Five Top Programming Languages and Their Features
Shalom Solomon
The digital era has made technological concepts and terminologies like websites, digital marketing, e-commerce, mobile applications, social media, and so on, quite popular. These terms or concepts came up with the need to solve and meet a plethora of problems and needs brought on by the digital era. Needs such as
Websites for e-commerce,
Digital marketing solutions for businesses,
Social media for communication and so many others.
Now, a common trait all the solutions to these problems posed by the digital era share is the need for a computer programmer.
A computer programmer who is also known as a coder or developer, is a person who writes and creates computer software.
The primary tool in the computer programmer's toolbox is programming language.
What are Programming languages?
Languages generally as we all know, serve as a means for people to communicate, exchange information.
Programming languages serve the same function as your regular language. Only that, the communication is not human to another human, rather it is human to computer.
Tech terms defines Programming languages as sets of intructions, commands and other syntax used to write or create a software programme.
Now, there are quite a number of Programming languages, and while all are relevant, some are more popular than others.
We'd go ahead now to examine some of the most popular programming languages and their defining features.
1. Python
Python is a general purpose programming language. Meaning that if can be used for both front end and back end web development. Some of it's features are:
- It is a high level Programming language
- It is developer friendly: it is easy to code, it can be learned and mastered in a short time frame
- It is an open source programming language: that means it can be improved and worked on by other developers.
- It is an object oriented programming language.
2. Kotlin
Kotlin like Python is also a general purpose programming language. It was initially designed by Jetbrains for the Java Virtual Machine(JVS) and Android. It has become popular though among android developers because it is considered a better alternative to Java especially as it improved on the major pain points of Java. It's features are:
- It is a general purpose language
- Code written in Kotlin is smaller when compared to Java
- It is also an open source programming language.
- It is interoperable with Java; can be used along side Java.
- It comes with an advanced compiler that checks errors at both compile time and run time.
3. PHP
PHP is a server side scripting language majorly used for the development of static websites, web pages and web applications. It is an acronym for PHP: Hypertext Pre-processor, where the PHP stands for Personal Home Pages. It's features are:
- PHP is an open source and free programming language.
- It has a short learning curve like Python
- It can be embedded in HTML
- It only needs to be installed on the server, it can run on any browser on the client side.
- It is regularly updated to include modern trends in web development.
4. C#
C# pronounced as C sharp is a general purpose, modern programming language. It was developed by Microsoft around 2000 for developing apps on the Microsoft platform. As such, it requires a .NET platform on Microsoft to work. It's features are:
- It is an object programming language.
- It is an open source language. It is still evolving as a community of developers are continuously creating better improvements for newer versions
- Interoperability; it can access and inherit code and classes written in any Microsoft complaint language.
- It is a modern programming language and has features such as: Automatic garbage collection, Modern debugging, rubost security and error handling features.
5. JavaScript
JavaScript is a very popular, text only, programming language among web developers. It was developed by Netscape. Unlike Kotlin and Python, it isn't a general purpose programming language, it is majorly used to develop the client side of a website. It's basic features are:
- It is a light weight scripting language for only client side execution.
- It is portable, meaning that JavaScript apps can run on any web browser.
- It uses object prototypes to create more objects instead of classes like other programming languages such as Java.
- It detects client information such as browser type, etc for analysis.
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