Old-school languages like C, C# and C++ still reign supreme as the ultimate choice to program in today. But what about other languages? Google has tried to change the world by introducing its new programming language Go. Officially opened in November 2009 after two years of design its syntax is broadly similiar to C. But why hasn't it kicked off? The designers of Go believe its syntax is easier to understand than high-end languages such as C, especially when things gets in-depth and complicated. But it comes to the fact that language designers don't have practical objectives. Most designers have the eagerness to build a language that stands out from the crowd without thinking of its usefulness. Some other reasons for failed languages is the accompanied poor documentation and support from designers. Take a look at this trend table sourced from Tiobe.
| Position Apr 2013 | Position Apr 2012 | Delta in Position | Programming Language | Ratings Apr 2013 | Delta Apr 2012 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 |  |
C | 17.862% | +0.31% | A |
| 2 | 2 | |
Java | 17.681% | +0.65% | A |
| 3 | 3 | |
C++ | 9.714% | +0.82% | A |
| 4 | 4 | |
Objective-C | 9.598% | +1.36% | A |
| 5 | 5 | |
C# | 6.150% | -1.20% | A |
| 6 | 6 | |
PHP | 5.428% | +0.14% | A |
| 7 | 7 | |
(Visual) Basic | 4.699% | -0.26% | A |
| 8 | 8 | |
Python | 4.442% | +0.78% | A |
| 9 | 10 |  |
Perl | 2.335% | -0.05% | A |
| 10 | 11 | |
Ruby | 1.972% | +0.46% | A |
| 11 | 9 |  |
JavaScript | 1.509% | -1.37% | A |
| 12 | 14 | |
Visual Basic .NET | 1.095% | +0.12% | A |
| 13 | 15 | |
Lisp | 0.905% | -0.05% | A |
| 14 | 16 | |
Pascal | 0.887% | +0.07% | A |
| 15 | 13 | |
Delphi/Object Pascal | 0.840% | -0.53% | A |
| 16 | 32 | |
Bash | 0.840% | +0.47% | A |
| 17 | 18 | |
Transact-SQL | 0.723% | -0.04% | A |
| 18 | 12 | |
PL/SQL | 0.715% | -0.66% | A |
| 19 | 24 | |
Assembly | 0.710% | +0.24% | A-- |
| 20 | 21 | |
Lua | 0.650% | +0.08% | B |
Languages such as C and Java are still the top players with PHP, Basic and Python follows distantly behind. Python is slowly growing in reputation, but is it the language of the future?
The answer is not known even when analysing statistics. Although Python is slowly gaining popularity the language itself is one of a kind. Its syntax is one of the first that actually focuses on making it easier for the engineer so full attention can be focused on the problem, not the language. When reading Python it is like reading English, but strict English indeed! I believe the fact that Python's syntax is incredibly simple, doesn't require an IDE/compiler and is being used by big corporates such as NASA and Google gives the language a big chance of being the language of the future. Python has influenced several languages some being Go, Cobra and a slight hint of Ruby. Languages go in and out of fashion all the time but Python is definitely here to stay. Learn Python and even if it dies from the face of Earth you have still learned (and hopefully excelled) the basic concepts of programming as they are relatively similar across all languages.
What do you think about the prospect of learning C and/or Python? I would like to hear your opinions!
