Muhammad Wasif

Posted on Dec 13, 2019

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

#help #discuss #react #javascript

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!

Oldest comments (86)

Tetri Mesquita • Dec 13 '19

python 🐍

Nested Software • Dec 13 '19

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.

isaacfink • Dec 13 '19

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

BudPrager • Dec 13 '19 • 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/

Travis Sturzl • Dec 14 '19 • 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.

James Thomson • Dec 13 '19

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.

Manan Joshi • Dec 13 '19

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

Matei Adriel • Dec 13 '19

Finally a nice suggestion

douggerhardt • Dec 14 '19

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

Nicolas Zilli • Dec 13 '19

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 ;)

Ghost • Dec 13 '19

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.

toordog • Dec 13 '19

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.