How To Pick a Programming Language in 2025... And Should You?

Key Takeaways

Let's talk about what you should actually learn and how picking the right language could be the difference between blending in with the sea of developers or standing out. Now, I need you to answer this question. Why are you learning programming? And what are you going to do with the programming language that you learn? Before I can give you any advice, you need to know the answer to that because the truth is a programming language is really just a tool. No one language is better than the other. It really depends on how you're going to use it. Are you learning this to land a job, to build the next big tech startup? Are you doing this for a hobby? Or are you doing it to build computer science foundations? You need to know the answer to this before you can pick a language. Now, if you're doing this for your career, then what you want to focus on is market demand, saturation, and how you can stand out. Now, if you're doing this just to build something, then you purely want to look at what tool does the job the best and is the easiest for you to adopt. And if you're picking a language to build the foundations, then you want to consider something lower level, maybe like C or Rust. So, please answer that question and that's going to help you in the rest of the video as I give you some concrete recommendations. So, let's start off with the most popular languages and then I'll get into some concrete recommendations. Now, first, just because I say a language is popular does not mean you should flock over and start learning it. They're popular for a reason, but it doesn't mean it's the best language to get into as I'm going to elaborate here. So we have languages like Python, of course, JavaScript, which are just the most popular languages that are the most in demand. Behind that, we have languages like C++, C, Java, Go, PHP, and probably a few others that I'm forgetting. The point is, this list of languages is something you've probably heard of before. And if you learn any of these, you're going to be set. You're going to be able to land a job if you're really, really good at them. And you're going to have skills that companies are looking for. But so do so many other people. If you think of all of the developers that you know, I'm willing to bet that more than half of them only know Python or JavaScript or those are the only languages that they would put on their resume or they're comfortable actually writing code in. So, if everybody is learning Python or JavaScript, just because it's the most in demand, it doesn't mean it's what you should be learning. There are a lot of other languages out there and you can be a lot more competitive even if there's less roles learning a language like Rust for example in the next few years than you might be by just being a pure Python developer. So I want to encourage you here. Think outside of what's just the most popular and ask yourself why am I learning this language and what is it going to do for me. With that in mind, let me go through a bunch of the different languages and discuss which ones you should learn based on which use case. Now, before we dive any deeper, I do want to give a quick shout out to today's video sponsor, Boot.dev, an online learning platform that's changing the way people learn back-end development. What sets Boot.dev apart is how they keep you actively engaged. They've taken inspiration from modern game mechanics to turn back education into something that's actually fun. And the best part is that you can access all of their content for free. Here's what you can expect. Instead of passively watching hours of video, boot.dev Dev puts you in the driver's seat with hands-on interactive lessons. You'll build real projects as you go, coding directly in your browser. It's laser focused on back-end development, so you'll get deep experience with things like APIs, databases, and serverside logic using languages like Python and Go. And one of the coolest parts is that it's structured just like a game. You'll level up, unlock new content, and stay motivated as you progress. And because it's packed with exercises and real world challenges, you'll be writing tons of code, which we all know is the only way to get better as a software developer. So, if you're serious about becoming a back-end developer or leveling up your current skills, then check out boot.dev and use my code tech with Tim for 25% off your first year when you choose the annual plan. I've been using it and I've got to say it's pretty addictive. Now, of course, we have Python. If you just want to build something really quickly, if you want to learn coding quite fast, if you're doing this as a hobby, if you just want to build anything with machine learning, AI, or simple kind of back-end web stuff, then definitely Python is what I would go with. If you're looking to build beautiful user interfaces, you want to make web applications or websites, then definitely learn JavaScript. Beyond that, we have all kinds of other languages. If you want to make games, you should be learning something like C or C++ with something like Unity. If you want to be making mobile applications, then you're going to need to be using something like Swift or Cotlin or maybe Objective C or Java depending on the route that you go down. The point is you need to know what it is that you want to build. Do you want to build mobile apps? Do you want to build websites? Do you want to work more on the back end? Do you want to work with cloud infrastructure? If you know that, then there's just an answer on what language you should learn because usually there's one that dominates in that space. But I want to expose to you a few less popular languages that you should definitely consider because I do expect them to be more popular in the future and because the less people are learning them, you can really gain a competitive edge and have that niche expertise that so many developers are lacking. So number one is Go. Now Go is still very popular. It's usually ranked the fifth or sixth most popular programming language. It's growing in popularity. It's relatively easy to learn, similar to something like Python in its syntax, but it's extremely high performance, and it's used for things like distributed systems, back-end servers, cloud computing, very, very popular in terms of using the micros service architecture. If you've ever heard of that, if you're watching this video, you probably haven't, but the point is Go is a great language if you mostly want to focus on the cloud and backend. And it's also becoming more popular, so I think it's definitely worth learning. Next, we have something like Rust. Now, Rust is definitely a lower level language, but it's used for building things like embedded systems, compilers, again, back-end systems, or desktop applications, and it's gaining a lot of popularity, and a lot of people really love Rust. I think we're going to see a much larger community for that coming up in the future. Next, we have Elixir. Now, this is great for scalable back-end applications. It's definitely more niche. It's not as popular as many other on this list, but there's a lot of companies that use Elixir that need Elixir developers and definitely are struggling to find them because it's just not that popular of a language. So, if you were to learn something like this, it may not be the most popular thing. You may not have thousands of jobs you could apply to, but the few that you are applying to, you'd be extremely qualified for. Next on my list, I have something like Haskell. This is used for finance and fintech, academia and research, building compilers and static analysis tools and used for AI and data science as well. It has a lot of other use cases. It's a lot more niche. It's not as in demand or as popular online. But again, if you were to learn this, you would really have a competitive advantage. Next, we have languages like Nim or Zigg, which are used for command line tools, system programming, game development, some web development as well. They're pretty versatile and for example, something like Zigg is much more of a C replacement for modern programming. Now, I won't lie, I'm not an expert in these languages, so my description might be a little bit off, but the point is there's a vast ecosystem of languages, libraries, and technologies that aren't just Python or JavaScript. And that's what I want to instill in your brain in this video. Now, with all that said, there's definitely some value in picking a really popular language. You want to make sure you don't pick something that's so obscure that no one uses it or it doesn't have a good ecosystem. And we can look at something like Flutter or Dart, for example, where it was really promising, a lot of people were learning it, but it just didn't have that ecosystem or the resources. And now we're seeing a little bit of a plateau. So for sure, you want to be careful. You want to make sure there's an ecosystem, resources, a community around the language that you're using. And you want to find a nice balance between something that's not the absolute most popular saturated in- demand thing and something that's actually useful that you could be really good at and find a job relatively quickly. So with that in mind, I'm going to tell you my kind of unique position here and what I would recommend to you in 2025. Now, first I would suggest have some familiarity with one of those main super popular languages. I would recommend Python or JavaScript just because they're relatively easy to learn and you can build stuff super quickly with them. I then would suggest, especially if you're looking to land a job, learn something that's not as popular. I've been suggesting Go quite a bit because it really kind of fits that balance. I think Rust is really going to see a lot of demand in the future and there still are a lot of jobs for it. Or even learning something like C++. Sure, that's still pretty popular, but a lot of new developers just aren't learning those languages. go with something a little bit outside of the mainstream that still has that market demand, but that's not the most popular thing in the world so you're going to stand out from the rest of the competition. Now, look, I have a private mentorship group. I'm actually opening it up again in about a month. If you want to sign up for the wait list, I'll leave it down below. And almost every single person in that group strictly writes code in Python and JavaScript. That's fine, but we had someone come in recently that was really good at PHP. So that person immediately started getting job applications, is about to land a job right now, most likely in the interviews that they're going through. And it was much less work for them because they were actually good in something that not everybody is an expert in. There's not 10,000 PHP developers applying to a job because again, it's a little bit more niche and it's not as popular. I would really suggest that you consider that fact so that you can be different and you can be useful at the same time. That's the important thing. That's what's going to make you stand out and I think that's going to help a lot of developers in 2025 if they move off just the super common track and are just looking like every other person coming out of a computer science degree. Now, of course, I will say if you want to build something really specific, then do some research, find the best language for it, and use that. But if you're just looking generally for how do I break into tech, that's my advice. And I hope this video gave you at least a framework for how you should make that decision. In terms of learning to code in 2025, I know it can be a little bit intimidating. I would say keep going. So many people now are giving up. They're not learning the fundamentals. They're not getting the foundations done. And the more and more people that are writing code, especially those vibe coding, are having no idea what they're doing, the more that people like us that actually have the foundations that put in the work that know what we're doing are going to be in demand to clean up the massive mess of what these people are doing. I'm going to make some more videos on this topic, but that is my thoughts overall in terms of kind of the market. Don't freak out. If you actually put in the work, it will pay off. I see it even today with many of my students landing jobs, and I know that you can do it if you put in the work. Anyways, guys, I hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, make sure to leave a like, subscribe, and I will see you in the next one. [Music]