You are probably here because you want to make coding your full time job. Well, you in the right spot because we are going to walk though how to find a coding language that is not only popular but in high demand in three easy steps. By the end of this blog you will have the best programming language that was meant for you and be marketable in the job search.
Step one:
Look up job postings from your dream companies. So let’s say you are interested in working for Google. You will find some job postings.Head over to [google’s job page](https://careers.google.com/jobs/) and we are going to start of by typing in coding into the input box. Try not to enter software engineer or developer because we want to open up the amount of job fields there are in the tech industry. Don’t worry about filling out the location and relevant experience fields. We can fill that out when we are ready to apply for jobs. Press next until we hit all the job postings.When looking at the posting skip over the qualifications or the requirements for the job. This will be important in step two but during this step we only want to focus on the description, what the job role is about. If you can see yourself doing this role copy over the job and put it in a safe place to look at later.
Repeat this step about 9 more times from different companies.
Step two:
Now that we collected a bunch of jobs posting. Pick the top three. Let’s see what coding languages that they have in common.
Step three:
Proceed to the YouTube search bar and paste in the coding language you find in common in step two. Check if there are a lot of resources with a lot of views.
Congrats we found the best programming language that was meant for you. Go ahead get started on your coding journey.
How I go about learning my first programming language
When I start to learn a new language I tend to go the course route instead of individual videos. And try to follow it all the way through. The internet is full of resources and free places to learn like Codecademy or FreeCodeCamp.
One thing to remember is to learn the language and not the framework. You definitely should pick up a framework but only after you learn the basics of that language. Most companies during interviews will not test you on frameworks but will test you on the language itself.
Overall stick to just one language. And dive as deep as you can into that on language. I believe learning more than one language will actually hurt you in your learning process. Your potential interviewer isn’t going to care if you can code in more than on language. They are only going to care if you can do that job in the language that the company provides.
I know I am telling you to stick to one language, but don’t stick to the language if you are not enjoying what you are doing. That not the point of this, we want to have fun. My first language was actually Ruby. But for me I just didn’t understand it. A lot of the answers were being outputted to the console and it wasn’t very satisfying seeing the process. I’m a visual learner so seeing things move on the screen was so satisfying to me. So that’s why I switched over to JavaScript.
List of great languages to learn
Now I’m going to be a little bias on this first one.
JavaScript
Not only do I use this language every single day. JavaScript is the language of the web and it will always be a high demand skill unless websites go away. I don’t see that happening any time soon. If you come from a design background or you like animations, plus you don’t mind making thing pixel perfect then front-end development with JavaScript is perfect for you. Thought it is not limited to that. You can also use JavaScript in the backend with Node JS.
PHP
Another language you could learn is PHP. Yes PHP. Facebook uses it, more than 50% of the web is built off of PHP. So let’s not trash it y’all. At my job, PHP is our backend language and it is so intertwined into our codebase it isn’t going anywhere. Plus if you are one of those people who want to be a freelance developer, PHP is great because you can build quick websites with [Wordpress](https://wordpress.com/).
The next language I would recommend on the list is Python. It is actually the language I am currently learning in my free time. Python is super human-readable, handles data very well, and it is constantly rising quickly in popularity. Python is taking over so many fields like cyber security, machine learning, data analytics, AI. I hate to say it because I love JavaScript so much. But Python is the king of programming languages to learn right now.
Java
I would also put Java on the list for coding languages. I personally have never use it. But I have backend friends who rave about it. Java is a little bulk in my opinion. But what is my opinion really worth nowadays?!? Java is one step closer to machine language, which is 0’s and 1’s then Python, or JavaScript. So there is going to be more overhead in getting things to run. If you really want to dive deep and learn some computer science principles then this is the perfect language for you. This programming language is great for people who want to build backends and API’s. It is also great for people who want to get in Android development. And once you are ready to learn your second language. After your first job of course. It will be really easy to pick up some really cool languages like Scala, Kotlin and Groovy.
Swift
There are so many cool programming languages you can learn. But my last one on the list is Swift. Unfortunately in this day and age not everybody has a computer. But everybody and their momma got a cell phone. So naturally most companies are gearing towards mobile development. They can have their brand sit on your home screen of your phone. Swift and Objective-C are the only languages you can use in the Apple environment. So if are one of those people who want to make an ios app. Then swift is the perfect language for you.
There are so many languages you can learn. But the most important step is to start coding.