For fresh-faced and seasoned programmers alike, there’s an ever-growing number of coding languages to learn. With such a fast-paced and constantly changing landscape, it’s often difficult to know which ones will prevail and offer the most interesting or lucrative career path.
With that in mind, we here at ADLIB spoke to the experts at some of the South West’s most successful software and marketing companies to gauge opinion on what’s hot and what’s likely to be the next big thing:
Ian Bound, Head of Tech Solutions at The Real Adventure Unlimited
“To be honest I think there’s going to be even more need for C# skills,” says Ian, whose focus is .NET development.
“Microsoft Visual Studio is getting better and better as a cross-platform tool. With Microsoft making many of its technologies open source, there will be more and more developers using Visual Studio, and therefore C#. We’re using Xamarin for cross-platform mobile development, which allows us to write using C# to create Android and iOS apps.”
C# is a versatile programming language that has been developed since the turn of the millennium. It can be used to build various apps for smartphones, the web and desktops, all running on Microsoft’s .NET software framework.
A free version of Microsoft Visual Studio called Express can be downloaded from the Visual Studio website, and Microsoft Virtual Academy also offers a free step-by-step course for absolute beginners.
Jon Brace, Technical Director at CX Partners
“JavaScript is going to be the most important language within the next couple of years,” predicts Jon. “It’s the only native programming language on the world’s most ubiquitous platform (i.e. the web), and it is the language of user interfaces.
“Due to its popularity, more and more quality JavaScript third-party packages and libraries are being developed”
“Due to its popularity, maturing infrastructure and continuing move towards standards, more and more quality JavaScript third-party packages and libraries are being developed. This allows developers to “bolt” these packages and libraries together to facilitate rapid prototyping, innovative interfaces and applications.”
Jon also points out that Javascript is now being used in ‘back-end’ languages, such as NodeJS and IO.JS, which means that “the language that front-end developers use can be utilised in back-end systems.”
The internet is awash with JavaScript tutorials if you want to get started, such as w3schools.com or Code Academy.
Jan Warner, VP of Engineering at Somo Global
“The language on everyone’s tongue is Swift, of course, but we have deemed it to not be ready for production use yet,” says Jan, whose focus is mobile development. “It will probably take another year until it is ready.”
Swift is Apple’s programming language of the future—the one least tested and yet the most promising for many developers. It replaces Objective-C as the language of iOS apps.
“The most important languages are those that are going to support the development of rich user interactions”
Jon Brace is also excited by its potential: “The most important languages, at least when it comes to user interfaces, are those that are going to support the development of rich user interactions. It was no accident that Apple released Swift ahead of the Apple Watch. Swift is easier than Objective-C, more concise, more expressive and easier to migrate to from another language. This means that it is more likely to support an uptake in development of apps for the Watch.”
Though relatively new, there are already plenty of ways to learn Swift, such as Apple’s official documentation or an online course from Treehouse.
From our point of view here at ADLIB we’ve seen a steep increase in the number of Javascript Developer requirements over the last 6 months as the language continues to develop as a mainstream discipline in its own right.
And as our digital technology clients continue to push towards building mobile teams, Xamarin is certainly playing a key part in their plans. We’re all looking forward to seeing what Swift has to offer and no doubt there’ll be other new MVC frameworks coming through in what is shaping up to be an exciting remainder of 2015.
Skill up
To upskill with any of these programming languages, the bottom line is to simply get stuck in. Nothing beats the hands-on experience of pottering around in your own time and experimenting with your own creations.
“Things like creating an open source project will help developers get new skills”
“Things like getting involved in or creating an open source project, or playing around with personal projects will help developers get these skills,” says Jon. “I think on commercial production projects, you don’t always get the opportunity to use the more cutting edge tech.”
In any case, with an abundance of online resources, there are plenty of ways for the hobbyist to start learning.
For the latest in programming vacancies, and to see more from ADLIB, see ADLIB Recruitment.
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