Finding your preferred programming language

This is one of the questions that comes up most often among new developers:

Which programming language should I base my whole career on?

Don't base your career on a specific language, and even less so on a particular framework.

Of course you can develop expertise as the years go by, but above all, don't box yourself in by saying:

"As long as I live, I will never do [language]"

Knowing how to contribute to a project outside your usual field of expertise can prove very rewarding, both for yourself and in the eyes of others!

That said, it's necessary to find a language of choice that you prefer working with, so as not to spread yourself too thin, to become more efficient over time, and also to be able to guide your job (or freelance) search.

So here are a few tips if you're looking for your language of choice, like Arthur searching for the Grail:

• Experiment, experiment, and experiment some more! How can you find what you like best without having tried as many things as possible?
• Look at the popularity of the language that you practice to get an idea of the market, and guide your experiments.
• Find out whether the community is fairly active, matches your values, and whether the documentation is well written and kept up to date, for example.
• Identify whether the most popular tools and frameworks match your way of working.
• Look into hosting and deployment methods, try a few out to get an idea of how much time it takes you to make an application available to the public.

But above all: Choose the language you feel most comfortable with, not necessarily in terms of knowledge, but the one that matches your logic and with which you most enjoy creating things! And don't let petty squabbles between developers make you believe that your language is worthless — that makes no sense.

As proof, here are a few small platforms built with different languages:

• Facebook is built in PHP
• Netflix is built in JavaScript (NodeJS)
• AirBnB is built in Ruby (RoR)
• Instagram is built in Python
• LinkedIn is built in Java

As for me, I started learning web development in PHP, and over time I watched JavaScript technologies grow in prominence (especially NodeJS). I learned to love them, and today I work exclusively in JavaScript.

If you're curious about the evolution of my tech stack, I wrote a special article about it.

Every language is powerful in its own way and has its strengths, as well as its flaws — it's up to you to discover them!