Hardest Programming Language to Learn

Recently I asked my Twitter friends what they thought the hardest programming language to learn was.

One guy had heard that Haskell was the most difficult to master, while another claimed it was Perl. My own initial reaction was along the lines of, “Why learn Ruby when you can program in Bash?”

There are thousands of programming languages to choose from! You’ll be in a much better position to make a well-educated decision about this when you know which are the easiest and hardest to learn and their use cases.

There are many ways to answer which is the hardest programming language. You can read the question on Quora and come up with your own conclusion. We want to help you figure out which ones will most help you in getting your start in software programming: the easiest and hardest languages and what their uses cases are

There are languages that are easy to learn and there are those which are very hard. The first question, therefore, is what is the hardest programming language to learn?

Benefits of Programming Language

Programming languages are more diverse, complex, and sophisticated than ever. 

For the vast majority of these jobs, programming languages play a central role. 

Behind every program is a programming language, and behind that, there’s a programmer!

Sharpen Your Problem Solving Skills

Learning a programming language involves conceptualizing problems at a multitude of different levels. 

You’ll learn to take a broader, high-level problem and break it down into smaller chunks that can be solved via programming. 

To do this, you’ll learn data modeling techniques like conceptual, logical, and physical data modeling.

By starting with more abstract problems and gradually delineating their many variables, you can start to model and visualize the tools and code you’ll need to solve a problem. 

Many exercises for beginner and novice coders pose simple problems that need to be solved with code. For example, some beginner coding exercises published by Adriann on Github ask programmers to “Write a program that prints ‘Hello World’ to the screen” or “Write a program that automatically converts English text to Morse code and vice versa.”

These types of problem-solving skills are not just valuable in programming or other technological disciplines but are also great life skills. 

Breaking down the problems and challenges you face in life into small, bite-sized chunks that can be solved with simple actions is a powerful self-help strategy or therapeutic technique. 

Employment Prospects

It would be impossible to miss employment prospects from this list. 

Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, famously described data scientists and statisticians as having the “sexiest job of the 21st century”. According to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics, computer programmers are set to continue in demand, outranking all other professions. 

In the UK, specialist recruiter Ivy Blue found that SQL, JavaScript, C#, and Python regularly appear in some 5,000 to 10,000 monthly job posts with salaries ranging between £50,000 and £100,000.

It’s clear that IT specialists and programmers of pretty much every variety are in demand. Modern programming languages like Python and JavaScript but also the RDMS language SQL seem to top the lists of the most in-demand programming languages. 

Job security here is very strong indeed, this is not a fleeting or ephemeral trend – programmers will continue in demand, probably forever!

Build Superb Websites

If you own/want to build a website then programming knowledge equips you with what you need to make it look awesome.

Though not strictly programming knowledge, HTML is relatively straightforward to anyone with programming skills and can help you build excellent content. You’ll also be able to find and troubleshoot errors. 

CSS is used to style documents written with HTML or other markup languages. Learning CSS allows you to create slick and great-looking web content to stand out from the crowd and even boost your SEO.

Become more Technically Minded

By learning a programming language, you’ll also become more technically minded which is perfect for a future dominated by technology. 

From troubleshooting your own systems and networks to working with IoT home equipment and much more, the technical skills you gain as a programmer provide a sound platform for further technical experience and qualification.

This also extends to the maths, data, and statistics side of things. Programming naturally draws upon other logical/mathematical skills – they strengthen each other and this can be particularly useful if you’re looking for a career in data science or analytics. 

This article focuses on the hard programming language out there.

Prolog

Prolog stands for Logic Programming. It was developed in 1972 and is a fascinating programming language if you’re interested in working with the natural language processing (NLP) aspect of artificial intelligence. 

Prolog is extremely useful for creating conversational bots. ELIZA  — the first-ever chatbot created  — was developed in Prolog.

Why Learning Prolog Is Hard

As a language, Prolog isn’t that difficult. Its syntax is comparatively more straightforward in comparison to C++ or Python. However, formulating Prolog programs is another challenge altogether. 

Concepts like facts, rules, and goals make Prolog a complicated language to learn. You can’t thoughtlessly copy and paste Prolog code hoping for it to work — you’ll most likely face compiler errors or infinite recursion. 

The core logic behind your program must be spot on, which makes it hard to work on. Most procedural languages being used today let programmers get away with some logical inconsistencies. 

Programmers can write long lines of code to compensate for the logical errors and adjust the code accordingly. With Prolog, you can’t do this. You need to get the logic right from the get-go.

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Prolog is one of the first logic programming languages, now seeing adoption in artificial intelligence applications and natural language processing.

It is hard to learn because:

  • It is an unconventional language, its data structures are unlike other programming languages
  • It requires an unreasonably competent compiler
  • It forces the programmer to think hard about their logic upfront
  • Online resources and Prolog code can’t be applied to your needs without thought

Use Cases of Prolog

  • Prolog is a highly cost-efficient language and helps companies in cutting down both maintenance and development costs.
  • Prolog is a logic-based programming language, so the code is reusable and readable. This is why Prolog successfully reduces maintenance costs.
  • Prolog is Turing-complete, which means it is highly reliable and predictable. While most modern programming languages are Turing-complete, many haven’t been used in that manner.

LISP

LISP stands for List Processing. After Fortran, it is the second oldest programming language. It was created by John McCarthy, one of the founding fathers of artificial intelligence as we know it today.

It’s called the “programmable programming language,” which reflects its most significant advantage over other programming languages.

“Lisp is a language for doing what you’ve been told is impossible.” — Kent Pitman

LISP is built as a practical mathematical notation for programs and has been a consistent choice for AI developers. Some of its features, like rapid prototyping, dynamic object creation, garbage collection, and extreme flexibility, make it one of the best programming languages for AI/ML.

It is the second oldest programming language after FORTRAN, and is still used in higher-level systems and for artificial intelligence.

It is hard to learn because:

  • Its is a fragmented language with domain-specific solutions
  • Syntaxing in LISP extensively uses parentheses which can be difficult to get used to

Why Learning LISP Is Hard

LISP follows the functional paradigm of programming. Most programmers aren’t well versed with functional programming or functional programming languages — how it works, how to maintain code elegance, etc. This makes the early stages of learning LISP a bit difficult. 

There are some conceptual barriers to cross because it uses different concepts than what you might be used to, but that’s manageable with persistence. Once you understand the important ideas in LISP, such as how the evaluator operates, how macros override it, and some pointers from the functional programming paradigm, things will begin to get progressively simpler.

Use Cases of LISP

  • LISP operates on the philosophy that what works best for the designer works best for the developers. So, working in LISP allows developers to add any feature they find missing from the language and use it in their application.
  • LISP allows programmers to clearly map out their ideas with how the program actually works. This makes for easy maintainability of code.
  • LISP offers dynamic typing, allowing developers to spend more time working on the code and less time dealing with the compiler. It also provides conditional systems that let developers develop interactive error handling codes.

Haskell

Haskell is named after Haskell Brooks Curry, the famous mathematician. It was introduced in 1990 and is a statically-typed functional programming language, offering shorter code lines. 

Haskell is highly efficient in handling errors, and therefore, is considered a safe programming language. Most non-syntactical errors are caught during compile time itself instead of runtime. 

Some key features of Haskell include:

  • Strong abstraction abilities
  • Extreme code reusability
  • Fewer lines of code, greater code understanding
  • Built-in memory management

These, and other features offered by Haskell, improve the productivity of the programmer. While a niche set of developers currently use it, it has the potential to compete with other languages for AI if given more recognition.

Haskell is a polymorphically statically typed, purely functional language that is built on lambda calculus. Named after mathematician Haskell B Curry, it is primarily used in research, industrial applications, and teaching.

It is hard to learn because:

  • It follows a 100% functional paradigm, unlike most modern languages which accept imperative commands
  • It is difficult to understand the nuances of compilation and error fixing in Haskell
  • It involves intense use of jargon, which might put off beginners

Why Learning Haskell Is Hard

Again, the difficulty in learning Haskell arises from the fact that it’s a functional programming language. But even among other functional languages, Haskell is challenging because of its abstractness, purity, terse syntax, and the use of one-letter identifier names. 

These are also the things that add to Haskell’s overall strengths, but they also make it challenging to learn and master.

Use Cases of Haskell

  • Haskell goes very well with C. The companies working with the C language on any application generally use Haskell as a powerful tool to write C.
  • Haskell pushes programmers to expand their thinking horizons and think about programming challenges in a different way. With Haskell, developers spend more time thinking about the problem and less time coding it.
  • Higher-order abstractions in Haskell offer developers a neater way to express the computations they need to perform.  
  • For developers dealing with data, Haskell teaches them to think more clearly about what they’re dealing with. Haskell supports algebraic data types to encourage developers to think about all the possible things, and for each, what are its parts.

C++

C++, an extension of C—which we said was an easy language to learn—is a general-purpose programming language. Google Chromium browser, several Microsoft applications, and even financial modeling at Morgan Stanley are said to be done with C++.

It is hard to learn because:

  • It has complex syntax to support versatility
  • It is a permissive language—you can do everything that’s technically possible, even if not logically right
  • It is best learned by someone who already has a foundation with C programming

Malbolge

Named after the eighth circle of Hell in Dante’s Inferno, Malbolge is an example of “esolang” (esoteric programming language). It took two years for the first Malbolge program to be written. Other languages in this category are INTERCAL and Cow, which you might take up only as a challenge.

It is hard to learn because:

  • It uses an obscure notation
  • Not many programmers spend time learning it, hence fewer learning resources
  • It is a self-modifying language that results in erratic behavior

Assembly Language (ASM)

Assembly Language is an umbrella term used to refer to low-level code that represents native machine code for any microprocessor. The other languages on this list were syntactically closer to English, and the code must be compiled down to the machine instructions through bytecode. 

The code here is assembled, hence the name. You can understand the intent of a piece of code written in C or Python just by reading it. For Assembly Language, this task is difficult without knowing the entire code for context. Each basic operation, including moving data in and out of memory registers, is a complete statement.

However, there’s a reason for these difficulties. Assembly Language is supremely powerful, especially when performance is of utmost importance. Using it, you can perform low-level systems programming. These can also be combined with other high-level programming languages for hardware development or systems programming.

Why Learning Assembly Language Is Hard

As mentioned earlier, Assembly Language operates on different parameters altogether. Therefore, learning as well as mastering it is quite a task. 

To begin learning Assembly Language, you must understand how a computer works internally. If you’ve only used high-level languages so far, you might find it challenging to understand how CPU works, how memory is managed, or how to read or write from registers. There’s generally a vast knowledge gap that needs to be bridged before learning Assembly Language.

Use Cases of Assembly Language

  • Assembly Language allows direct hardware manipulation, so companies working on hardware tech require Assembly Language developers.
  • For addressing extremely critical and sensitive performance issues.
  • Developing low-level embedded systems and real-time systems.

Rust

‍Rust is an open-source systems programming language and Stack Overflow’s most loved language for four years straight. Rust provides a viable and solid solution to tackle the pain points of other languages with minimum bitter pills. It’s safe, fast, and concurrent.

Rust offers better control over low-level details and optimum memory management, allowing businesses to save costs. It provides the intuitiveness of high-level language and control and performance of low-level language. Rust is a modern systems language that offers the benefits and performance of C and C++, but without the downsides, programmers are used to when working with these languages.

Rust’s features, such as its built-in package manager, top-notch compiler, and ability to work with modern systems, make it one of the most preferred languages in today’s programming ecosystem.

What Makes Learning Rust Hard

The steep learning curve of Rust can be attributed to its syntax, macrosystem, and the different approach it adopts with regard to some basic concepts. Although efficient memory management is one of its biggest advantages, it can take some time to wrap your head around a compiler that’s reminding you about memory constantly. And it has multiple packages that do exactly the same thing.

Having said that, if you spend some time with Rust and get a grip on it, you’re more likely to fall in love with the language just like many other programmers.

Use Cases of Rust

  • Businesses such as Mozilla, Postmates, Dropbox, and many more use Rust in production.
  • Rust is used to build a wide range of software applications such as operating systems, game engines, browser components, as well as simulation engines for virtual reality.
  • Yelp has developed a framework in Rust that’s used across the company’s website and apps to perform A/B testing on UX, internal infrastructure, and more.
  • Dropbox uses rust for improved data center efficiency. Many components of its core file storage system are written in Rust.

Esoteric Languages

There are quite a few esoteric languages that were intended to be challenging to learn and work with. Some are so challenging that their creators find it hard to use them. Let’s take a look at a few of them.

Cow

This funny-sounding programming language is as crazy as it can get. Created by Sean Heber in 2003, the language uses 12 instructions, all of which are variants of the letters “moo” — based on a cow’s sound. They look like — Moo, MoO, moo, moO, mOo, and so on.

This case-sensitive language regards anything other than these instructions as comments. Cow language is based on the language that was used in Turing Machine. 

C#

C# logo
C# is an especially important coding language for game development.

C# is a general-purpose language developed by Microsoft. It is especially suited for building programs for Windows environments and creating web applications in combination with the.NET Framework. 

While C# offers support for many programming styles, it’s often used in an object-oriented way like Java. Its syntax has many similarities with Java’s as well, so a programmer skilled in either of these languages shouldn’t have much difficulty transitioning between them.

Among the easiest programming languages here, C# has an “average” difficulty. While you have to set up and run a compiler to build your programs, you likely won’t have any issues reading and understanding the syntax for your program.

Moreover, there are many helpful resources for learning C# given the size of its community. Most answers can be found either by using a search engine or reviewing tutorials on the type of problem you are working on. 

Perhaps one of the most recognizable projects that use C# is the Unity game engine. The game engine allows game developers to build a game that’s compatible with multiple platforms at once. If you’re interested in a game development career, you might want to consider starting with a Unity tutorial. A tutorial will help you become familiar with C#’s syntax and pick up the essential concepts of making your own game.

RELATED READING: C#
If you’re interested in game development, be sure to check out our guide to the Best 2D Game Engines to get started creating your own games.

Rust

rust logo
Rust is a great coding language when security is a top priority.

Rust is another general-purpose programming language based on C and C++. Rust is built by Mozilla, the developers of the popular web browser Firefox, which first appeared around 2010.

Compared to Go, which tries to make things as simple as possible, Rust is very strict on how you interact with memory. This approach minimizes the possibility of bugs or vulnerabilities in programs while maintaining a high level of performance.

As a result, Rust is an increasingly popular choice for building systems where safety and security are essential. For example, developers planning an Operating System or an HTTP server will greatly benefit from these restrictions. These measures ensure that the different processes executed only have access to the data and memory that they’re supposed to. 

One great demonstration of how Rust is used can be found in the Firefox browser itself. It was used to improve the efficiency of the CSS engine while simultaneously reducing the number of potential security vulnerabilities.

Even though Rust is especially appropriate for dealing with this kind of system-level programming, it’s not unheard of for people to start their programming journey with Rust. If the security focus of Rust sounds intriguing, you’ll want to either start with “A Gentle Introduction to Rust” or The Rust Programming Language.

Conclusion

People love comparing programming languages. Some say C is the hardest, some say it’s C++. Some say even Java is the hardest. Of course, everyone has a different opinion of what makes a language ‘difficult’ to learn, but I don’t think there will ever be a consensus.

If you want to learn a new programming language, there’s bound to be one that seems the hardest. Every programming language has things that are unique and difficult to understand. That’s why we did some research for you!

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