Ask HN: Which new programming language are you planning to pick up in 2019?
I am giving a good amount of thought to picking up Go for fun and profit this year.
29 comments
Dart
The language is pretty performant, nice to write and read, OOP, portable, strong typed, etc. Can be used for scripting, backends, etc.
With Flutter, you can get Android and iOS apps with the same codebase and near native performance. Downside is, not every functionality is supported, but it's getting better every week.
AngularDart gets you webfrontends without touching JS. Ok, it compiles Dart2JS because browsers are not supporting Dart (yet), but I don't have to write JS/TypeScript myself.
This will get even greater in a few years when Google releases Fuchsia aka Android-replacement.
Ok, there are downsides: - no WASM support - VM based for use outside of a mobile device/browser - lack of some libs/frameworks - not widely supported (like on the big 3 in the cloud or default install on top10 distros)
The language is pretty performant, nice to write and read, OOP, portable, strong typed, etc. Can be used for scripting, backends, etc.
With Flutter, you can get Android and iOS apps with the same codebase and near native performance. Downside is, not every functionality is supported, but it's getting better every week.
AngularDart gets you webfrontends without touching JS. Ok, it compiles Dart2JS because browsers are not supporting Dart (yet), but I don't have to write JS/TypeScript myself.
This will get even greater in a few years when Google releases Fuchsia aka Android-replacement.
Ok, there are downsides: - no WASM support - VM based for use outside of a mobile device/browser - lack of some libs/frameworks - not widely supported (like on the big 3 in the cloud or default install on top10 distros)
I don't plan to learn any new languages.
Also this might have been better as a poll:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll
Also this might have been better as a poll:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll
Polls on HN!? Do you have an example link where it has been used?
I've started dipping my toes in Rust and Elixir. Rust because of the concepts like borrow checker, highly strict compiler, traits etc. Elixir because it is based on Erlang and is highly concurrent due to Actors, and overall a very clean language syntactically. Both of these are very different from the traditional OOP language that I'm using at work (C#).
Actually this is something I wanted to do last year but didn't get enough motivation/energy to actually pursue it. Now I've forced myself to actually do stuff with Rust for the first quarter of 2019 and have made some progress. If things go as per my timelines, I'll focus on Elixir & Rust in alternate quarters. I've found this to be much better than tackling both in parallel which I was doing last year.
As an aside, in the last month of 2018 I dabbled with Pharo/Smalltalk just to investigate its highly dynamic nature, improvement to dev productivity & how things really were supposed to work in real OOP. It was very impressive, especially considering we had something like in 80s & 90s.
Actually this is something I wanted to do last year but didn't get enough motivation/energy to actually pursue it. Now I've forced myself to actually do stuff with Rust for the first quarter of 2019 and have made some progress. If things go as per my timelines, I'll focus on Elixir & Rust in alternate quarters. I've found this to be much better than tackling both in parallel which I was doing last year.
As an aside, in the last month of 2018 I dabbled with Pharo/Smalltalk just to investigate its highly dynamic nature, improvement to dev productivity & how things really were supposed to work in real OOP. It was very impressive, especially considering we had something like in 80s & 90s.
Last year I've dabbled mostly with high level languages: JavaScript, TypeScript, Python... a bit of Clojure.
I guess it would be time to pick something like Rust or Go. But I still haven't decided which one to pick up first.
I’ll be the outlier: I’m working on learning Chicken Scheme, because it’s a new paradigm and most of the libraries and frameworks I need are already there.
So far, I’m surprised at how easy it is to get started writing a web app with the Awful framework (for my fairly simple needs, it’s anything but awful). Then again, I’m not employed as a programmer, so I’m not evaluating new languages based solely on practicality.
So far, I’m surprised at how easy it is to get started writing a web app with the Awful framework (for my fairly simple needs, it’s anything but awful). Then again, I’m not employed as a programmer, so I’m not evaluating new languages based solely on practicality.
Ruby
I don't find Python fun at all. I wish I did.
I've been messing around a lot with Sonic Pi, which seems to use a Ruby-based DSL and I love the expressiveness of Ruby.
I don't find Python fun at all. I wish I did.
I've been messing around a lot with Sonic Pi, which seems to use a Ruby-based DSL and I love the expressiveness of Ruby.
Ruby is Perl and Lisp inspired from start.
Python sacrifices flexibility for consistency. Like Java but with duck typing.
Python sacrifices flexibility for consistency. Like Java but with duck typing.
You may be interested in the information in the 2018 developer survey on HackerRank. https://research.hackerrank.com/developer-skills/2019#skills
Scroll down a bit from the linked part of the page and you'll find the responses for languages for 2019.
Scroll down a bit from the linked part of the page and you'll find the responses for languages for 2019.
Either Ocaml or ReasonML. I always liked functional programming, and dabbled in haskell, but it always seemed too much of an investment to bring anybody who doesn't already like haskell into the project. But they did add deriving_via to haskell recently, so maybe I change my decision :P
Embedded C++ (EC++)
I know, Bjarne Stroustrup seems to hate EC++ and claims it is dead, but tell that to game developers and the NASA Curiosity Mars Rover. You can't tell that to Opportunity, which does appear dead, but Embedded C++ is not to blame, just some dust storms on Mars.
I know, Bjarne Stroustrup seems to hate EC++ and claims it is dead, but tell that to game developers and the NASA Curiosity Mars Rover. You can't tell that to Opportunity, which does appear dead, but Embedded C++ is not to blame, just some dust storms on Mars.
Rust!
New concepts, systems programming, seems to be getting some traction! Plus the book is awesome: https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/
New concepts, systems programming, seems to be getting some traction! Plus the book is awesome: https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/
Going with Rust too, while most of my company is starting to embrace Go. I feel like the weird guy, but having a strong Java/C# experience I think Rust complements my knowledge.
Learning by book (O'Reilly) and by nano projects / examples.
Learning by book (O'Reilly) and by nano projects / examples.
Admittedly learning a new programming language is very far down my "teach myself something programming related" priority list, if I was to learn a new language it will either be Julia or Elixir.
I'm going to continue messing around with Go for webservices and server stuff. Going to try to pick up either R or Python or a little of both for ML and bioinformatics stuff.
C. I only know high level languages (JS, Ruby) but never delved into lower level ones. Not from lack of interest but rather lack of time. I'm going to change that this year.
I've never actually planned to pick up any languages in the past. Normally just get forced into it.
It might be Ruby this year though, just because it's a part of our current tech stack.
It might be Ruby this year though, just because it's a part of our current tech stack.
Trying to stick with C++, mainly because it's everywhere. But jeez, it's a really huge language with seemingly endless amount of stuffs to learn.
I've been interested in Go for a while, but I never seem to find the time. I just started a new Python project last night.
Perfect time to pick up Go!
On a somewhat related note, does anyone think it's a good idea to pick up Android programming at this stage?
I’m conflicted between Go and Rust. As my codebases get bigger, maintaining them in Python is not fun.
Julia(for studying data science) and Pharo(for studying UI?)
everyone is going for rust. Is it that good? what are the really good use cases of rust?
Sql and Regex
Rust
Python
Rust
elixir