Two Google Programming Languages You Should Learn
Programming languages, like other languages, continue to evolve as the needs and desires of its users change with the times. Everyone wants to be on the forefront of adoption rather than on the tail end, but it can be hard to decipher which languages are flashing fads and which ones are worth picking up.
There are a number of programming languages that are emerging as likely candidates to become considered mainstream, but there are two that share a common characteristic that may just give them a leg up on the competition. That common characteristic: being developed as a child of the Google open source projects family.
Dart, revealed in late 2011, is an object-oriented programming language that has C-style syntax and is class based. Although Dart has received its fair share of criticism from others in the industry, it’s hard to bet against Google. Considering that Dart continues to evolve under the engineers at the tech giant, it will likely gain more momentum as it becomes more polished.
Go, also known as Golang, is another language being adopted by the Google open source family. It is written expressly for the cloud and is quickly gaining steam in the industry.
Some experts are even predicting that Go will eventually replace—or at least heavily contend with—Java when it comes to developing for the cloud. Programmers are heralding Go for its fun and easy-to-use disposition.
Don’t let the fact that it isn’t that popular yet turn you away from Go. Despite Go's not being in the top twenty programming languages used in 2014, some employers are seeing that promoting it to developers actually increases their talent pool, as Iron.io found when they switched from Ruby to Go:
When we first decided on Go, it was a risky decision. There wasn't a big community, there wasn't a lot of open source projects, there weren't many (if any) success stories of production usage. We also weren't sure if we would be able hire top talent if we chose Go, but we soon found out that we could get top talent because we chose Go. ...Top tier developers wanted to work for us just so they could use Go in their day to day lives.
Only time will tell if Go and Dart become as essential to common conversation about programming as Java, Python, and C are currently, but if you are looking to learn new languages to further enhance your resume or add skills to your team, then Dart and Go are two to strongly consider.
