When it comes to programming, everybody has to start somewhere. Which programming languages do aspiring tech professionals learn and use first?
According to Stack Overflow’s latest Developer Survey, which queried 89,184 developers from 185 countries, HTML/CSS tops the list of programming languages most used by those just learning to code, closely followed by JavaScript and Python. Check out the full chart:
Far fewer (but still significant) numbers of aspiring tech professionals are using SQL, Java, C++, and C. One interesting thing to note: among those learning to code, older languages remain popular, while far fewer are utilizing newer, buzzy languages such as TypeScript, Golang, and Kotlin.
If you’re just starting out on your coding journey and curious about Python, always begin with a visit to Python.org, which offers a handy beginner’s guide to programming and Python. From there, you have your choice of documentation and tutorials online, including Datacamp (whose Introduction to Python course includes 11 videos and 57 exercises), Udemy (which offers a variety of free introduction courses, including one for “absolute beginners”), and Codecademy. Also, w3schools has an extensive (free) Python tutorial.
If you want to learn JavaScript, there’s quite a bit of material online, including (but definitely not limited to) The Modern JavaScript Tutorial, w3schools (again), and websites such as Codecademy.
HTML, which is vital to learn for a variety of tech roles (including front-end developer and web developer), has decades’ worth of documentation and tutorials online, including HTML.com and w3schools, among many, many others. If you want to do anything involving the web, you absolutely must learn HTML/CSS.
HTML, Python, and JavaScript power an immense number of websites and other services across the economy, much of it quite specialized. If you’re just starting out, learning these three languages can open the door to all kinds of opportunities, from website and mobile-app development to data analytics. As you master the principles of programming, you can expand your knowledge to more specialized languages.
