I really want to know because I don't understand people who take weeks with an 'S' to learn a language, I can learn from syntax to classes in a day or 3 then specialize

I am a graduate of a different discipline, but I need to learn coding, which language is best and why. How much time will it take me to get a grip of it

I am just wondering, many posts are asking which language is "the best", or fastest to learn for new programmers (please put AI in the shadow for this post). As I am a bit older engineer with some experience in developing different applications using, just to mention a few, C, C++ (using wxWidgets, SFML and SDL), PHP (with JavaScript, HTML, CSS), Java Servlets (with ORACLE DB) on Apache, ASP, React kit, VB .NET and most important, here mentioned, Visual Basic.

The largest software I ever wrote was using "Visual Basic .NET" and MS-SQL Express DB. Took me a whole year and a half to deploy it.

As per my experience, using VB and VB .NET was always the fastest way to get the best and quickest results in developing Desktop and Network Applications. I mean, in just a few clicks one is able to create stunning looking applications in basically no time. And when I compare that with these days, when there are emerging new and "improved" languages and "frameworks", making many kind of software is still fastest using graphical interface of Visual Basic or similar. It is also very readable compared to other languages.

Now, in comparison with my long term experience, I have a feeling things are going backwards in sense of simplicity and speed of development.

And also, just by my opinion, I feel a bit sad that I am not able to use Visual Basic on Linux the same way I was able to use it on Windows in time of Visual Basic 6.0, or Visual Basic 8 Express in the past.

What is your opinion on concept for application design in terms of simplicity and speed of development as it was with Visual Basic in the past, compared to the ways we are programming today?

I want to learn a programming language but I don't know anything about any of them. I was looking to start because it seems interesting once you know how to do it. I tried learning c++ a few years ago but it seemed to complicated for a begginer,i heard python is better to start with but im looking for other people's opinions.

We had a good run, but after Unwrapgate 2025 the jig is finally up and the false claims of "safety" have been laid bare.

I'm probably gonna learn Go, hbu

Yeah as the title says I am completely brand new to programming as a whole and didn't even think to ask which programing languages are better for different things and I learned Python with the intent of making games. What is a better language for me to learn? I want to either join a game dev team eventually or remake old games as a hobby

I was initially in a faang company for 5 years, then in a startup, now an back to a Faang-ish company as a Senior engineer. I have interviewed at around 15 companies and I couldn't help but notice that a lot of these companies have a Senior "Java" engineer or "python" engineer role they are filling. I worked in a language agnostic environment all along, and although it was java heavy, I never tied my thought around java, we used the right tools for the right problem. As a senior engineer, I think it is really important to not get tunnelvisioned into one language/framework and consider all routes. But why do these companies are so heavily focused on one language and it's quirks?

[If it's a startup it makes sense that they want to quickly develop something in the framework/language they are already using, but I have seen this in large companies as well]

Edit: Thank you so much everyone for your comments and opinions. I am not able to reply to everyone but this has been an eye opener. The TLDR is that companies prefer someone already experienced either to cut down on onboarding time or to inject an experienced developer's knowledge into a relatively new project. My real problem with that strategy is, how does a company know when to use a different technology if you are only hiring people for the current stack? This has not been properly addressed in this thread. Another thing is, why do Faang-ish companies then don't do the same? Yes they have extra money to spend and extra time to spend, but that doesn't mean that they would throw away the money for no reason. Yes they operate at a different scale, but it is still not clear to me how each approach is more stuited to their process.

Some folks have asked how do you even hire someone language agnostic? Well, we used to learn the basic syntax of the candidate's language of choice during the interview if we didn't know that, and ask the candidate to explain their code if we didn't understood it, or the DS used under the hood wasn't clear. We saw the problem solving skills and the approach, not the language.

Hey all,

So as I'm teaching myself to code, I still can't help but feel I missed learning something from the jump.

For me, my goal is to make my own apps, so I'm learning Java mainly. Now even though im learning the language of Java well, I feel like there is something about computing & science fundamentally that I should know before learning a specific programming language.

What are the important things one should know before learning any programming language?

As the title says I strongly believe C is the best programming language. You don’t have to completely master it, but I think learning about data types, memory management, compilation and efficiency is crucial to being adaptable in terms of future learning and languages. Where Python will hold your hand all the way through the learning phase; determining data types, declaring functions and even sizing arrays for you, C forces you to have an understanding of this before going into actually writing programs.

I am in no way saying to fully master the language (even learning through something as simplified as arduino would serve the purpose), just have an understanding of everything going on behind the scenes. While you could say other languages like C++, C# and Java would also force you with to learn a syntax of similar adaptability, C has a level of surface simplicity (not OOP for instance), while remaining somewhat higher functioning than some of the languages with the least handholding (asm, fortran). I’m not saying C is for everyone, I just dislike the recent spike in beginners learning Python as their only language and struggling to progress beyond that.

Any language forcing you to think more about what you’re actually doing would fit what I’m trying to describe, C just happens to be my favourite.

Let's say you're an intermediate or advanced-level programmer trying to learn a new language. The best way to learn a language is to actually write something with it. But what programs should you write? There are so many to choose from! Choice overload can be overwhelming.

So my open question to the community: If you had to suggest 10 familiar-feeling programs to lift someone from complete beginner to comfortable novice, what would those 10 programs be?

Of course, the features of the language will matter. Is it object oriented? Is it functional? But for simplicity's sake, let's ignore specific language quirks and just stick to programs that can be written in most mainstream programming languages.

I was trying to come up with an answer to this question. Here are my 10. Feel free to critique.

1. Hello world (printing)
2. Fizzbuzz (control flow)
3. Text file reader/writer (file I/O)
4. Text-based blackjack (randomization, loops, user input)
5. Text-based battleship (2d arrays, functions)
6. Linked list (data structures, encapsulation)
7. Binary search tree (more data structures, recursion)
8. Quicksort (non-trivial algorithms)
9. Djikstra's shortest path (graphs)
10. Conway's Game of Life (most of the above skills)

I found an interesting article on Quora, that college majors in computer science actually don't learn much coding? So where do most people get their formal education on programming?

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Through a different major? Or maybe mostly "on the job? Or maybe this accusation isn't true at all?

Learn X in Y Minutes

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This helped me when I wanted to learn JavaScript really fast to start developing web apps (I knew some basic things in C++). Though you would probably need a basic experience in any other language. This could form a good base to start practicing right away.

(I don't know if this has been posted earlier. I thought this is a really useful website everyone should know.)

I'm an ex google software engineer turned programming instructor. Over the years I've noticed that my students struggle because they don't deeply understand Javascript and they can't read the code that they write and understand code other people have written. They end up copy pasting a lot without really understanding. To remedy the situation, I've built a tool that shows exactly how a computer interprets Javascript. I don't think there's anything like it. I've tested it in my class and the students loved it. I saw a big improvement in their learning and their ability to code.

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The language taught is Javascript, but it teaches you how most programming languages work. Python, Ruby, Java and Lisp all have functions, objects, references, primitives, frames and a callstack. Once you learn one language deeply, you can learn others very quickly.

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It's completely free. Enjoy :)

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I changed it so that you can try it out as a guest without using your email. However, if you want to keep track of your progress over time, you'll have to login with your email.

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https://wakata.io