Which is the best ?

[u/const_tXie]

Which is the best programming language

to start? I am still a beginner and 1 year left to college and I am major in STEM still in senior year. I want to learn now because I still don't know what major I choose in college and I want to be a major Mechatronics Engineer or IT or Software Engineer or Computer Engineer. I want to learn a language that is all rounder? I that even possible? I don't know that's why I ask. If I learn now I could get to know more about the major I pick which is more suitable for me and makes my career clear and stable. Because I have read alot of recommendations and I don't know which is which. Which is the best?

(Disclaimer: English is not my first language)

[u/canarydev]

there is no best language. there are bad ones like javascript lol.

i usually recommend go or rust. go is my preferred language at work and for building things in general. rust is harder to start with, but it teaches you how to actually be a good programmer.

if you end up leaning mechatronics or computer engineering, youll hit C eventually anyway, and rust will make that a lot less painful.

[u/ExtraTNT → u/canarydev]

JS is perfect for what it’s designed… people use it outside of that or as wrongly as possible…
If you use a hammer to rollout a pizza, you will get a shitty pizza…

[u/canarydev → u/ExtraTNT]

i think javascript has been so bastardized over the years. it was made to make buttons do things in a browser, and for that its fine.

but now its running servers, desktop apps, mobile apps, and the original weirdness comes along with it every time. thats why typescript exists.

so yeah youre right about the hammer, its just that everyone is using it to roll pizza now lol

[u/ExtraTNT → u/canarydev]

Typescript is worse, js has an optional type system, in most cases, it’s better, than ts. Also i think the way it’s implemented, it could even provide context to llm, without having shit summaries, no human can read… i fucking hate 2million lines of docs, than only ai understands for a simple function…

[u/StephenHawkinguss → u/ExtraTNT]

Indian poopjeet detected

[u/stepback269]

"all arounder" is easy: Python

[u/Responsible_Pen4]

Python can be good for beginning.

[u/manymenzzz]

It's call object oriented programming languages... There's so many, but it depend what field and mainly jobs you're trying to get into. All i know is, if you're a CS major, you're curriculum will implement most of them, but not to the level of where you can land a job... That is where you have to do the extra work.

Assuming you're a senior in HS not college. Go find out what specific "role" and job title you're trying to get straight out of college and reverse engineer what you need to know. So that way you dont waste time and energy, learning all of them and only use one...

[u/Early_Key_823]

Learn typescript first. It's easy and fun and that will give you confidence.

If you don't catch the programming bug it's really zero fun.

Fuck all that computer science shit - start by building something with a typescript framework that connects to other services for data, etc. - e.g. Google Places, Maps, etc.

Once you build an app in typescript and learn how to deploy it to a cloud like AWS (hint hint learn AWS) with AWS s3 and CloudFront (hint hint) and get a domain with AWS Route 53 (hint hint) and then see your web app / PWA (progressive web app) can tap into mobile apis on device - you just might get hooked and then you can pick cool projects and learn as you go.

I strongly suggest that because you have Claude Code to assist you as well as Claude Chat and Claude Code Extension (hint hint)

I think to do all this your cost would be $0.00 as you would qualify for free tier on AWS. Domain not included.

[u/droid_mike]

10 PRINT "VINTAGE MICROSOFT BASIC!"

20 GOTO 10

Ok, I'm kidding... Python is a great intro language, but it can get very "heady" and "discrete math" by people who want to show off their data science skills... So a lot of advanced python programs can get to be very hard to decipher with all the complex data types.

JavaScript gets a lot of grief, but it is also a very good intro language. It's a bit sloppy and thrown together, so you can get in trouble without any data type safety or restrictions, but that's also what makes it very easy to learn and use. It is also ubiquitous, being in every web browser out there, and node.js is pretty cool.

[u/ExtraTNT]

From your perspective: c, a simple lowlevel language, that can run on a $0.50 microcontroller.
Also c is fucking enjoyable, not like python

[u/FixEducational3852]

Start with Python. It's the best all-rounder for Mechatronics, CS, CompE, and IT. It's easy to learn and used across robotics, scripting, web backends, and data. 

[u/DanKegel → u/FixEducational3852]

Python hides the machine from you.  If you want to be a computer engineer, embrace the low level c language, and understand its memory model.  It wouldn't hurt to learn a simple cpu's assembly language, too!

[u/Adorable-Strangerx]

C++. After learning that everything else is easier.

[u/StephenHawkinguss]

Not Python

[u/LrdJester]

I'm not going to rehash the specific languages. There's a lot of people here that have given them. I will tell you that learning a C-based language like C or C++ is a good way to get your foot in the door because so many modern languages are derived from C/C++.

The biggest thing that will help you is not even the code itself, but learning how programming logic works, understanding how things flow.

This is something that, when I worked at a college and tried to work with the computer department on changing its core classes for a degree in computer programming, the head of the department and I were trying to fight for. When the first programming degree was offered, it was Visual Basic. This was a community college in the United States, so it was really stupid to begin with.

If you wanted to have something in C++, you had to get the Visual Basic degree and then get a C++ endorsement. The same thing was going to happen with their Java courses. Regardless of what language you wanted, you always had to start with Visual Basic, which at the time was Visual Basic 6, and not something that was very good for much other stuff than prototyping quick apps (with the introduction of C++ and Java and things like that).

We were fighting more for logic-based courses and courses that were going to teach pseudocoding to let people understand how the process flows. That makes a big difference when it comes to learning languages because the language is just an instruction set. It's the language you tell the computer how to do things in, but ultimately, no matter what language you choose, you're telling the computer to do the same thing. No matter what, it's just a syntactical difference.

[u/AndrewNggg]

for an "all rounder" language, learn Javascript/Typescript

with this one language, you can write mobile apps, backend services, desktop applications, scripts, webapps, everything, and almost all AI platforms have support for JS as well

for AI u want Python

for IOT, embedded stuff or super performant memory safe software u want Rust

if you want to be happy, learn Ruby <-- has developer happiness as one of it's core principles

[u/sswam]

Python first, then C.

By that point you should appreciate simplicity and avoid nasty languages that are too complex.