There are literally hundreds of computer programming languages in the world, which one should you choose? I am asked many times because I teach computer programming languages in colleges/universities for many years. Since it is impossible for me to cover all of them in a short article, I want to cover 9 of them. Furthermore, I want to divide 9 languages into 3 groups with descending importance. Even within the same group, the first language to be covered is more important than the second and third. Let us get started.

The first group includes JavaScript, Python and Java. The very first one is JavaScript. Why? The reason is that JavaScript is the most widely used language in the world. Software development can be roughly divided into front-end development and back-end development. JavaScript is unique in that it can be used by both front-end developers and back-end developers. Because of the unique historical reason, JavaScript is the ONLY language for front-end development. JavaScript is the monopoly and there is no way to avoid it if you are in the software development business. The back-end version of JavaScript is called Node.js and it is also very popular. In fact, Node.js is the first language supported by AWS Lambda function when it was launched in 2014. Python is THE language for machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). Given the popularity of ML and AI, no one is going to doubt the usefulness of Python. How about Java? Java was hugely popular 10 to 20 years ago and there are a lot of “legacy” software packages written in Java. There is no shortage of job opportunities for Java developers. However, if you are brand new to software development, you may want to try JavaScript and Python first.

The second group includes Go, C++ and PHP. I like Go a lot because Go was designed by famous people to replace C and C++. The hugely popular software called Docker and Kubernetes are written in Go. C++ is still popular because a lot of low-level programming benefits greatly from the speed of C/C++ ecosystem. PHP’s influence can be measured by its powerful user base. Two names are worth mentioning: Facebook and WordPress.

The third group includes C#, Swift and Kotlin. C# is created by engineers at Microsoft and Swift is created by engineers at Apple. Kotlin is created by JetBrains, a Czech software development company. What makes Kotlin special is that Kotlin is promoted by Google as a better replacement for Java. Google has a love-hate relationship with Java because Android OS uses Java and Java is owned by Oracle, a rival of Google. Making Kotlin the language of choice for Android development gives Google a lot of freedom in its dealings with Oracle.