I’ve been working with a Javascript (+ TypeScript) + Java + SQL stack for the last 10 years.
For 2024 I’d like to learn a new programming language, just for fun. I don’t have any particular goals in mind, I just want to learn something new. If I can use it later professionally that’d be cool, but if not that’s okay too.
Requirements:
- Runs on linux
- Not interested in languages created by Google or Apple
- No “joke languages”, please
Thank you very much!
EDIT: I ended up ordering the paperback version of the Rust book. Maybe one day I’ll contribute to the Lemmy code base or something :P Thank you all for the replies!!!
Ada and COBOL are still where the big money is, and still will be for years to come.
Kotlin is by far my fav language. I’ve been astonished by its capabilities used with the “Exposed” library
Yeah! It can even compile to JS and the JVM! Interestingly, it also supports the functional paradigm as you can see when programming with Compose.
C# is a great choice.
Incredibly versatile language and should be an easy jump from java.
My two cents: I strongly agree with this. We just deployed an intranet blazor server app running on Linux (don’t know which distro) and apache (we might switch to nginx soon). It works very well and we had to write less than 100 lines of JS (mostly for file download and upload) One of my workmates was hired one year ago and at the time he didn’t know anything about .Net stack. Now he is mostly autonomous and he loves .Net and blazor in particular. Obviously YMMV.
Bundle size is my only complaint with blazor, has to send the .net runtime in webassembly to the client.
Aside from this, C# on the browser is an absolute joy to use. I’d use for everything if I could.
You are talking about Blazor webassembly, I am talking about Blazor server side, which loads as fast as a “normal” website.
Server side Blazor has other caveats, that’s why I specified it is an intranet project, where server side Blazor fits very well. Anyway, at the moment, Microsoft is still putting effort in polishing both type of Blazor hosting model.
This is not our first Blazor intranet web app and some of them are running in production for one year more or less.
It is really a joy to program using Blazor, especially if you need cross tab/browsers/device/user real time communication, which comes almost free thanks to underlying SignalR channel.
Ah you mean Razor then. Blazor lets you run C# in the browser, but Razor is the one that needs a server and streams changes to the client using signalR.
I know Microsoft didn’t get this right with naming and you got caught in the trap but there are 2 (actually 3) ways of hosting Blazor.
I also see that this confusion won’t help OP choose Blazor over some more coherent dev environment hehehehe
Razor
Razor is the templating engine that’s been there since the original MVC. Blazor Server is the one that needs a server and streams changes to the client using signalR. Blazor WASM is the one that uses Web Assembly. As of .Net 8, Blazor can now also ne used as a generic SSR backend. They all use Razor Components, which is a component model using the Razor engine.
Not to be confused with Razor Pages, which is also a generic SSR backend.
Just don’t bring your damn factories over. For some reason Java developers just love unnecessary layers of abstraction and forcing that ridiculous factory pattern.
And they bring it to any language they develop in after Java.
If you see someone saying “no Java developers” for a position, this is why. They’ve been trained incorrectly, as a joke.
All the core parts of dotnet (e.g.
roslyn) seem to be built that way. I find them very frustrating to work on. Between that and the whole nuget thing being somewhat FOSS unfriendly, I’d steer people away from C#.I don’t get how NuGet is FOSS unfriendly. I mean, at worst you could set up your own repository. All the tools are local. It wouldn’t be difficult to set up your own source if that was absolutely necessary.
The whole thing is built around pulling binary packages from servers, and there’s no consistent way of building those things from source.
It’s extremely difficult to package anything non-trivial without referencing those binary blobs.
They had to build this whole custom thing (https://github.com/dotnet/dotnet) just to make the SDK itself buildable from source, and most releases still have some binary dependencies. They only did it for the SDK so it could be packaged in Debian, etc.
Agreed, as a Java developer you will hopefully find C# familiar but more refined. They share a lot of the same features now, but C# seems to do them all better, in my opinion. Linq especially is just so much more enjoyable for me than Java Streams.
.NET Core (now just .NET) readily runs on Linux and Visual Studio has a free edition that is superb - an IDE provided by the language developers. Of course, you can always use Visual Studio Code or a third-party offering like Rider (by JetBrains so the transition from Java could be very easy of you are already familiar with their programs).
My only complaint on C# is that the .NET versioning is a little confusing if you aren’t already familiar. However, that’s only an issue if you work with legacy code. New versions after .NET 5 are all the same naming and upgrading is generally effortless, just changing a single number in your project file and downloading the proper SDK
In my previous company we had a dot net + Microsoft SQL server stack. The code base was admittedly really really bad but those .NET Web Forms were horrendous to work with. C# in general felt very close to Java at the time, except for the LINQ queries I guess.
I’m sure that, like PHP, the technology has come a long way and things are better and more modern right now. This was before Nugget was even a thing! Regardless, I feel like those chapters in my life are finished. I’d rather try something actually new to me!
I get the impression OP wants to try something new. Java and C# are pretty similar.
PHP is a really fun language syntactically and has a surprisingly good built-in library.
As a PHP Dev: Please avoid PHP unless you have to use it.
What would you recommend learning instead?
My team is currently exploring rust as an alternative because we have to do a lot of api calls and data crunching real fast. So rust?
As a php dev who actually writes clean code and doesn’t blame people writing shitty code on a language: don’t listen to this fella.
As a php dev who actually writes clean code while cleaning up after other people because
Getting things done is more important: Don’t give people the tools to write shitty code.
I know it’s fashionable to shit on PHP but it’s significantly better than it once was… it’s honestly like a cleaner python that lets you use brackets.
Sure, could be/was a lot worse than today. Still, PHP gives one way too much rope to hang themselves with.
Hey, I grew up on C++… you’d be amazed how comparatively safe PHP is by comparison. I don’t disagree though, but I do appreciate having features like var-vars around for when I need them.
Cleaner python? Hahaha that’s hilarious
I love Clojure+Clojurescript
Perhaps Elixir is worth a look.
I see you mentioned JS, but not TS. If you haven’t tried TypeScript, you 100% should! It helps a lot at scale.
Also, I really do recommend Rust. It’s pretty awesome having the errors actually make sense, and it’s not as complicated as the hype makes it out to be (until you get into async rust lol).
As others have mentioned, C# is also awesome.
We do use TS as well, yes!
Rust is definitely a language I’m considering. Syntax looks a bit scary, though!
Rust syntax is totally fine really. It often feels like writing python
Kotlin would be the most straightforward/useful professionally if you’re primarily Java. Other Java stack options are Scala or (shudders) Clojure
As the other person said, Python. Or if you want something lower level, how about Rust?
Rust doesn’t even have to be lower level
C# has been doing a lot of really cool things lately, and has first-class Linyx support.
Id suggest rust, gets you a step closer to the hardware and a bit of a different paradigm than Java while still feeling high level.
Except that actually doing anything with hardware is “unsafe.”
Well, yeah, because doing things with hardware is just always unsafe in that sense, no matter if you’re implementing it in Rust or C or Assembly. As long as you know what you’re doing (and the hardware manufacturer did, too), it’s not actually unsafe.
Rust just decided to isolate the code parts where you need to be extra smart like that, whereas in C or Assembly, you might need to be extra smart throughout the entire code base.
Obviously, no sane C programmer would just randomly start scrubbing memory addresses in UI code, but it’s still just helpful to have the naughty code clearly indicated.
Rust is definitely something I’ve been keeping an eye on. The syntax looks a bit scary, to be honest, but looks very versatile.
I’ll second Rust, it’s so fresh and versatile! You can go from super low level stuff all the way to things like web frameworks with WebAssembly and whatnot.
The memory model is definitely a unique beast but I’ve found it gave me some insight on how it all actually works behind the scenes and I appreciate the strictly enforced correctness too.
Definitely rust, and definitely use rustrover from jetbrains for an IDE. It’s amazing
I’m a Rust noob. At first it’s daunting and nothing will compile. But it’s getting easier and I feel like getting over that initial difficulty is mainly a matter of internalizing a few basic rules, after which it feels more natural. So from what I’ve seen so far, I wouldn’t rate Rust as especially difficult. It certainly feels easier than C++.
For a really challenging language I’d suggest Haskell. That one nearly broke my brain because thinking functionally is really very different if you’re used to more procedural languages. Rust, it seems, teaches you new discipline, but Haskell teaches you a different way of thinking.
Anyway, that’s how it feels as a relative noob in both.
Prolog.
It will free your mind.
I’m gonna be the weirdo recommending Ruby. I really like it as a language, and it’s pretty fun to write. Plus it’s got a lot of libraries so you can do fun projects like Discord chat bots.
I absolutely hate ruby. I would almost rather write php. Ruby just feels like every decision they made is wrong, and designed to add confusion.
I feel like you and I wouldn’t get along
Maybe. I just do not understand the love for ruby. Literally all the ruby code I’ve ever seen is just awful. Which isn’t necessarily a dig at the language, but it just seems like it makes it so easy to write terrible code.
Also, what’s the deal with
unless? “Do this unless …” is so unintuitive it’s almost like it was designed that way as a joke.
I have this one weird friend who does competitive one-line-programming in Ruby. It’s supposedly the best one-liner language.
I can believe it. The way Ruby implements “everything is an object” gives it amazing flexibility. Though the one-liners for Ruby aren’t as intricate and beautiful as Perl one-liners.
I been meaning to learn Ruby to get around using Python. I like Ruby syntax better.
Give Clojure a go.
It’s a modern variant of lisp that runs on the JVM and has deep interoperability with Java, so you can leverage your existing knowledge of Java libraries.
But as it’s a lisp, it will have you thinking about problems in a very different way.
Can you name any real world usages for Clojure? I did some lisp once when I was a sprout and loved it, would be awesome to do it on the jvm now that I work with java every day.
It’s a very flexible language so can find a niche almost anywhere. I know of fintech companies that use it extensively for their back end data processing systems, and I’ve seen some really interesting stuff done with Clojure and Apache Kafka. They’re a good fit for each other - Clojure, as a lisp, is optimised for processing infinite lists of things and Kafka topics can be easily conceptualised as an infinite stream of data.
Also, when combined with Clojurescript, it provides a single language that can be used full-stack, so could drop in anywhere that you might otherwise use Node.
But I think one of the best things about it is the way it forces you to re-evaluate your approach to development. It’s a completely functional language so you have to throw away any preconceptions about OO and finding new ways to resolve old problems is one of the things that should be a joy for most developers, even if it has no practical application.
IMHO it would fit use cases of java, mostly long running services. But it is a hosted language with different implementations on top of javascript, .net etc. So it might branch out other use cases like frontend dev. It has a small but active community. Although it might be most popular lisp nowadays.
If you are not familiar with lisp and aim is having fun while learning new things then clojure will fit nicely. It is so joyful once you get the initial weirdness because it will feel different. You just fire up a REPL, leave it running in background, hook your ide/editor to it and start sending evals. The application grows while it is running. I find the workflow quiet enjoyable.
I have a couple of suggestions based on what you want!
Ocaml: A good intro into functional programming
The languages you’ve used seem to be primarily imperative style. Ocaml is not commonly used in the industry (with some exceptions), but it has a vibrant small community, and more importantly, because it’s a functional language, it will be different enough from what you know. Even if you don’t use it in industry, it will teach you a lot that would be hard to learn using non-functional languages.
Ocaml is a compiled language, with a very fast compiler and very good type system.
Scala: Another good intro to functional programming that’s more forgiving
Although scala is mostly a functional language, it still has most of the gestures of imperative OOP languages like Java. It is also far more mainstream than ocaml and has used in industry.
Scala also runs in JVM like Java, and thus gives you access to most JVM libraries.
Rust
Intro into low level programming Other answers spoke enough about Rust so I won’t dive here
Zig
similar to Rust in low-levelness, but less mainstream, better C interop, and other interesting differences
Raku: the result of 15 years of programming language design
Raku, formerly perl 6, was almost redesigned from the ground up to resolve complaints of perl 5. It has a very interesting design, with a gradual type system, a blend of functional and OOP paradigms, plus interesting syntax features like sigils and grammars.
There are many interesting languages out there. I could talk forever about this, but I’ll leave you with the above. I personally would recommend ocaml if you’re interested in functional programming or care about performance. Otherwise, Raku, since its very interesting but doesn’t perform well (Raku’s VM is still immature and under development).
I’m sorry, but as someone who was paid for Perl 5, I have trouble seeing the appeal for Raku.
The first thing they should have done was nuke Perl from the orbit. Instead they built on top of the magic variable hell.
So no thanks. PHP is much better.
Coming from JavaScript, they may enjoy using ReScript instead of Ocaml.
I tried to give OP languages that would be reasonably different from what they know already, so that its more fun (imo).
However I didn’t know of ReScript, so I gotta check it out.
Ocaml is going to be my next learn for fun language forsure! I’m getting sucked into the functional paradigm hole. The option/result types in rust have made working in languages without them much worse.
