Everyone has to start somewhere when it comes to programming. Which programming language do aspiring technology professionals learn and use first?
According to Stack Overflow’s latest developer survey, which asked 89,184 developers in 185 countries, HTML/CSS tops the list of programming languages most used by people just learning to code, closely followed by JavaScript. Python follows. Check out the complete chart.
The number of aspiring technical professionals using SQL, Java, C++, and C is much smaller (but still significant). There is one interesting thing to note. Older languages are still popular among people learning to code, while newer, hotter languages are used by far fewer people, such as: TypeScript, Golang, Kotlin, etc.
If you’re new to coding and interested in Python, be sure to visit Python.org. A useful beginner’s guide to programming and Python. From there, you can explore online options such as Datacamp (their introductory Python course includes 11 videos and 57 exercises) and Udemy (which offers a variety of free introductory courses, including one for “absolute beginners”). You can choose between documentation and tutorials. Code Academy. Also, w3schools has extensive (free) Python tutorials.
If you want to learn JavaScript, there is a fair amount of material online including, but not limited to, websites like The Modern JavaScript Tutorial, w3schools (also), and Codecademy.
HTML is essential to learn for a variety of technical roles (such as front-end developers and web developers), and there are decades of documentation and tutorials available online, including at HTML.com and w3schools. If you want to do a job related to the web, you must learn HTML/CSS.
HTML, Python, and JavaScript power a vast number of websites and other services across the economy, many of which are highly specialized. If you’re just starting out, learning these three languages opens the door to all kinds of opportunities, from website and mobile app development to data analysis. Once you master programming principles, you can expand your knowledge to more specialized languages.
