Programming Languages You'll Need Next Year (and Beyond) 315
Nerval's Lobster writes: Over at Dice, there's a breakdown of the programming languages that could prove most popular over the next year or two, including Apple's Swift, JavaScript, CSS3, and PHP. But perhaps the most interesting entry on the list is Erlang, an older language invented in 1986 by engineers at Ericsson. It was originally intended to be used specifically for telecommunications needs, but has since evolved into a general-purpose language, and found a home in cloud-based, high-performance computing when concurrency is needed. "There aren't a lot of Erlang jobs out there," writes developer Jeff Cogswell. "However, if you do master it (and I mean master it, not just learn a bit about it), then you'll probably land a really good job. That's the trade-off: You'll have to devote a lot of energy into it. But if you do, the payoffs could be high." And while the rest of the featured languages are no-brainers with regard to popularity, it's an open question how long it might take Swift to become popular, given how hard Apple will push it as the language for developing on iOS.
Erlang is overrated crap (Score:5, Interesting)
Please, no more Erlang world domination news.
I went through that 3 years ago already. We had a project that a fanatic asked us to rewrite in Erlang.
it took 9 months with 2.5 people.
Tons of issues, mostly with very lacking library support, tooling. Obnoxious stuck up community too.
In one case, I had a guy tell me online "hire me as an Erlang consultant and then I will help you".
In the end we set screw it (once the Erlang fanatic left).
We rewrote this 9 months of Erlang development in 3 weeks (!) using one senior Java developer.
it worked like a charm and still runs flawlessly in production today.
Erlang = HYPE
Everything is immutable is beautiful for fairy tales, but not for real-life software (trying building a DOM in a language which is 100% immutable).
All modern languages have learned from Erlang's mistake. They do immutable by default, but allow mutable if there is a need for it (e.g. Ceylon, Rust, etc)
Re:If you want to earn big bucks... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's terrible advice. If you want the big bucks, get into Python, Node.js, or Go and find a startup that just received VC and has tons of money to shove at developers. C++, Java, and C# are great for long-term "comfortable" jobs, but that's not where the seriously good money is.
Re:I like Swift pretty well (Score:2, Interesting)
You might want to take a look at http://nimrod-lang.org, like a cross platform swift.
Re:I like Swift pretty well (Score:5, Interesting)
The whole point of Swift is its ability to abstract Cocoa. Lots of Swift's specifics make no sense without Cocoa. Given that Swift in practice is going to be loaded with calls to Cocoa, it is going to be as portable as Visual Basic or Bash.
My thoughts on these selections. (Score:4, Interesting)
CSS/JavaScript/HTML5 is plainly obvious. Everything from Microsoft to mobile hybrid development relies on this these days.
C# is the standard language of the Microsoft stack --- in fact, the bulk of MS-stack training is in C#, with only a smattering in VB.NET.
Java is the COBOL of the early 21st Century. It isn't sexy anymore but it will always be around.
PHP is used in a lot of web applications. I wish it weren't. In fact, I'd really rather see Ruby on Rails take over this space.
If you're going to program native code, you could learn Swift, sure. You could also learn Rust [cnet.com] (Mozilla's systems-level language with significant buy-in from Samsung) for device programming. If your goal is to write native apps, your best bet for Android is actually Java. By the way, one can also design native apps in Java (the code is Swing-like) and compile them to native apps for iOS or Android using Codename One [codenameone.com], and I imagine a few shops will pick up that practice.
I like Erlang as an honorable mention. I'd also add two others: Python (especially for data analysis) and PowerShell (which will set the grown-up Microsoft sysadmins from the point-and-click kids).
Re:Over at Dice? (Score:4, Interesting)
There should at least be the obligatory disclaimer "Slashdot is owned by Dice" so that readers can prepare themselves. Presenting it as a neutral article seems deceptive.
I seem to recall Timothy telling everyone that "sponsored" stories would be identified as such. Perhaps it's just a wild coincidence that this article just happens to be from Dice?
Just because a substantial number of Nerval's Lobster's [slashdot.org] accepted submissions are from Dice or Dice properties doesn't mean he's a Dice shill...
Re:Repeat after me... (Score:5, Interesting)
HTML5 + CSS3 is Turing complete [lambda-the-ultimate.org], which is the usual criteria.
Picking nits...