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Muhammad Wasif
Muhammad Wasif

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I want to learn a new programming language. What should I learn?

I'm a front end developer. Now, moving to cloud native and nodejs but I want to learn a new programming language. Which one should I learn?
I would like to explore field of Robotics and AI. So, please suggest!

Top comments (86)

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tetri profile image
Tetri Mesquita

python 🐍

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nestedsoftware profile image
Nested Software

Yup. I think for things like AI and machine learning, Python is the way to go. I don't know much about robotics. I would expect that you can probably use Python libraries for that too, thought you may wind up having to learn some C at some point as well for lower-level stuff.

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tsturzl profile image
Travis Sturzl • Edited

I work at a robotics company. All the control systems are written in C++, and then the robotics code is a mix of python and C++. Used to work at an ML company and all the data scientists used python.

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isaacfink profile image
isaacfink

You could definitely use python to control a microcontroller like Arduino and as far as low level stuff python allows for c extensions to be included so it's definitely a good choice

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budprager profile image
BudPrager • Edited

MicroPython might be the answer here, it has support for ESP8266 Aarduino) and ESP32 (Arduino with built in WiFi) chipsets.

So having learnt python OP would be able to leverage the ai and machine learning libraries or use off the shelf microcontrollers.

Edit: docs : docs.micropython.org/en/latest/

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jamesthomson profile image
James Thomson

This is next on my list to learn as well. From the little bits that I've read it has a lot of similar concepts as JS which helps with the learning curve.

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manan30 profile image
Manan Joshi

I would suggest Haskell. It is a functional programming language and will completely change the way you think about programming.

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mateiadrielrafael profile image
Matei Adriel

Finally a nice suggestion

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dough654 profile image
douggerhardt

Agreed. Try it. You'll never be the same.

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kajoseph profile image
kajoseph

As a Node dev myself, my choice would be Rust, but in your shoes I'd stick with Node with Typescript a little while longer. I'm already familiar with C#, C/C++, Go, and Python, though. Rust tries to be a safe C, where C is the king of speed and flexibility at the expense of safety. Basically, C# = Java but with Microsoft backing. I like .NET Core and think it would be a good framework choice to learn with. However, if I were in your shoes (coming from the FE), I'd stick with Node for a while longer and start using Typescript. Get used to classes with public, private, protected, abstract, etc. permission properties. Use buffers, streams, cryptography, process, asserts, and fs which will help you get more familiar with back end function, organization, and optimization. Node and Typescript offers a lot of capability and flexibility where you can still build cool things without getting bogged down by new syntax, idiosyncrasies, and strict typing. Node is highly supported and you can find libraries and docs for nearly everything. You can use Johnny-Five for IOT and robotics, plus I think most popular ML libraries are available for Node. Once you feel comfortable with all that, I'd introduce a whole new language.

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thewasif profile image
Muhammad Wasif

Thank you. That was helpful

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arshadnadeem9 profile image
ArshadNadeem9

For front end
HTML 5
Css3
JavaScript es6 es7 es8
React.js
Angular js
Vue.js
And
Back end
PHP
Php oop
Mvc framework
Sql for data base with xampp server
Node.js
Express.js framework of node. Js
Nosql with mongo db

Php is for business apps and WordPress developer

Node.js is for mean && mern developer
If you want be full stack web developer then you needed follow these skills

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tracker1 profile image
Michael J. Ryan

You can go well beyond mean and mern with node. I use it for most of my scripting needs as it's easier to deal cross platform much if the time. There's also iot and ai (Tensorflow) options.

I think Python is probably a better long term option if going iot or ai though as there's more support there.

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arshadnadeem9 profile image
ArshadNadeem9

For ai developer
Python
Python with machine learning && deep learning
Tensor flow
Pytorch
Apache spark
Neural network

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mateiadrielrafael profile image
Matei Adriel

Any functional language (haskell, f#, elm etc)

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shrpereira profile image
Silvio Pereira

Clojure!

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mateiadrielrafael profile image
Matei Adriel

The deal breaker for me was the dynamic typing, I just can't live without the safety type systems give me...

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hokutosei profile image
jeanepaul

Erlang, scala, or elixir

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euler2718 profile image
John Corley

I see a lot of suggestion for python for obvious reasons. But why not Julia? Syntactically this language is pretty beautiful with native data structures python doesn't have without libraries. Plus it's fast, and easily works across your cores.

Haskell is also a great choice in theory...

I think if your goal is to learn a new lang and think differently, these are probably great choices.

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nozil profile image
Nicolas Zilli

Cloud Native => Go.
Otherwise I had a great time discovering Elixir.
You should try exercism.io/ for finding some exercises and mentors there is a lot of languages supported ;)

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theraggon profile image
Theraggon

You may want to check ML.NET and F#. Also .NET core is getting more and more awesome for a lot of things like web, iot, and probably robotics too (therobotreport.com/misty-robotics-...)

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juancarlospaco profile image
Juan Carlos

Nim lang πŸ‘‘ Python like syntax, C like speed, Rust like safety.

Compile and interoperate with C, C++, JavaScript, NodeJS, Python, ObjetiveC, NimScript, Assembly, WebAssembly, LLVM IR, Backend and Frontend, and more.

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ghost profile image
Ghost

depends on what you want to do, "Robotics" is somewhat broad; to program microcontrollers nowdays is C, you can do it in Python but is too heavy, limits you too much; Rust in the future, has the power for it but the embedded ecosystem is not very mature yet; you can do robotics with more horsepower tho, farther from Arduinos and closer to Raspberry Pi. As far as I've seen from afar, Python is the way to go for AI and ML.

For general purpose I'm beting for Rust; learning it for a while and loving it. But is very new, and although have very mature libraries, sometimes you find lack of libraries of some specific area.

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daniel13rady profile image
Daniel Brady

If you want to tie your decision to a language that a lot of people use for similar purposes, I find StackOverflow's annual developer survey to be a useful resource when considering this question.

For AI, machine learning, and data science, Python is the reigning monarch of programming languages at the moment, and has been for awhile.

For robotics, I don't have much experience to draw from. But I was told while at university to start by looking at languages often used in embedded systems and rule-based systems; to me, that means some variant of C, Rust, and Lisp (my personal favorite Lisps are Racket, Clojure, and Scala).

If you're mainly interested in personal growth, rather than how applicable a tool might be to your programming practice, I recommend designing/choosing a project and then doing that project in a language vastly different from the one(s) you're comfortable with in some way. (For me, this would probably be something with strict typing and/or DIY memory management.)

I see this a bit like traveling to a place with a vastly different culture from your own: the things you take for granted will start slapping you in the face, your world views about "the way something is done and why" will be turned upside down more than once, and you'll come back home with a valuably different point of view.

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rfaulhaber profile image
Ryan Faulhaber

Rust. It's just a cool language.

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lucbarr profile image
Luciano Barreira

It depends on what you want to do. I participated in robot soccer competitions for years and never heard of anyone using python successfully at it, mostly because in my specific use case the game is very dynamic and multi agent so AI has to run very fast.

I suggest you to research on what are people using for what you want to do and don't care too much about the programming languages, the concepts that comes before the code arrives are more important. I suggest to grasp into any little project and learn the language as you go. Since you must have some programming experience, if the language shares paradigms with what you already know, your efforts will be merely to translate your thoughts into that specific language.

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toordog profile image
toordog

Java is great, growing more every day, in fact the market for java programmers to hire just for replacing python code is crazy, kotlin isnt bad too learn also, but its definitely not on a level like java. I know 12 different languages, and for the salary out of the gate if you're into money (I'm not) isn't too bad, top dollar on replacing python code for enterprise design is all over the market now with all the kids from college scripting up a lot of bad python and other languages.

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kumarvarun1987 profile image
kumarvarun1987

Hi
I am working last 2 years in RPA(Robotic process Automation) and AI domain, personally I suggest start learning on RPA and ML.
Below are the new RPA and ML language
Workfusion: if you know Java easy to learn
Uipath :
Blueprism
Pega
Blockchain

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th3pwn3r profile image
Th3Pwn3r

Please forgive my English.
Python will greatly expand what you can do, even backend with things like django, also there are amazing frameworks like tensorflow for IA, magenta for IA and music, you can automatize boring stuff ( which by the way, if you use Linux or Mac adds another layer of possibilities to get things done fast and efficiently). If you really want to understand how things work at low level, learn c++ it also will give you the tools to learn any language faster since most of them inherit from c it's sintax.
I had a lot of trouble learning front end coming from c, so it might be hard to learn it first for you, in that case, python should be first.

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th3pwn3r profile image
Th3Pwn3r

Also, a question for you op, I really love using vanilla js since it seems to me I can do everything I need without things like jquery, is any reason to use it aside from the fact that the lines of code gets massively shorter? Maybe it is kind of a dumb question I'm such a n00b xD

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