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Diner Das
Diner Das

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

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Ashwin Hariharan • Edited

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.

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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 !)

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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.

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Pavel

Good choice. But have you ever used javascript? 😏

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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.

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AndyRosenberg • Edited

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.

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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.

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Rudy Nappée

Js... A swiss army knife 😁

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Martin Wheeler

JavaScript

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Jeremy Friesen

Lisp…it's older than me and will outlive me.

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Alexander B.K. • Edited

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.

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Tony Nguyễn

Golang

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Ishaan Sheikh

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

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ecyrbe

Definitly Rust.

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Jonas Manthey

something esoteric, gotta stay entertained

malbolge maybe

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js-god

Bring back Turbo Pascal bro!!!

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Alexander B.K.

:):)
Pascal was once the best one for introducing programming language. It can still be the better one for that purpose instead of the likes of Python.

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Kasey Speakman

It's a tough call between F# and Clojure.

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Eduard

Been learning clojure lately, completely new experience to me. It's been really refreshing and I love all of its concepts.

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matthew-salerno

Probably python or C++ for their proven legacy and versatility. I personally prefer C to C++ but C++ gives me more options.