There are thousands of programming languages out there. Many are aimed at a particular industry with a particular purpose. But what makes a programming language popular? I would venture to say that the top programming languages would stand out for their job marketability and wide use, and developer support.
There is no point in being stagnant. No programmer worth his salt sticks to one tool set. We have to change in this ever changing world. What was good yesterday is not good today.
There is just so much competition out there that one has to be prepared for almost every opportunity. Its a sad thing when you have to turn down a job because you are not familiar with a mainstream language.
I do realise that there is a limit to what you can do, or a limit to how many languages you can be effective in. We have to be practical. But my suggestion is that we would need to be at least comfortable with 2-4 languages or scripting languages if we want to be marketable.
Here is a top 10 list of programming/scripting languages. Perhaps we should be familiar with at least 3.
- PHP
- C#
- AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)
- JavaScript
- Perl
- C
- Ruby and Ruby on Rails
- Java
- Python
- VB.Net (Visual Basic .Net)
Honourable mention of HTML and CSS, if you're interested in web development.
What is your top 10 list?