You can only use one programming language for the rest of your life. What do you choose?

Comments

[Ashwin Hariharan]

I guess whatever language helps me earn a living, and also something that casts a wide net to cover as many areas of software engineering as possible. At the moment, that would be JavaScript.

Almost every industry requires a website / web app, and at present JavaScript dominates this area, at-least when it comes to building user interfaces. But that's note all - with JavaScript, I can also build mobile and desktop applications, do server-side programming and build backends, and even do machine learning.

[Sherry Day]

I think C is the safe choice if I want to make sure I can still do lots of stuff.

I'd prefer only coding in Python, but I feel like I'd be more limited in the long run.

I think in it is about optionality vs enjoyment.

[Gianluca Tessarolo]

Absolutely Java

(I'm 60 yo, I've learned and used many languages in my life, QuickBasic, xBase (Clipper & QuickSilver), VisualBasic, Delphi (Object Pascal), Java, Ruby but Java still remains my favorite !)

[Alexander B.K.]

Clipper :)
I used its "brother" : FoxPro 2.6 for DOS from which I earned money for the 1st time by using a programming language.

[Pavel]

Good choice. But have you ever used javascript? 😏

[AndyRosenberg]

Ruby

Lots of interesting things happening as of the last couple years. Hotwire for Rails, Glimmer taking off for desktop development, more concurrency libraries, etc. I’m starting to look into Ruby’s ML options too, would love to see more resources devoted to those.

[Ben Halpern]

I'd +1 for Ruby for general enjoyment, confidence that it will keep improving, etc. It would definitely limit a few things I'd ideally want to do, but I'd probably be happy.

[Rudy Nappée]

Js... A swiss army knife 😁

[ecyrbe]

Definitly Rust.

[Ishaan Sheikh]

Probably C# as it will cover most of the platforms.

[Martin Wheeler]

JavaScript

[Alexander B.K.]

Although I am still learning it, I think I will pick Java, because I know it can be used to build apps for 3 areas :

1. Desktop non-web (GUI), like VB6, Delphi, VB.net, C# do on windows
2. Web back-end, esp with J2EE or Spring framework
3. Android, although Kotlin is a strong alternative for this area. I feel, I cannot call myself a real programmer before I have used Java in a real project. Some people said similar things on C++.

However, still consider C# as the strong alternative, although don't have time to learn it currently.

[Tony Nguyễn]

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