What is the easiest programming language to learn? Now this really depends on what you want to do with it.
I consider that the easier the programming language, the more useful it will be for you to learn and teach others.
Java
Java is one of the most preferred languages used for enterprise development due to its stability and simplicity. It’s primarily used for application and web development.
In addition to simple variables and functions, Java has some complicated concepts, such as inheritance and polymorphism, giving it a slightly sophisticated edge.
What Makes Learning Java Easy
Considered by many the easiest programming language to learn, Java is also an intuitive general-purpose language. With a class-based and OOP approach, Java is a beginner-friendly language most suitable to teach design patterns to beginners. Prior experience of OOP makes learning Java easier.
Java has a huge active community of developers and plenty of learning resources freely available online. Being a platform-dependent language, programs written in Java can run on any machine as long as it has the Java runtime environment (JRE).
Use Cases of Java in FAANG
- Java is used extensively to create games, one of the most famous being Minecraft.
- It’s used to build Android apps.
- Some of the most popular and widely used websites, such as Google and LinkedIn, use Java.
- Java is also used to program automation apps.
Java
Java is one of the most preferred languages used for enterprise development due to its stability and simplicity. It’s primarily used for application and web development.
In addition to simple variables and functions, Java has some complicated concepts, such as inheritance and polymorphism, giving it a slightly sophisticated edge.
What Makes Learning Java Easy
Considered by many the easiest programming language to learn, Java is also an intuitive general-purpose language. With a class-based and OOP approach, Java is a beginner-friendly language most suitable to teach design patterns to beginners. Prior experience of OOP makes learning Java easier.
Java has a huge active community of developers and plenty of learning resources freely available online. Being a platform-dependent language, programs written in Java can run on any machine as long as it has the Java runtime environment (JRE).
Use Cases of Java in FAANG
- Java is used extensively to create games, one of the most famous being Minecraft.
- It’s used to build Android apps.
- Some of the most popular and widely used websites, such as Google and LinkedIn, use Java.
- Java is also used to program automation apps.
Elixir
Elixir is a dynamic programming language that follows the functional paradigm. Released in 2011, Elixir is still a relatively new language but has gained a lot of support through the years because of its reliability and scalability.
Furthermore, it is an excellent programming language for microservices and cloud computing applications. The language is based on Erlang VM, a 20-year old VM supporting concurrent, robust, distributed software. Together with its Phoenix framework, you can use Elixir for virtually any application in any industry.
What Makes Learning Elixir Easy
Elixir is a highly readable and fun programming language. Learning Elixir will be simpler for programmers who have some idea of Ruby since both follow a similar syntax.
Elixir doesn’t require programmers to write large code lines and offers libraries to simplify a lot of work. For instance, using the Tesla library, you can implement integration with a provider like PayPal in 20 lines of code.
Use cases of Elixir in FAANG
- Pinterest is one of the biggest names to have used Elixir. Because of Elixir, the company handled 250 million active users pinning more than 180 million items to their board in 2018.
- The Financial Times runs a vast online service that houses more than a million paying readers. They moved from a microservice REST APIs to an Elixir-based API to seamlessly manage their growing reader base and traffic.
- Discord uses Elixir to build its platform’s services. As a result, they’ve successfully managed more than 5 million concurrent users and millions of events per second.
HTML
In all fairness, HTML is NOT a programming language. It’s a front-end coding language that can be used to create skeletons of web pages. CSS is then added to it to beautify the page, and the web pages are made functional and interactive by using JavaScript.
That being said, HTML remains one of the basic languages that a developer, especially the one targeting the likes of FAANG, must know. It’s very straightforward, and with a working knowledge of HTML, you’ll be able to easily modify and make amends to webpage codes to fix structural issues related to HTML.
What Makes Learning HTML Easy
HTML is not a programming language, so it doesn’t work on logic as such. To master HTML, all you need to know is the basic syntax, important tags, and how the tags are invoked and utilized. Because of these reasons, HTML is a pretty easy language to learn, and mastering it will give a good start to your FAANG interview preparation.
Use Cases of HTML in FAANG
- HTML continues to be important for all the front-end work — be it webpages, websites, or web applications. The first skeleton is always created using HTML.
- There are different frameworks and libraries for HTML for various purposes, but to know how to use them, one needs to know the basic working of HTML.
- Facebook uses FBML (Facebook Markup Language) for its page creation, a modified version of HTML. Working knowledge of HTML will help you master different variants of HTML with ease.
JavaScript
JavaScript is an all-purpose programming language that has grown into a monster since its inception. What started as a language to create basic interactivities in the webpage (or to create browser-based games) now offers different libraries and frameworks for end-to-end development.
The most primitive version of JavaScript is known as Vanilla JavaScript, which uses custom codes and programming. Since then, several frameworks have been built using the JS syntax, like React, Node, Angular, and more, and these offer additional functionality to the application.
However, before mastering the frameworks, you must learn Vanilla JavaScript to become familiar with the syntax and the flow of the language.
What Makes Learning JavaScript Easy
JavaScript is a highly intuitive language to learn and a great vehicle to understand the basic principles and working of Computer Science. Whether you’re planning on being a front-end or a back-end developer, JavaScript frameworks will help you in both cases.
However, since they’re based on JS syntax, once you’ve learned Vanilla JS, you’ll be in a place to understand these frameworks better. Another reason why JavaScript is considered easy is that you can see it in action in real-time on your browser, and any changes you make will reflect in your browser window.
Use Cases of JavaScript in FAANG
- Vanilla JavaScript is mostly used for front-end development or adding interactive elements to a static website/webpage.
- Although Vanilla JS itself is powerful enough, FAANG companies generally prefer to use the frameworks of JS since they enhance the capabilities of JavaScript even further.
- Angular JS is an open-source framework developed and maintained by Google for binding data from databases to the front-end.
- React JS, another popular JS framework, is developed and maintained by Facebook. React Native is also a very powerful JS framework introduced by Facebook that can be used to develop iOS and Android applications.
C
C is considered a middle-level programming language. It was developed in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie and has since emerged as debatably the mother of all languages. The language was developed to redesign the UX operating system and enable it to be used in more systems.
C combines the features of both low- and high-level languages and allows for functions such as scripting for applications.
What Makes Learning C Easy
C is relatively simpler to get the hang of than object-oriented programming languages like C++ or Java that utilize concepts like inheritance, abstraction, encapsulation, and others.
That being said, creating complex applications in C is a tricky task but still manageable. Another reason why C is considered relatively easy, and why most beginners find C as a good starting point, is because it starts from the very basics and builds the foundation for learning all other, more complex programming languages. Further, C is also one of the fastest languages in terms of execution speed.
Use Cases of C in FAANG
- C programming language is often used for working with embedded systems, whether it is scripting applications or drivers.
- C can also be used for creating Graphical User Interface (GUI) applications. Fun fact — Adobe Photoshop, the OG editing tool, was developed in C language.
- Google uses C language for its file system and Chromium web browser.
- C programming language is also used for developing operating systems.
Python
Python is the go-to choice for developers and companies working on machine learning applications. It is a relatively slow language, being interpreting in nature, and therefore, is not the best fit for competitive programming.
However, because of the number of modules and libraries it offers and the simplicity of its syntax, Python has grown to become one of the most important languages of today. Other than machine learning applications, Python can be used for game development, back-end development, data science, data visualization, and a lot more.
What Makes Learning Python Easy
The syntax of Python resembles simple written English. As a result, many find it easier to learn Python.
Python code is extremely easy to read for developers, which makes debugging easier. Furthermore, Python is backed by an extremely active community of developers where you can reach out for help, making the learning process a whole lot easier.
Use Cases of Python in FAANG
- Python offers frameworks like Flask and Django, which are best in business for rapid application development. Because of these frameworks, Python has evolved as an irreplaceable tool for web application development.
- Pandas, NumPy, SciPy, Keras, Tensorflow, and various other libraries help you work with large amounts of data, analyze it, and extract valuable insights to meet business requirements. Python has an extensive collection of libraries for Machine Learning applications.
- Another interesting use case of Python is that it allows developers to turn any physical object simply into an electronic gadget with the help of Raspberry Pi.
- FAANG companies use Python to implement ML capabilities in their products to understand user behavior patterns and generate insights.
Go
Developed by Google, Go language (aka Golang) is one of the most intuitive languages and considered better and simpler to use than Python. The consistent library designs, simple package management, and a toolbox with cross-platform compatibility are the primary reasons for Golang’s wide adoption and popularity among software professionals.
Goroutines, a lightweight thread managed by Go runtime, has segmented growable stacks. That means it will use more memory only if required. The Golang libraries such as netconf and ssh can be plugged into other libraries for improved performance through networking. Plus, the compilation speed of Golang is quite high.
What Makes Learning Golang Easy
Go is a general-purpose language with its use cases and syntax closely resembling C and C++, making it easy to learn, especially for programmers with C and Java background.
Go has a smaller syntax and accomplishes tasks with a minimal set of features. It has detailed documentation, which makes concepts easy to understand.
Use Cases of Golang in FAANG
- Many tech giants, including Netflix, Uber, Intel, Twitter, and Facebook, use Golang in their products. Due to its cross-platform compatibility, Golang works great for cloud computing, cloud-native applications, and microservices.
- It also makes it possible to build applications with auto-scaling and multi-cluster support in Kubernetes using Docker.
- Go language is popularly used in DevOps and SRE (site reliability engineering). It’s also used in web development along with authentication systems for heightened security.
- Tech product companies build and manage scalable databases through Golang’s support. With Go, you can work with MongoDB, Oracle, Redis, MySQL, and more. For example, Medium (the online content platform) uses Golang for managing its databases.
Conclusion
Python has been dubbed the easiest programming language to learn, although I’ll admit that when I first started out in building websites, I was a little intimidated by programming languages in general. A few years down the road and a lot of practice in different languages under my belt, I have to agree with the assessment that Python is actually one of the easiest to get started with.