If you step outside of the HN language of the month bubble, you'll see lots of boring companies using languages like PHP and C#. They're not flashy, but they're used everywhere and aren't going anywhere. Sure, they'll be back office type jobs, but they will be stable with good enough benefits and probably won't tolerate rewriting the entire stack in the latest technology every 6 months. Then layer on JS/CSS with whichever backend language you like and you should be fairly safe.<p>Stack Overflow's survey may be useful to look at, too. <a href="https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#most-popular-technologies-language-prof" rel="nofollow">https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#most-popular-...</a>
I will summarize what others said and I will add my own thinking as well.<p>Web Development: PHP and Javascript and its ecosystem<p>Mobile Development: Java/Kotlin for Android and Objective-C/Swift for iOS<p>Enterprise software: C++, Java, Rust and Golang<p>Machine Learning, AI and Data Analysis: Python and its ecosystem<p>Embedded: C and Rust<p>Game development: C++ for PC and Game Consoles, Java as well for PC games, Java/Kotlin for Android games, Objective-C/Swift for iOS games and Javascript and its ecosystem for Web games
What are freshers?<p>Most employable languages are still the enterprise languages.<p>1. Java and its ecosystem<p>2. JS and its ecosystem<p>3. Python and its ecosystem<p>I see more and more people are asking framework experience as well now.<p>1. Spring Boot<p>2. React<p>3. Pandas<p>Add AWS to your resume, you can probably ride AWS/Java/Python for the next 10 years.
A lot of Julia-based companies just hit big Seed A, Seed B, etc. rounds, with a lot more startups entering the space as well. There is a glut of Julia programmers in the industry now given all of this hiring. "Most employable" is hard because no one is in all places, but I can at least tell you that locally there is and will be a lot of hiring in the next few years here.
Employable by what kind of companies? I'd imagine the following aren't going away anytime soon and will likely be employable for entire careers for many people: JavaScript, java, c#/.net, python, c++, go - basically just find what Enterprise is using and learn those
Find a programming language you actually like and want to use rather than what will be popular for this is the way to true happiness. You don't want to have to code javascript just because it's popular.
Python for job orchestration (Airflow) and data science (numpy, scipy, etc) , Java 16+ for the general enterprise, product development, Julia for HPC. C for embedded, C++ for games, highly intensive systems.
I am currently digging into Nim. It feels like Python, does some things better, and not very many things worse. It is strongly typed, has method overloading and Macros. Creating objects is much more enjoyable than in Python. foo(a, b) can be written as a.foo(b), and foo(x) can be written as x.foo. The docs are very good.
Backend:
Python (Django)
Spring Boot<p>Frontend:
Typescript (React + React-native)
Kotlin, Java and Swift<p>Quite a good way of getting into mobile development is to start with react-native and learn the native languages by adding modules.
As a Python backend services dev I fear a lot of the Python popularity you see is data analyst and data science/data pipelines/ML roles so if thats not your bag then don’t go all in on Python.<p>Lots of companies doing cool backend things are doing Golang now, and I see Infra/SRE roles mention Go a lot.<p>and of course endless tons of both cool and uncool companies are still committed to Java.
Definitely learn the boring ones, C#/Java, SQL, JS and such.<p>But IMO also learn other paradigms. Such as FP or a LISP.<p>And definitely read: <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.5555/1243380" rel="nofollow">https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.5555/1243380</a><p>This is THE must read book IMO.
Ruby should be up there. Github, Shopify, Airbnb, Twitch and tons others are using it, but also growing incredibly. Growth of the Ruby talent pool slowed down while the JS SPA fad went nuts, but growth of companies using it <i>didn't</i>!
So the Rails job market is hot--supply is down, demand is up!<p>Throw in the new Rails 7 upgrades with simple JS packaging, turbo and stimulus reflex, and there's a pretty solid case for really high employability going forward.
I think concentrating on the language is a mistake. Once you can grok a few, perhaps at least one imperative and functional, you can learn any other in a matter of days. Sure, mastery takes much longer but in my experience most businesses hire for effectiveness to make change not be a guru of language X and Y.
People in the replies are confusing language popularity with developer demand.<p>Reminder: you don't need 10000 jobs. You need one. Aiming for a niche market rather than doing shotgun is a perfectly valid strategy.<p>Find what fits you.<p>(random example: if you care exclusively about income and employability, learn COBOL)