PHP

This day looks like every programmer hates PHP and that is because they probably don’t know it as is today. PHP 5 and PHP 7 are like two different languages.

Unless you have some specific needs PHP is the language to use in most cases. It simply gets the job done and that's why is still the dominant language in web apps and it will be for a long time. Since PHP 5 the language has improved a lot and is evolving every day.

Recently was released PHP 8 comes with few cool features. Take a look here.

First: Python

“Python will probably be the most favorite programming language for developers in 2021.” Artur Yolchan, owner of coding skills

Python has been here for a long time. Created in 1992, is an interpreted, high-level, and general-purpose language. Its clean syntax helps developers create readable code for small and large scale projects.

Adopt in the science community for its simplicity and ecosystem, also is often learned in schools the popularity will continue to grow. You will hear from python in the next year.

Which of them should I learn?

Well, that's a difficult question. The most important thing is to understand and know how to write code that everyone can read. Every language has its strengths and weaknesses so beware of that and you will be fine.

Programming isn’t just about the language.

I hope you like and be nice in the comments.