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Ask HN: What language will be most useful in 5 years?

3 points| mohsen | 15 years ago | reply

If you had to pick a language and learn the living hell out of it so that 4-5 years from now you'd be extremely in demand, what would that language be? Why do you think so?

7 comments

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[+] davidw|15 years ago|reply
Wrong mentality: you want to be able to able to pick up whatever's current or interesting or required, and do so easily because you have the experience and flexibility to do so. This means you should probably learn C, Java, some functional language, and one of Ruby or Python. Extra points for assembler, as well as Forth, Lisp, Prolog or other 'mind benders'.

That said, you can bet there will still be Java and Cobol jobs in 5 years.

In terms of more "fun" things... Ruby and Python will still be around, so will Javascript. Likewise PHP but I don't consider it much fun.

[+] smcl|15 years ago|reply
Interesting, I took the OP's question to mean spoken language rather than programming language. Looks like it could be either.

I'd go for Swedish, as Sweden is a really cool place I'd dearly love to spend more time in (if I could afford it :))

[+] mohsen|15 years ago|reply
Thank you. Some really good points to think about.

However, wouldn't all this mean that one is not sure of what he/she wants to do? Shouldn't you just stick to a couple of languages and become very very good at it?

[+] mohsen|15 years ago|reply
ooops, my apologies...