What programming language is the most popular among beginners?
If I switch to the ranking page here, at CodeAbbey, I see here currently over
8200 participants. I can use filters by programming language to see what they prefer:
or in plain numbers:
Python 2630 31.7%
Java 1738 21.0%
C++ 1686 20.3%
C# 699 8.4%
JS 535 6.5%
others 1002 12.1%
Of course these stats could be somewhat imprecise (for example because not all languages are thought useful for problem solving - that is why PHP and JS has lower percent here - and Java has some advantage because some percent of users come here from java forum) - however the main idea is clear.
In total the five languages cover almost 88%, so Python is the obvious leader. Why is it so?
I suspect the following points make it very suitable to start learning:
- it allows to dive into programming easily, without prior learning classes, methods etc (as with Java) - simplest code in Python will have a single line only (instead of 4-5 in C or Java);
- on the other hand it has all features of mature object oriented language so it is easy to get acquainted with them before learning other languages (all those classes, methods, annotations, inheritance etc);
- it also have nice functional features allowing to get introduced for further learning of functional languages (like Haskell, Erlang or Scala) - while languages like Java and C are poorly suited for this goal;
- at last, but not least, it is industrial-scale language - many programs and web-applications are written in it (sites like Reddit, some parts of google and google apis, many useful libraries) - so it is not the language which you learn in vain (like Scratch) without opportunity to find a job in future.
The main disadvantage of Python, as for me, is the existence of not well compatible 2-nd and 3-rd versions. However if you start learning it - prefer 3-rd version, it is more contemporary (while 2-nd is still more widely used in industry - but things are going to change, I hope).
If you want to start right now, you can go with the problems on this site - after solving any of them, take care to browse some of others' solutions to see how other people do this.
You may want to read Official Python 3 Tutorial and other pieces of documentation - or try some book or resource like Learn Python The Hard Way. Good luck!