Lex Fridman: What programming language should I learn?

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GUEST BIO:
Guido van Rossum is the creator of Python programming language.

PODCAST INFO:

SOCIAL:

[LexClips]

Guest bio: Guido van Rossum is the creator of Python programming language.

[floooobzdagget]

If you programmed your whole life, you can easily pick up any new language in less than a week and have a good grasp of things within a month.

[gschady]

in other words .. DON'T just sit there, do something even if it's WRONG

[JohnSmith-vzws]

You don’t learn the programming language but you learn how to learn programming languages.

[BenRangel]

12:35 I agree with Guido here, hard to guess which languages will make you happy. I find using the same language at another company is often a bigger difference than to stay at the same place and switch languages.

And I often find myself having incorrect assumptions about which field is a good fit for a personality. Like "I'm creative so I probably wouldn't like backend" or "I wanna feel like I'm doing important work so I should be in healthcare software"

I would say you can kinda make a rough guess about which languages are moving up or down. Rust is clearly moving up. But trendy langs might not be wanted on the job market. For example Node is huge but very few recruiters email me about Node, instead I get tons of C# offers and my profile clearly states I'm not in C# anymore since years back.
thr job market is very country specific though.

[KingKBGames]

I think at 12:40 what Lex does not realize Guido was saying is that in any moment things can change and so there is no point is stressing too hard about the right choice because that will always change in ur life

[zeMasterRuseman]

It doesn't really matter what you learn first. My first 2 languages were visual basic and actionscript. They don't even exist anymore. But once you learn how to program, you can pick up any language.

[robswc]

Love the advice being shared. In addition to taking risks and doing a bit of everything, I would say invest in whatever language/tools are being used in the field you want to work in. If you're a game dev, you're going to be working with a very different set of tools than someone doing web dev.

[wilhelmsarasalo]

Do you build a bridge in French or Mandarin? Knowing about bridge building matters more. Going between programming languages is super trivial. Assembly helps to see it from the hardware's point of view. C will teach you about memory management. Python plays well with others (has great libraries, maybe written in C++), but is not all that great by itself, except for being really accessible. Best way to learn is to teach others and there the community comes to play. Long time ago I was on Usenet News answering questions about Paradox database. It was a very good experience for a long time, till many people did not want to learn, they just wanted me to do their work for them. That killed it, but it was good for quite a while. Teaching is a good way to learn.

[ronaldronald]

Interesting ! Reflecting on past experiences, mistakes made, knowledge gained . The same knowledge that holds you back to try something "better" as you start defining what better actually means for you. A mental trip exploring your options, generate some gut feeling be brave and jump in.. Enjoy the ride. Great stuff.

[JakeSelkirk]

When flash was working properly it was ground breaking and amazing.

[TheUttamkumarbagchi]

The thing is, A good programmer can do any thing with their experience! The matter is being a good and skilled programmer.

[d-rex]

Lex seems focused on optimising to too fine a degree - something I've been guilty of, myself. You waste cycles and run your brain hot by focusing on an exact value and continually polling yourself as to whether it was the right choice. If you're learning the principles and an implementation, then you are within the confidence interval of having made a good choice and it's easy enough to jump over to a slightly different implementation or language, if it makes sense to do so. You will already have a head-start on picking up the 'next thing' and your brain will thank you.

[JGKorny]

Guido van Rossum is a iving legend. And those podtcasts are a digital monument. As pointed out by many other comments the differences in the current languages are mostly syntactic sugar. It is just effort but not a complete change of paradigme.
The big deal will be with the quantum computing transition. Then it will be oooh my gosh....

[Selbstzensur]

He is so right. Concepts matter. Modern php with symphony acts like spring boot ... Php acts like an oop java aquivalent.... In the end, it is all about the problem context and the devs you are with and where they feel the sweet spot... Languages does not matter... It is all about sequence, looping and deciding... The logic is the same... Here and there some additive concepts... But c# feels a lot like java, dart feels a lot like java, in php u have traits, in dart you have mixins, in ruby you have mixins but u are missng type safety. I will code in every language as long it is in the same oop like context grown... So why should i care about python, or ruby, or javascript, or dart, or go or c++, or rust or crystal (ruby clone) ... The team decides, the manager decides or at the end, just get shit done...

[robbieparis]

I forgot ALL about Action Script until 1 min into this video, haha! I did quite a bit of that in the early - mid 00's. Wow.

[jasonhall]

Figure out what you want to build, look online to see what everyone else, or most, are doing in that space and go from there. Along the way, don't fret over learning the newest programming trends. Focus on learning programming paradigms, algorithms and, industry best practices and you'll be better able to adapt to changes in technology.

[MMarkur]

C. Why? If you know the syntax of C it’s easy to learn C++, C# and Java.

[fivestarcrest]

after a long conclusion I will stick to BASIC

[PeterSedesse]

I think Lex is overstating the problem of ' picking wrong'. If you master a language, and you start over with a new language, you are going to master it very quickly. The concepts like Algorithms and Data Structures are always going to be there, and Syntax takes no time at all. You don't start over with concepts like testing, version control, deployment etc. I started out with C# because of Unity, but it wasn't even a speedbump to become just as proficient at Python.