I feel that the most productive programming languages are those that encourage programmers to become productive as quickly as possible, and aim to always be giving a programmer as much productivity gain as they are giving up with each change to the programming language’s language itself.
As you’ll see later on in this article, programming languages are, as a whole, quite malleable to implement changes.
Productivity is a complex topic to delve into, so I’ll be a bit repetitive in what I’m about to say, but the reason I feel that programming languages should be created with a higher emphasis on productivity is that a lot of software development is focused around processes or pipelines.
So to accomplish more in the software development process, these different processes and pipelines should be as efficient as possible.
And I feel that if any of these pipelines (like pipelines into committing and merge views) are inefficient, it will slow down productivity as a whole.
Also, most programming languages are designed with a lot of historical perspectives them
As a result, not all of them have as much of a focus on the ideas of modern developers.
So, to some extent, the engineering that goes into each new programming language is a bit stale.
It may be a good language, but it may not be the best idea for where the world is going.
To get a better understanding of what I mean by this, let’s dive into some of the features of some of the most popular programming languages.
Most popular programming languages
These are the most common programming languages out there, so, likely, you or someone you know is already familiar with them.
Java
Java has been around for a long time and it has become the most popular language in use today, in a way that has gone way beyond its original purpose.
In its original usage, it was created as a way to create virtual machines for the operating system.
This would allow it to create a nice interface for development so that it would be easier to write applications, making them more flexible and robust.
A big part of this was that it was also designed to be efficient in the coding process, which is where a lot of its productivity gains are found.
The most notable features in Java include lambda expressions, function calls, variables, loops, objects, and multiple inheritances.
There are a ton of features in Java, so a comprehensive list would require an entire book on its own, but I think I’ll limit myself to a few of the more important ones.
C++
C++ was initially designed to be a robust standard for manipulating structured data, mainly for management purposes, but was later expanded to include low-level programming in hopes to make it more practical for the programming community to use.
It’s well known for its objects and inheritance (based on C++11), loops (C++11), and templates (based on C++11).
Python
Python was created for scientific computing, and it was also created by a large-scale research group, which makes it a powerful tool for the production of high-quality scientific data.
It was designed to be highly readable and easy to use in the programming community, and it was also developed to be highly efficient in the programming process.
Python’s best feature is that it is a very popular language for front-end development, especially for HTML and CSS, and it’s definitely a language I would recommend learning at some point.
The problem with Python, however, is that it’s becoming more popular, but there aren’t that many good resources available for learning it.
That’s why I will be focusing on it in this guide, although I do encourage other Python resources to be written.
Ruby
Ruby was created in the 1990s as a lightweight language for computer programming, but in its more recent history has become very popular as a language for web development and is a perfect fit for Rails and other full-stack frameworks.
Its best feature is probably that it allows for easy creating of objects and classes (because of the Ruby On Rails framework).
Groovy
Groovy was created by the Java team to create a feature-rich implementation of Java and Groovy came about from it.
It was designed as a lighter, faster implementation of Java, and also to make the Java language more flexible and extensible.
It has a very intuitive syntax and syntaxes that are easy to read and understand.
Its best feature is its strong validation, which allows it to be used to generate powerful JavaScript code.
Go
Go is a language designed for developing web applications, particularly for microservices.
It was designed to be a better version of the Java programming language and allows a developer to create a minimal set of primitives with the rest being ancillary work.
Like Ruby, it is a language that has a lot of documentation.
JavaScript
JavaScript is a relatively new programming language and was created in 1995 as a new, dynamic language in the tradition of ActionScript.
It has undergone several changes over the years to become what it is today and has become one of the most popular languages for web development.
JavaScript was created with one purpose in mind: to allow web developers to create an entire web application, all by themselves.
