How long does it take to learn a programming language? Overview of the most popular languages and their difficulty scores

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A lot of points should be taken into consideration when asking the question “How long does it take to learn a programming language?”. Your dedication, knowledge and coding experience, time available, professional goals, etc. Another factor to step forward is the coding language itself. In this article, we’’ll identify programming languages in high demand, their cons and pros, and consider how easy it is to learn them.

HTML

Developed in 1990 and considered as an industry standard, HTML, or Hypertext Markup Language is about frontend web development and is involved into coding most web pages and apps across any browser. HTML leverages tags and elements to define how text, images, and interactive forms will be shown. HTML’s duo with CSS ensures sophisticated styling and modifying web structures while being backed up by JavaScript, it allows scripting programs.

HTML is a programmers’ passion and is designated as the easiest language in a survey of 909 programmers in U.S. California. On the other hand, while developing just a simple webpage, you need to write tons of code and it may generate some complexity.

Java

Java is the most popular primary programming language. Its popularity is due to its functioning over environments. A client-server app written in Java can run on any platform supporting Java. It is also considered to be quite easy to learn due to its intuitive syntax and excellent structuring.  Java is a classic tool for the Android apps and is scalable to ensure an agile custom mobile or web application at a reasonable rate in a variety of industries from FinTech to Retail.

However, Java would hardly be the right choice to build an app on the cloud as contrasted with server apps or websites.

JavaScript

JavaScript has a reputation for being an ideal programming asset for non-programmers and beginners. This is what provides the Internet with interactive websites and is widely used for the Internet of Things software. JavaScript ensures stress-free integration with other languages and is commonly used for front- and backend programming. This programming language has a larger community that can be easily leveraged by new coders. Netflix, Facebook, Skype, LinkedIn are just some names built with JavaScript. Using versatile JavaScript frameworks and libraries, developers can work on projects of different scales and complexity meeting the web’s most difficult challenges.

Python

Python provides developers with extensive library support, control capacity and integration with other coding tools for web applications, desktop apps, media tools, network servers, machine learning, etc.

For new coders especially, the consistency and simplicity of Python both contribute to its ease of use and approachability,” a survey of programmers says.

A sensitive point about Python is that it cannot be used for mobile app development.

C++

Being an object-oriented, and general-purpose language, C++ is commonly used for building mobile, cloud computing, gaming apps, mathematical simulations and more. C++ ensures a high speed of apps and is therefore the preferred choice for FinTech and healthcare apps to enable processing multiple transactions in a limited time. C++ development is in high demand and still on of the most popular languages.

Although it supports versatility, C++ has a very complex syntax and is best used by developers with expertise in C coding. C++ is also hard due to memory management. When the burden of allocating and freeing memory is performed incorrectly, this leads to product security vulnerabilities.

PHP

Providing a tough competition for JavaScript and Python, PHP is a server-side programming language widely used for mobile apps with database access. Its great synergy with HTML also ensures web pages development. PHP’s good name is due to its ease of use and open source that significantly reduces development costs and time. PHP is a beneficial coding language for B2C and B2B business software, inter alia, in e-commerce, finance, healthcare and other domains. However, PHP does not provide good error management and has security vulnerabilities like other open-source programming tools.

Conclusion

Choosing the right programming language is vital for a developer to bring an impactful result for software solution, its safety, functionality and scalability. Although the basics of coding is sometimes said to take up to 6 months to learn, a developer’s life is about constant fixing bugs and troubleshooting different coding problems. With the IT constant progressing, people have always something they need to improve.