There are many programming languages and the choice can be difficult to make when you want to get started in programming or simply learn a new language. The best known of them and which most often appear in the top 20 language ranking indexes are JavaScript, Java, Python, C#, PHP, C, C++, Ruby, Swift and Objective-C, but there are dozens of them. If you had to learn a new programming language in 2025, which one would you learn? Here is a list of languages we offer.
Depending on whether you want to get into video game development, front-end or back-end development, mobile development, desktop application development or even more system programming, there is a wide range of programming languages in which you can choose. However, some languages often stand out from their competitors due to their design, syntax, or other characteristics. Saurabh Joshi offers here a top 10 languages to learn in 2025 depending on the use case.
Front-end web development
Today, JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages on the market. With this popularity that the language enjoys, it is almost impossible to be a software developer these days without using JavaScript in one way or another. Joshi ranks it among the best programming languages to learn in 2025. According to Stack Overflow's 2018 Developer Survey, 71.5% of professional developers ranked JavaScript as the most popular programming language for the sixth year in a row.
However, due to the fact that it runs client-side, it is prone to some security issues, leading some to disable it on their browsers. Another thing he also points out is that JavaScript is sometimes interpreted differently by different browsers. While server-side scripts will always produce the same result, client-side scripts can be a bit unpredictable. “Don’t worry too much about that. Once you test your script in all major browsers, you should be safe,” he wrote.
Back-end web development
JavaScript is everywhere. This is vital for both front-end developers and back-end developers. Then, he also cites Python for back-end development. It is one of the most influential languages of the moment. According to Joshi, it is one of the most versatile, user-friendly programming languages to know. Python has seen a significant jump in the ranking indexes of the most popular programming languages. Python also offers a wide variety of libraries to developers.
Python's popularity also stems from its growing adoption in fields such as Quality Assurance Engineer and Data Science. According to Joshi, Python is easy to learn, scales even the most complex applications with ease and a large number of resources are available for Python. However, he believes the language is slow, a poor choice for memory-intensive tasks, and for multiprocessor or multicore work. It would have limitations for database access.
The third language he suggests learning for back-end development is Java. Java is undoubtedly in the list of best programming languages to learn for any grade. It is the most used language for developing Android applications, although Kotlin is now experiencing remarkable growth. According to Joshi, Java is also favored by businesses, with around 90% of Fortune 500 companies using Java to build applications and other back-end systems.
Java offers APIs for different activities like database connection, networking, XML parsing, utilities, etc. It also offers powerful open source rapid development tools and libraries. However, he adds that memory management in Java is quite expensive and the absence of models can limit you in creating high-quality data structures.
Mobile application development
In this category, Saurabh Joshi cites Java for Android application development. Then, he cites Kotlin, Java's number 1 competitor in the development of applications for the Android platform. Google only supported the Java language for developing applications for the Android platform, but this year, at the Google I/O developer conference, the online search giant announced that the Kotlin programming language is now its preferred language for Android application developers.
For some Android developers, the Kotlin programming language introduces solutions to common programming problems, but in addition it improves the Java ecosystem as a whole. According to Call Tutors, which offers a nine-point comparison between Java and Kotlin, Kotlin offers a few additional features that make it a preferred choice over Java. The two languages each have their advantages and gray areas, even if in the comparison Kotlin seems to have the advantage.
Finally, Saurabh Joshi proposes the Swift language, developed by Apple itself to facilitate the task of iOS developers, as the language to understand in 2025 for developing iOS applications. It was developed as a replacement for Objective-C. The language is used to develop powerful, high-performance native iOS, macOS and Linux applications. Its popularity has climbed in the Redmonk and TIOBE indexes in recent years. Swift is a scalable language and automatically integrates memory management.
Developing applications for the office
Here Joshi offers Java and Python, but on top of that he adds C++. It is a programming language developed by Bjarne Stroustrup in 1983. C++ is a more modern, object-oriented version of C. According to Joshi, it still remains in demand because of its flexibility, performance and multiple contexts/domains where you can use it. A career in C++ would typically involve developing desktop applications that are focused on performance-intensive tasks.
However, he believes that the syntax of C++ is complex, and the standard library is small, making this language very difficult to learn for the beginning programmer. That said, C++ is the language he recommends for video game development. In this category dedicated to applications for the office, he also cites the Go language. Go is a programming language developed by Google and is a minimal language like Python. According to Joshi, it offers much better functionality than others for writing competing programs. “In this era where multi-core applications are being written, Go meets this need very well and there is also built-in support for concurrency within it,” he said.
System programming
At this point, Joshi cites the Rust language. Rust was originally developed by the Mozilla Foundation and functions as a low-level language. It is a new system-level programming language that is expected to change the common way of programming. It is one of the most popular programming languages currently. Rust was created with the aim of preventing critical memory issues or any other type of memory errors. Rust is like C and C++. Microsoft itself has repeatedly praised Rust's performance.
This summer, the Microsoft Security Response Center team is recommending the use of Rust as a proactive approach to more secure code. Similarly, the npm team chose Rust to handle CPU bottlenecks over Go, C, C++, and Java.
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