If you’re planning to expand your IT knowledge or apply for a position in this field, knowing at least one programming language is mandatory. Even if you’re doing design work or writing screenplays for video games, your work has to be translatable into code to be integrated into a bigger project. To make that possible, you have to know a programming language.
Unfortunately, learning even the easiest programming language that will suit your needs and way of thinking can be challenging. To help you choose, we've compiled a list of programming languages for beginners or experienced IT professionals who want to evolve their skillset. Each of these computer languages can create excellent opportunities to get the best tech job.
HTML
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Hello World</h1>
</body>
</html>
HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language and is used to create web pages. For many IT professionals, HTML is considered the easiest programming language to learn. However, keep in mind that, technically, HTML is not a programming, but a markup language. This means that HTML envelops or marks up data with HTML tags so that a browser can read and display them.
The Language Basics and Advantages
HTML “explain” what purpose each section of data is meant to serve on a webpage. For example, HTML tags signify which part of an uploaded document is the title and what part is a heading or an image. However, HTML doesn’t actually involve any executable commands, which is why most programmers exclude it from the “programming” category.
Nevertheless, learning HTML is similar to learning an easy programming language. Its logic is clear and easy to grasp. Once you master its basic functionalities, you can also figure out how to include some more advanced elements, such as <dialog> or <details>/<summary>.
Another great thing about HTML is that it often goes hand-in-hand with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to construct sophisticated styles, and JavaScript for scripting software. HTML can be a gateway for beginners to move onto actual coding languages used for programming. It is the best first language to learn before actual programming, because:
- You can learn the basics in just a few hours.
- No previous programming knowledge is required.
- It uses straightforward opening and closing tags.
- You can observe changes or bugs in the code as you type in a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor.
Disadvantages and Who Is It For
The biggest “shortcoming” of HTML is that it doesn't offer extensive logic functions, conditional statements, or essential mathematical functions as other programming languages do. This is, again, because it’s not actually a programming language, but a markup one.
HTML is also the easiest “programming” language for kids to learn, whether they want to be full-stack engineers, front-end engineers, website editors, and web, email, or mobile app developers in the future.
CSS
<style type="text/css">
h1 {
color: DeepSkyBlue;
}
</style>
<h1>Hello, world!</h1>
As its name suggests, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) determines the look of your web page and its content when viewed by a browser. It also defines menus, background images, animations, and text boxes. CSS makes a webpage readable, functional, and more pleasant to look at. Thanks to CSS, websites can be optimized to display correctly on any screen, be it on your computer or phone.
The Language Basics and Advantages
Like HTML, CSS is also hailed as the easiest programming language for beginners, even though, also like HTML, it’s actually not one. Instead, CSS markup is used for styling layouts, fonts, and colors for a webpage's content. It can also serve to make pages more accessible to vision-impaired users.
CSS is relatively simple to learn, with plenty of educational material available on YouTube, discussion forums, online classes, and printed books. The main advantage of CSS is that you can modify the look of a webpage by rewriting one line of code. You’ll often find CSS advertised as the easiest programming language, and part of that is true - it’s very easy to grasp.
In general, CSS is an excellent choice for aspiring programmers because:
- It’s very straightforward.
- Beginners can learn the basics in a few weeks.
- Using the <class> tag, you can define the style of many HTML elements at once, reducing bandwidth use.
- It is excellent for separating content and presentation using simple parameters.
Disadvantages and Who Is It For
As mentioned, CSS is not a programming language, let alone the most basic programming language. This language does have its shortcomings, such as: You cannot name a rule, so that someone else can use the same rule even if its selector (the piece of markup signifying a specific bit of data) changes. You also cannot use the style specified in one rule as part of another rule - instead, you’d have to specify the same thing twice, essentially duplicating the styling.
Regardless, CSS remains in-demand among beginners and IT professionals. You cannot create a visually appealing site without using a combination of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. CSS is a good choice for front-end developers, full-stack developers, CSS and mobile app developers, bloggers, and website editors, and a simple “almost” programming language overall.
JavaScript
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>JavaScript Hello World Example</title>
<script src="js/app.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
JavaScript is the final part of the front-end development trio, along with HTML and CSS. It’s also an actual programming language, unlike the first two options on this list. This light programming language has come a long way from its beginnings. Today, besides adding behavior and interactivity to websites, with JavaScript, you can create web and server applications, smartwatch and mobile apps, or games.
The Language Basics and Advantages
JavaScript is a front-end and back-end scripting language used to code apps and the Internet of Things (IoT). It is officially the easiest computer programming language to learn. JavaScript adds interactivity to websites through HTML-element manipulation.
Its capabilities allow solving mathematical equations, defining search algorithms, data analysis, or even powering game engines. JavaScript allows client-side and server-side functionality implementation using Node.js - JavaScript back-end environment.
JavaScript, as the name suggests, completes its functions through tiny scripts. It uses libraries like jQuery, React, or Node.js, and frameworks such as Angular. Despite being the simplest programming language, JavaScript can make input-based logical resolutions or programming loops.
JavaScript supports most structured programming syntax from C, such as switch and if statements, and while/do-while loops. This language makes a clear difference between statements and expressions. JavaScript is also a dynamically typed programming language.
JavaScript is an excellent choice for a first programming language because:
- You can create lines of code and test them in the browser in real-time.
- After learning the language foundations, you can create software applications.
- It's easy to pick up by experienced programmers due to its resemblance to many other programming languages.
- It supports loops, expressions, statements, delegations, and promises.
Disadvantages and Who Is It For
There are some drawbacks to JavaScript: For example, browsers and their versions interpret JavaScript differently. To ensure that JavaScript’s functionalities are compatible with older browsers, you'll have to run the code on individual platforms before publishing it. What’s more, one of the downsides of it being the easiest programming language is that JavaScript’s client-side security is questionable, as many users can change the code if they gain access to it. And anyone can gain access to it, since it’s usually freely viewable.
JavaScript offers speed, strong support, straightforward structure, great interoperability with other languages, superior functionality, and flexibility. If you are looking for a programming language with a low knowledge barrier, JavaScript is an excellent choice. What’s more, it’s used every day by front-end developers and engineers, full-stack developers and engineers, back-end, web, and JavaScript developers.
Python
print('Hello World')
Python is the easiest programming language for beginners with non-IT background thanks to its easy readability. This means the language uses English words as its basis and avoids complex lines of code.
It's very accessible to beginners, but that doesn’t detract from how powerful it can be. In fact, Python is a staple of every list for the most sought-after programming languages. For example, Netflix and Google use Python in their development.
The Language Basics and Advantages
Python is considered to be a multi-paradigm programming language. In other words, you can use Python for object-oriented or procedural programming. Object-oriented programming is organized around “objects” - i.e., datasets - rather than functions. The opposite is true of procedural programming, which specifies a sequence of executable steps to be performed. Due to its dual nature, Python is not the easiest programming language on our list, but it’s extremely versatile.
Python can be used for back-end development, data analysis, and as a basis for entire game engines. Python and other coding languages work well together, too.
An integral part of Python's continuous popularity lies in its sizeable resource library. It includes over 300,000 packages (and counting) for purposes such as machine learning, automation, data analysis, building graphical interfaces, and many, many others. Again, it’s not the easiest programming language, but to get a job, having Python in your skillset can be a life-saver.
As an accessible general-purpose coding language, Python is an integral part of most introductory CompSci courses. However, just because it’s basic doesn’t mean it doesn’t support some pretty high-level applications. For example, Python is the computing language of choice for a vast number of artificial intelligence projects. With its modular architecture, Python is a good scripting tool for natural language processing. As the easiest and first programming language for many developers, Python excels on many fronts:
- As an easily testable and modifiable language.
- As a language that uses whitespace intelligently, thereby making lines of code more approachable for beginners.
- Its resource libraries and vast programming community offer more support for users than most other languages.
- It simplifies code readability by using English language words.
Disadvantages and Who Is It For
The amount of programming freedom Python brings comes with a couple of shortcomings. The first one is slow performance since line-by-line code execution requires more work, slowing the overall performance. It also takes up a lot of memory space. Another reason why it may not be the easiest computer language to tackle is that its database access is fairly crude, which might present difficulties even to seasoned developers. What’s more, you constantly have to be on alert for runtime errors, and thoroughly test each iteration of a piece of code.
Nonetheless, as witnessed by its popularity and unparalleled resource base, Python remains the best choice for web developers, data scientists, software engineers, quality assurance engineers, and full-stack developers.
Ruby
puts "Hello World"
Similar to Python, Ruby is all about accessibility, regardless of the user's previous experience. It’s another contender for the easiest-to-learn programming language, thanks to its clear syntax. And with the addition of Ruby on Rails, a server-side web application network coded in Ruby, its capacities have been greatly enhanced.
The Language Basics and Advantages
Ruby focuses on productivity and clarity as a programming language, while the Ruby on Rails framework makes web application creation much easier. It greatly resembles Python, but their main difference is in the field of application. While it can be used for data analysis, and as a scripting language, Ruby is primarily used for web development. It’s also known as perhaps the easiest programming language to learn for a beginner in real programming.
Ruby’s creator Yukihiro Matsumoto wanted to implement the best parts of Lisp, Smalltalk, Perl, Eiffel, and Ada development languages to create Ruby. This allowed for its excellent flexibility: You can customize every aspect of the language to help you code better, and achieve the same goal using different solutions. For example, if you prefer your symbols spelled out for ease of typing, you can set Ruby up to work like that.
Ruby is a favorite among programmers and one of the highly sought-after programming skills on the job market. As potentially the easiest object-oriented programming language, Ruby represents an excellent stepping stone to learning the hardest programming language - C++, widely renowned as the best programming language for games - or an esoteric programming language, such as Malbolge.
Most programmers use this language for web app development because of Ruby on Rails. Many other web frameworks, such as Python's Django or Catalyst in Perl, borrowed ideas from Ruby on Rails. However, it can also be used for data processing, automation, scraping, etc. Ruby is fairly approachable in terms of programming language difficulty, and it's excellent because of:
- Straightforward syntax
- Flexibility in creating solutions for a single problem
- Open-source code that allows Ruby to continue evolving
- A friendly and vast helping community
Disadvantages and Who Is It For
Ruby falls short on a few fronts: First of all, its flexibility can be its downfall, as the versatile approach to problem solving can make any debugging pretty complicated. Secondly, the Ruby on Rails framework is not particularly scalable, according to experts, as massive data transfers can be slowed down or interrupted due to the framework's performance. Ruby on Rails also has some security vulnerabilities which have yet to be addressed.
All in all, Ruby is a powerful and versatile general-purpose programming language that is an excellent choice to get started with coding for beginners. As potentially the easiest object-oriented programming language to learn, Ruby is in high demand, especially for future web developers. For those proficient in Ruby on Rails, salaries also remain highly competitive and lucrative.
Swift
print("Hello, World!")
Just as Java experienced a sudden rise in popularity, Swift is now all the rage among the mobile app developers. Swift is exclusively used to build apps on all Apple devices, including Macs, iPads, iPhones, and Apple Watches. Apple created it in 2014.
This is a programming language with low difficulty ranking, as its modern programming features make it very accessible for beginners. Swift is welcomed by most IT companies today, as there are thousands of open positions for iOS developers in the US alone.
The Language Basics and Advantages
Swift is the perfect programming language for those looking to make their mark on the mobile market. It has a modern syntax and an extensive library for beginners. Because of its structure and simplicity, Swift code is quickly pushing out C-based mobile apps on iOS devices.
Swift was designed to employ easy and understandable lines of code, like with Python and Ruby. It's one of the basic coding languages that uses classes and structures, functions, arrays, conditionals, and loops. Swift is a fine addition to any learning roster, because:
- It is a simple and fast language for those who want to learn programming
- It will become the dominant language on iOS mobile devices
- The demand for Swift developers is constantly high
- There are plenty of learning resources online
Disadvantages and Who Is It For
Since it is a young language, Swift is not without flaws. One of them is code compatibility. Since Swift is constantly updated, there might be a chance of current code becoming unusable in future versions. Since it is a very new and exclusive language, despite being the easiest coding language for Apple devices, only about 5% of developers know how to use Swift. Hence, while its learning resources are still growing, it cannot compare to the vast libraries and resources more established programming languages have.
Nonetheless, Swift makes a compelling case for itself; thanks to Apple's efforts to continue improving it, this language has a bright future. Most sought-after jobs that require Swift knowledge are those of iOS developers, full-stack engineers, and front-end engineers.