A Guide to Today's Most Popular Programming Languages

This article provides an overview of several of the most influential and widely-used programming languages in the software development landscape.

JavaScript

JavaScript is a high-level programming language that stands as one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web. It is utilized as a client-side programming language by over 97% of all websites. Initially, JavaScript was used exclusively for developing web browsers, but its application has expanded to server-side website deployments and various non-web browser applications as well.

Python

Python is one of the most popular programming languages today, and its readability makes it easy for beginners to learn. It is a free, open-source programming language with extensive support modules and a robust community. Furthermore, it is a popular programming language for machine learning and deep learning applications.

Go

Go was developed by Google in 2007 for APIs and web applications. It has recently become one of the fastest-growing programming languages due to its simplicity and its ability to handle multicore and networked systems, as well as massive codebases.

Java

Java is a multi-platform, object-oriented programming language that runs on billions of devices worldwide. It powers various applications, smartphone operating systems, enterprise software, and many well-known programs.

Kotlin

Kotlin is a general-purpose programming language, originally developed and unveiled as Project Kotlin by JetBrains in 2011. The first version was officially released in 2016. It is interoperable with Java and supports functional programming languages.

PHP

PHP is an open-source programming language created in 1990. Many web developers find it essential to learn PHP, as this language is used to build over 80% of websites on the internet, including notable sites like Facebook and Yahoo.

C

Developed by Microsoft, C# rose to fame in the 2000s for its support of object-oriented programming concepts. It is one of the most-used programming languages for the .NET Framework. Anders Hejlsberg, the creator of C#, notes that the language is more like C++ than Java.

Swift

Apple developed Swift in 2014 for Linux and Mac applications. A few years ago, Swift entered the top 10 in the monthly TIOBE index ranking of popular programming languages.

R

The R programming language is an open-source scripting language used for predictive analytics and data visualization.

Ruby

Ruby is an interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language. It was designed with an emphasis on programming productivity and simplicity. In Ruby, everything is an object, including primitive data types. It was developed in the mid-1990s by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto in Japan.

C and C++

C is arguably the oldest and most popular programming language, serving as the root for other programming languages such as C#, Java, and JavaScript. C++ is an enhanced version of C. Many developers today skip learning C on its own, while others believe that learning C first provides a valuable foundation for C++ development. Both languages are widely used in computer science and programming.

Matlab

Matlab is a proprietary programming language owned by MathWorks, originally released in the mid-1980s. It is built specifically for use by scientists and engineers.

TypeScript

TypeScript is a programming language developed by Microsoft that adds static typing with optional type annotations to JavaScript. It is designed for developing large applications and transpiles to JavaScript.

Scala

Scala is a strong, statically typed, high-level, general-purpose programming language that supports both object-oriented and functional programming.

SQL

SQL is a standard database query language. It is used to access and manipulate data in databases and is the world's most widely used database query language.

HTML

HTML is the standard language for creating web pages and applications. It is used to create web pages, and you can use it to add images, links, and other types of content to your web page. HTML is a simple markup language; you don't need extensive knowledge to create a basic web page.

CSS

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a stylesheet language used to describe the presentation of a document written in a markup language. A stylesheet, which is a set of rules, can control the layout and appearance of HTML or XML documents for web browsers.

NoSQL

NoSQL databases are non-relational systems designed for high performance and scalability. These databases are often used in Big Data applications where data is distributed across numerous nodes.

Rust

Rust is a programming language designed to be safe, concurrent, and practical. It is a systems programming language that runs blazingly fast, prevents segmentation faults, and guarantees thread safety.

Perl

Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, several backronyms are in use.