We
all have heard about Computer Programming gaining a lot of popularity in the
past 3 decades. So many students these days want to opt for a Computer Science
stream in order to get a job at their dream tech company - Google, Facebook,
Microsoft, Apple, and whatnot.
What is Programming?
In
this blog post, we will decipher the term “programming” and understand its
usage and many other related terms.
“Instruct the
computer”: this basically means
that you provide the computer a set of instructions that are written in a
language that the computer can understand. The instructions could be of various
types. For example:
- Adding 2 numbers,
- Rounding off a number, etc.
Just like we humans
can understand a few languages (English, Spanish, Mandarin, French, etc.), so
is the case with computers. Computers understand instructions that are written
in a specific syntactical form called a programming language.
“Perform various
tasks”: the tasks could be
simple ones like we discussed above (adding 2 numbers, rounding off a number)
or complex ones which may involve a sequence of multiple instructions. For
example:
- Calculating simple interest, given principal, rate and
time.
- Calculating the average return on a stock over the last
5 years.
The above 2 tasks
require complex calculations. They cannot usually be expressed in simple
instructions like adding 2 numbers, etc.
Hence, in summary,
Programming is a way to tell computers to do a specific task.
Why should you bother about coding?
You must be wondering
- why does one need a computer for adding or rounding off numbers? Or even for
simple interest calculation? After all, even an 8th standard kid can easily do
such things even over large numbers. What is programming used for? What
benefits do computers offer?
Well, computers offer
so many benefits:
- Computers are fast: computers
are amazingly fast. If you know how to properly utilize the power of
Computer programming, you can do wonders with it. For a typical computer
of today’s time, an addition of 2 numbers which could be as big as a
billion each takes hardly a nanosecond. Read again - nanosecond! That
means that in 1 second, a computer can perform about a billion additions.
Can any human ever do that? Forget a billion additions a second, typical
human can’t even do 10 additions per second. So, computers offer great
speed.
- Computers are cheap: if
you were a stock market analyst and you had to monitor the data of say
1000 stocks so that you can quickly trade them. Imagine the hassle that
would create if you were to do it manually! It is just impractical. While
you are performing your calculation on the stock’s performance, the price
may change. The other alternative is to hire people so that you can
monitor more stocks in parallel. That means your cost goes up
significantly. Not to mention the trouble you will face if some of your
employees commit a calculation error in the process. You may end up losing
money! Contrast that with the case where you use a computer. Computers can
process a huge amount of information quickly and reliably. 1000 stocks are
nothing for computers in the 21st century.
- Computers can work 24x7: Computers can work 24x7 without getting
exhausted. So, if you have a task that is big enough, you can without
worries allocate it to a computer by programming it and sleep peacefully.
What is Programming Language?
As mentioned above, Computers
understand instructions that are written in a specific syntactical form called
a programming language. A programming language provides a way for a programmer
to express a task so that it could be understood and executed by a computer.
Refer our another blog-post "What is programming language?" to know more about programming
languages. Some of the popular Programming languages are Python, C, C++, Java, etc.
Why should you learn Computer Programming?
Now, after knowing so
many things about programming, the big question to be answered is - why should
you learn Computer Programming? Let us understand why:
- Programming is fun: Using
Programming, you can create your own games, your personal blog/profile
page, a social networking site like Facebook, a search engine like Google
or an e-commerce platform like Amazon! Won’t that be fun? Imagine creating
your own game and putting it on Play Store and getting thousands and
thousands of downloads!
- The backbone of a Technology Company: The backbones of today’s technology companies
like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and many others, are
giant computer programs written by a collaboration of thousands of skilled
programmers. If you have the right business acumen, knowing programming
can help you create the next big tech company.
- Pretty good salary: Computer Programmers are paid extremely well almost all across the world. Top programmers in Silicon Valley make millions of dollars every year. Quite a few companies offer to start salaries as high as $100,000 per year.
The 12 Best New Programming Languages for 2020
As a developer, it is important to always keep
yourself ahead of the tech game. Eventually, web and app
developers will have to learn high-level computer programming
languages in their careers to further develop themselves.
There are many mainstream languages like Java,
JavaScript, Python, Ruby, and PHP that will get you a job with some major
companies as a developer. But some languages are starting to fade in popularity
in favor of more modern languages that can handle the requirements of the
future of tech.
Developers will recommend code newbies start
with the “Power of 3” in programming (HTML, CSS,
and JavaScript) when starting in software engineering. While
learning those languages, you will discover languages influenced by or even
imitating them.
Newest
Programming Languages Since 2010 (From Oldest to Newest)
Here are 12 of the most popular programming
languages that have launched since 2010:
- Rust (2010)
- Dart (2011)
- Kotlin (2011)
- Elixir (2011)
- Red (2011)
- Julia (2012)
- TypeScript
(2012)
- Swift (2014)
- Hack (2014)
- Crystal (2014)
- Reason (2016)
- Ballerina
(2017)
Now that you have the list, let’s dive into
the newest programming languages that are making an impact in the industry.
Rust (2010)
Rust is
one of the newest languages with the fastest-growing popularity today.
Rust has been
around since 2010, but for some reason, this language has taken on popularity
in the developer community like no other. In fact, StackOverflow awarded
this language as the “most loved programming language” in the community since
2016. This means that the community of web developers preferred to continue
with this language over all others and rightfully so.
Rust was designed by Graydon Hoare at Mozilla
Research. Initial development included many contributors, including Brendan
Eich, the founder of JavaScript. Rust’s original goal focused on providing
better memory safety while managing high performance. Its syntax is like C++,
which is one of the many reasons why it has grown so fast in popularity since
its launch.
The software is free and open-source with dual
licensing from both MIT and Apache. This means that it is open for others to
use, study, copy and change the software as they see fit. Considering the
reputation of Mozilla, there’s no wonder why this language has taken the hearts
of so many web developers in the industry.
Dart (2011)
First developed by Google in 2011, Dart has
been around for some time with the media moniker of the “JavaScript
Killer”. It is a client-optimized language built for apps on many
platforms. Google developed this language to replace JavaScript on Chrome with
its own virtual machine. But after some slight criticism, they changed the
plans of Dart to JavaScript compilation instead.
The language has strong influences from
C-style syntax and some JavaScript. It is a class-defined, garbage-collected (a
form of automatic memory management), and object-oriented programming language.
Google primarily uses the language to build mobile, desktop, backend and web
applications. To this day, Dart has been the strongest competitor of JavaScript
and has a lot to offer the digital world in the future.
Kotlin (2011)
Kotlin has been
around since it was first developed in 2010. However, the official
production-ready version was launched in 2016, still making the language very
fresh and new in the tech scene. Kotlin is simply a cross-platform language
that targets Java Virtual Machine. It works in conjunction with Java but also
compiles to JavaScript and native code.
JetBrains, the developers of Kotlin, built it
with sheer productivity in mind for the developer. Kotlin is also used for
Android mobile development and supported by Google. In May 2019, Google crowned
Kotlin as the official programming language for Android web
development in the company. This puts Google in the market alongside Apple’s
Swift language in mobile development.
Elixir (2011)
Elixir
is a language that carries huge influences from Ruby, Erlang, and Clojure.
Elixir is a
concurrent, general-purpose, and functional programming language that runs on
the Erlang VM. Created by José Valim and launched in 2011, the language carries
heavy influences of Erlang, Ruby, and Clojure. Valim, a Ruby developer, took
the best features from those languages to create something with high
concurrency and low latency. This makes Elixir useful for handling large data
volumes. Telecommunications, eCommerce, and finance companies
benefit from using Elixir for its speed and capabilities. Many
companies like Discord and Pinterest also use the language to handle the large
scalability on their sites and apps.
Red (2011)
According to its website, Red’s
focus is on being the “world’s first full-stack language”. Now we know what it
takes to be a full-stack developer, but a language that
gets the work done all at once? Now that’s some strong promise thrown out to
developers, but the developers of Red are working to make that possible.
The next-generation language was created to
overcome the limitations that Rebol has run into in its lifetime. It possesses
heavy Rebol influences in its “human-friendly” syntax. First launched in 2011,
Rebol developer Nenad Rakocevic built Red to be completely independent of any
other toolchain. The language performs its own code generation instead. He
built the language to take source files on any platform and produce packaged
binary code—all from a single execution. In fact, he didn’t market the language
as a “language”, per se, but as a “language construction set”.
Rakocevic created the language to support
metaprogramming and domain-specific languages. This makes Red virtually
universal with any language native to any operating system out there. Arguably
the best feature of this language is the fact that there is no software or
setup needed at all! It uses everything that is native to your OS. It’s used
for both high and low-level programming. By providing simplicity, flexibility,
and portability, it saves on memory, speed, and performance. If there is one
language to keep an eye out for in the future, this would definitely be the
one.
Julia (2012)
Julia is set to
change the world with its high performance and high-level dynamic programming.
Its main features are well-suited for computational science and numerical
analysis. Yet it’s useful as a general-purpose programming language as well.
Anyone interested in data science or machine learning
may end up encountering this language in their near future.
Julia is garbage-collected, uses eager
evaluation, and includes robust mathematical libraries. More than 1500
universities use this language in their degree programs currently. The language
has more than 11 million downloads since its initial launch. The language
contains influences from various others, especially C, Lisp, Python, MATLAB and
Ruby.
In 2019, the Climate Modeling Alliance selected
Julia as the sole implementation language for its global
model. This will help provide insight into the effects and challenges of
climate change. They saw Julia as the only language able to handle the
productivity and first-class performance necessary for the project.
TypeScript (2012)
Since JavaScript’s launch in 1995, Microsoft
worked tirelessly on developing a competitor language. JavaScript sparked what
is now known as the browser wars between Microsoft and Netscape. After
JavaScript saw a resurgence around 2010, Microsoft jumped at the opportunity to
respond in the form of TypeScript.
Microsoft designed the scripting language with
the intention of developing large applications, and it is a statically typed
language (JavaScript is dynamically typed). The syntax shares similarities with
JavaScript and JScript.NET, another Microsoft ECMA implementation. It also
serves as a strict syntactical superset of JavaScript. The language is
open-sourced, so it can be edited, copied and modified by other developers.
Existing JavaScript programs also serve as valid TypeScript programs. But
TypeScript can be used to develop both JavaScript applications of client and
server-side execution.
Swift (2014)
Swift
is the official programming language for software development created by Apple.
Apple provides its own programming language
for web development with Swift. Released in 2014, the tech company wanted
to think differently with their OS development across their products. Swift is
a general-purpose compiled language capable of high performance across all
products. Designed to work with Cocoa, Cocoa Touch, and Objective-C code within
the devices, Swift uses heavy influences from C and C++. It also uses the
Objective-C runtime library, allowing C, Objective-C, C++, and Swift to all run
within one program at once.
The language is open source, giving developers
access to build their own versions of the language. The usability
of applications on Apple OS platforms is seamless and
prevents bad practices and common errors. It’s even considered highly usable
for game development. This makes it one of the most useful languages of web
development in the 21st century.
Hack (2014)
Hack is a
programming language for the HipHop Virtual Machine. Created by Facebook as a
dialect for PHP, the language allows programmers to use both dynamic and static
typing in its code. This is also known as gradual typing. It also allows types
to be specified for function arguments, return values and class properties. But
local variable types are always inferred, so they cannot be specified. Hack
works in conjunction with PHP and focuses on web development and can be
embedded into HTML for ease of use.
Crystal (2014)
Crystal is,
simply put, the younger sister of Ruby. Launched in June 2014, it is a
programming language developed by more than 300 contributors with strong
influences from Ruby in its syntax. It serves as a general-purpose language
that is object-oriented. It is also compiled with static type-checking.
Specification of variable types and method arguments are unnecessary in its
code. Active developments of the language are still in progress today.
Crystal’s syntax feels more natural to read
and easy to write compared to its predecessor. It is currently free and
open-source software available for others to edit, copy and modify to their
preference. As Ruby starts to fade, Crystal could take over as the heir to the
throne in the programming world with its simpler, more readable code.
Reason (2016)
Here’s something that may shock you about Reason—it’s
not a programming language. In fact, it’s more of a syntax extension and
toolchain influenced and powered by
OCaml. OCaml is a general-purpose language that emphasizes
expressiveness and safety.
Created by Jordan Walke at Facebook in 2016,
the syntax favors heavily with JavaScript and compiles to OCaml. Walke created
Reason with JavaScript programmers in mind. On their website, they even
describe it as JavaScript’s “simpler, faster cousin”.
With most of the historical features removed,
it enhances the runtime and performance of applications. This makes it more
user-friendly to develop apps for both iOS and Android. Reason works well with
React-based web apps as well through a version called ReasonReact.
Ballerina (2017)
Ballerina is,
for now, the newborn programming language in the industry. It was developed as
a code-based alternative to configuration-based integration tools. This is also
one of the first languages to use constructs geared towards cloud-native
development. It contains influences in its syntax from Java, Go and JavaScript,
but has scripting that is easy to learn, write, and modify. This makes it
suitable for programmers who have the intention of connecting various web
services all into one program.
Summary
Learning
the latest languages in tech help to develop you for a strong career.
For the code newbies, you may feel
overwhelmed—looking at these modern programming languages and thinking that you
have a long way to go. However, you will learn that developing your skills in
coding isn’t that difficult after all.
If you look back into the influences of these
languages, several contained code inspired by languages such as JavaScript,
C++, and Ruby. And many of the coding curriculums teach these mainstream
languages as fundamentals in coding at the start of every coder’s career.
Coding bootcamps update
their curricula with the latest languages to prepare tech newbies with the
skills to adapt and grow. This provides a better platform for newbies to adapt
their skills and be unique assets in the future of the tech industry.
Want to be the newcomer that makes an impact
on your career with the knowledge of these languages? Download the SoftwareTechIT app today and unleash your
full potential.
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