10,000 hours of deliberate practice. That’s how long it will take for you to become an expert. That’s about 5 years of working full-time to reach the top level of competency.
Choosing a programming language can bring in choice overload, especially if you’ve never programmed before. However, just because you choose one to start out with, doesn’t mean you’re stuck with it forever.
Download the top 5 programming languages you should learn here.
Employers look for a group of competencies that range from problem-solving ability to designing systems. Here’s an idea for what employers are looking for primarily in a candidate:

One of the best approaches you can take to picking your first language, is to be data-driven and understand the current market trends.
To help with this, we will be using the Stack Overflow Developer Survey, HackerRank Developer Survey, GitHub Trends, and the TIOBE index which has responses from hundreds of thousands of developers and will paint a broader picture to what’s used today.
Most Popular Languages (Stack Overflow)
StackOverflow surveyed over 90,000 developers to provide you a list of the most popular languages.

Most Popular Languages (HackerRank)
HackerRank surveyed over 70,000 developers to provide you a list of most popular languages.

Most Popular Language (GitHub)
The Octoverse Report provides insight into the programming languages used for various private and open source projects.

TIOBE Index
The TIOBE Index is an index of the popularity of programming languages throughout the years. It’s an index to represent the popularity of languages used, rather than the best programming language or lines of code written.

Languages Developers Want To Learn
Being proficient in a few languages is great. However as your career evolves, so will your want to learn new languages. HackerRank surveyed over 70,000 developers asking which language they want to learn next.

Most Loved Languages
You’ll be spending countless hours in each language you’ll be working in, so making sure you enjoy the environment is a plus. StackOverflow surveyed over 90,000 developers to provide you a list of languages that developers love to use.

Top 5 Programming Languages To Learn
Without a doubt, these are the top 5 programming languages that I would suggest to learn first.
- JavaScript
- Python
- Java
- C#
- C++
Top 5 Programming Languages To Keep Your Eye On
If you are already proficient in a couple of languages above, I would suggest that you keep your eye on these languages.
- Go
- Kotlin
- Swift
- TypeScript
- R