C# vs F# vs Python

Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

C#

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F#

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Python

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C# vs F# vs Python: What are the differences?

  1. Type System: One key difference between C#, F#, and Python is their type system. C# is statically typed, meaning variable types are checked at compile time, ensuring greater safety. F#, on the other hand, supports both static and dynamic typing, providing more flexibility. Python is dynamically typed, allowing for quick and concise code but potentially introducing more errors at runtime.

  2. Syntax and Semantics: C# follows a curly brace syntax similar to C and C++, while F# uses indentation-based syntax, which can be more readable and concise. Python also uses indentation for code blocks, emphasizing clean and readable code, making it popular among beginners.

  3. Functional Programming Support: F# is a functional-first programming language, making it easier to write code in a functional style. C# and Python, although not primarily functional languages, have added more functional programming features in recent versions, but they are not as deeply integrated as in F#.

  4. Ecosystem and Libraries: C# has a vast ecosystem and support from Microsoft, with a strong focus on enterprise development. F# benefits from integration with the .NET ecosystem, sharing libraries with C# and other .NET languages. Python, with its extensive libraries like NumPy and pandas, is widely used in scientific computing and data analysis.

  5. Concurrency and Parallelism: F# has built-in support for asynchronous and parallel programming, making it easier to write concurrent code. C# also offers good support for concurrency using async/await and parallel processing libraries. Python has threading and multiprocessing libraries but is known to face challenges with the Global Interpreter Lock (GIL).

  6. Community and Adoption: C# has a large community of developers due to its longstanding presence and support from Microsoft. F# has a smaller but dedicated community, known for its focus on functional programming. Python boasts one of the largest and most active programming communities, with a wide range of use cases and applications.

In Summary, The key differences between C#, F#, and Python lie in their type systems, syntax, functional programming support, ecosystem, concurrency capabilities, and community adoption.

Advice on C#, F#, and Python
Needs advice
on
ElixirElixirGolangGolang
and
PythonPython

Hi! I'm currently studying Flutter for mobile apps, but I also have a demand to automate some tasks on the web and create backends' for my apps, so thinking about which one of those could be better? Considering the performance and how easy it's to learn and create stuff? (I'm already familiar with .NET stack but want something more "simple" to write)

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Replies (4)
Amit Mor
Software Architect at Payoneer · | 5 upvotes · 191.8K views
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on
PythonPython

Definitely Python. Lots of libraries, dead simple syntax. Lots of code examples and reference projects. Elixir is pure functional and takes time to grasp the concepts. Go is great, with simple syntax and performant runtime, but more strict as it is statically typed. For quick coding, nothing beats Python. As you come from .net I’d consider similar approach and be considering Java with SpringBoot as it makes Java faster and much more fun to code web servers

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Recommends
on
ElixirElixir

Elixir really has a good performance for the web (and in general). Its framework Phoenix for the web is a great tool, easy to install and to use, with features for websockets (and Pub/Sub) or LiveView to write reactive and real time app with only HTML (and Elixir) so basically everything is in one place

It can take some time to learn a few things in Elixir but I really think it's worth it, and it's very easy to go distributed and concurrent with Elixir. Also it's easier to code quickly with some features like the pattern matching or some operators like the pipe or the capture one

And in the case you need it you can still connect and interface Python and Elixir pretty quickly, and now Elixir has a lot of different frameworks : web, embedded or even neural networks now

Never went far with Go but I have some trouble with its syntax, I find it a bit messy

I don't have a lot of experience with the web with Python but I don't have a good experience with the little I did

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Recommends
on
GolangGolangPythonPython

Judging your previous experience we will benefit from Golang in terms of portability and speed. If you want to go simplier use Python. If it's only scripts use Python.

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Shivam kr Shiv

Hey Vitor, You can use Node and Express JS to create a backend for your app. You can create REST APIS to connect your front end with the backend. It is a very simple and scalable solution for building backend web apps.

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Youcef Benamare
Needs advice
on
C langC langC++C++
and
C#C#

include include int main(){ char name[10], pasword[10]; printf("enter you user name :"); gets(name); printf("enter your pasword : "); gets(pasword); printf("your name : %s \n your password : %s \n", name, pasword); if ( name != "youcef") { printf("name undefined\n"); } else { printf("finde name"); }

}

his not working

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Replies (2)
Richard Rios
Senior Software Engineer · | 5 upvotes · 134.6K views
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on
C langC lang

You will want to do a few things here. First, replace gets with fgets. Then, you're going to want to use strcmp from string.h to compare the input with the desired result. The code listed below has been updated with a working example with the previously mentioned recommendations. This isn't perfect and there are other ways to accomplish the same task. Explore other options that are available when you have a chance and see if you can improve on this example.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

int main()
{ 
    char name[10], 
    pasword[10]; 

    printf("enter you user name :"); 

    // Use fgets as gets is insecure and can easily lead to buffer overflow exploits
    fgets(name, sizeof(char) * sizeof(name), stdin);

    // Remove \n from fgets stdin read with null character so as to not have to include
    // in strcmp later.
    name[strlen(name) - 1] = '\0';

    printf("enter your pasword : "); 
    fgets(pasword, sizeof(char) * sizeof(pasword), stdin);

    printf("your name : %s \n your password : %s \n", name, pasword);

    // If strcmp result > 0 || < 0 it's not a match
    if (strcmp(name, "youcef") != 0) 
    { 
        printf("name undefined\n"); 
    } 
    else 
    { 
        printf("finde name"); 
    }
}
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Recommends
on
C langC lang

Dear, Yusuf You can't use if statement to compare two strings, but you can use strcmp() function which means string compare The behavior of strcmp function is: If (string1 < string2)? Then: return a negative value. If (string1 > string2)? Then: return a positive value.

If(string1 == string2)? Then: return (0).

So, you can modify this statment to: if(strcmp(name,"Yousef") != 0) printf("name undefined\n");

else printf("find name");

But, In this case there is one logic problem that (strcmp) function don't ignore the letter case. For example: If you input name : yousef

The first letter here (y) is small, but in the comparing statement above is capital, So the result will be "name undefined", but in fact "yousef" = "Yousef".

To solve this problem you should use stracasecmp() function. This function ignore the letter case while comparing. The code will be: if(strcasecmp(name,"Yousef") != 0) printf("name undefined\n");

else printf("find name");

Attention: Include string libreary after using these functions to skip any problem may be found.

include

may Allah bless you ^_^

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Needs advice
on
JavaJavaJavaScriptJavaScript
and
PythonPython

I'm making my university community web service with a team. (6 members myself included)

And we decided to use JavaScript, HTML, CSS (for sure, it's the basic of websites) but couldn't decide for the back end part.

There are tons of languages, tools, etc., but I'm really new to programming, so I'd like to get some help to figure out what tools we need.

So my question is this: are there any good examples of web community services we can mimic the tools or get an insight from them?

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Replies (6)
Recommends
on
DjangoDjangoPythonPython

Since you're following Python, I would recomend using Django as your main back-end language. If you know Python it would be a great experience. Django is well documented on their official website: https://www.djangoproject.com/ I would also use React for front-end as well. Also this article is worth reading, I think progressive web app is something worth learning these days: https://web.dev/progressive-web-apps/ Hope that helps :)

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Since your team is already using JavaScript, there's a great number of examples for backend services written with NodeJS. I'd recommend using Firebase, or any backend as a service (you can use that term to find alternatives), for setting up your backend as it is much easier for newer people to understand and lets you focus on your core application logic, and not provisioning servers, databases, etc.

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anas mattar
Technical Lead at DPO International · | 2 upvotes · 219.7K views
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on
JavaScriptJavaScript

Since you're team is already using JavaScript, there are alot of examples and open source projects written with NodeJs, so I preffer this language in your backend application and also I am recommended using Mongo DB with It for saving data in it, and also for your frontend application I am recommanded using VueJs.

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Jamal Abdinasir
Product manager at abdinasirjamal171@gmail.com · | 1 upvotes · 219.9K views
Recommends

Kindly I don't find any help that solve this mystery I need more help if it will happen

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Nash Nziramasanga
Software Developer at Billow Software · | 1 upvotes · 219.5K views

Since you are already using JavaScript on the front end it would be easy to adopt the MERN (MongoDB, Express, React, NodeJS) stack which s all javascript based making it easy to transfer knowledge with the backend and front end

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Hüseyin Özkılıç
Senior Full-Stack Developer at RADSoft · | 1 upvotes · 219.5K views
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on
JavaScriptJavaScriptLaravelLaravel

Make it simple, most of projects doesnt need a AI, ML or big algorithms. If your project just serving end users take it to the web ready compatible. (Javascript, .Net, PHP Laravel)

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Needs advice
on
C++C++JavaScriptJavaScript
and
PythonPython

Hello, I am interested in learning how to program. I am a beginner, and many articles saying I should go with Python if I am new to programming. I considered Lua a long time ago, but for my career, I believe major programming languages should be better for me. I'm considering Python at this moment, but if you have other tools I should use, let me know.

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Replies (3)
Pat Fitzner
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on
PythonPython

Although Lua is a very simple,efficient, elegant and welcoming language, Python is extremely versatile. Therefore, if you want to get into programming without a defined direction, Python is the way to go. It has a lot of libraries, the ability to do anything and it is closer to other languages than Lua is (yeah I know about Lua and C, but from a learner's point of view, it makes sense). Additionally, Python will be a marketable skill, but I for one have not yet seen job offers for Lua devs.

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Recommends
on
C langC langC++C++C#C#JavaJava

The language you choose is also dependant on the type of career / area of programming you wish to focus on: Web Based and mobile applicaitons I would lean towards Java, PC Applications I tend to like C#, Embedded industry C, C++

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anas mattar
Technical Lead at DPO International · | 2 upvotes · 194.5K views
Recommends

my advice , you should answer me for this question, what do you like to work: web base or mobile native or cross platform. if you like web base you should choose PHP or ASP.net or Node.js or if you like mobile native you should decide Android or IOS platform and else if you like cross platfrom you should learn Flutter with dart language. thanks

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Brayden W
Needs advice
on
GolangGolangPythonPython
and
RustRust

Hey, 👋

My name is Brayden. I’m currently a Frontend React Developer, striving to move into Fullstack so I can expand my knowledge.

For my main backend language, I am deciding between Python, Rust, and Go. I’ve tried each of them out for about an hour and currently, I like Python and Rust the most. However, I’m not sure if I’m missing out on something!

If anyone has advice on these technologies, I’d love to hear it!

Thanks.

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Replies (4)
Recommends
on
GolangGolangPythonPython

Rust is still in low demand. It's a great language but you'll have a hard time finding jobs. Go is the mix of both Rust and Python. Great language with modern features, fast, scalable, fun to write, and at the same time it has high demand (not as much as python).

Python on the other hand is a language that you can't go wrong with. Look around you and see what your job market prefers. If there isn't much difference to you personally, pick the one with more demand.

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All of these are solid options, however considering your expertise currently, I would probably suggest Node.JS considering your past experience with JS. However Python offers a similar development environment to JS in my opinion, and Go is a good sort of intermediate between Rust and Node.JS and Python. It's fast, but not as fast as Rust, and offers a development experience that combines C-styled languages (like Rust), and Python-y languages... So: Rust for the fastest, Node for familiarity, Python for ease of development, and Go for a good middle ground. I have used all in personal projects... If you use Go, I suggest a easy to use web server framework like Fiber.

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Akihito KIRISAKI
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PythonPythonRustRust

Rust is a challenging choice, but worth to be chosen. It has strong memory-safety and type-safety, this gives you no bother about those errors. However, static typing languages often slow our developing speed down in early stage. In that case, it's effective to write prototype in an easy language like Python, and rewrite it in a hard language. It's important not to be afraid to throw away first code you write.

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Donald Tran
Software Engineer at T-Mobile · | 3 upvotes · 374.3K views
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on
RustRust

The other answers are excellent, but I want to be a bit of a contrarian and say you should learn Rust. While the number of jobs for it are (relatively) low(er), it is certainly expanding and you'd be surprised at which companies do use Rust (Discord, for example, is starting to move away from Golang to Rust!).

But the main reason is that learning Rust itself will teach you a lot about systems design (/backend) because of its borrow checker. You can try out a lot of ideas and make a lot mistakes and the borrow checker will always be there guide you to a better solution (thereby teaching you in the process).

Also, I wouldn't underestimated how important managing memory (and memory safety) is. While Golang is great in some ways, it doesn't protect you from pushing memory leaks into production. And eventually you'll come upon a scenario where you'll have to make your Python code run faster and the optimizations you'd have to do won't look pretty (or be very Pythontic).

And Rust is freakin fast! If you have Rust, you wouldn't need any other language for the backend (or any other systems level code). Check this blog post: https://blog.discord.com/why-discord-is-switching-from-go-to-rust-a190bbca2b1f?gi=dd8bc5d669d. Discord found that even after spending months optimizing Golang code it still wasn't fast enough. But unoptimized, first-draft Rust code was (is) faster by an order of magnitude!

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Piusha Kalyana
Needs advice
on
GolangGolangPHPPHP
and
PythonPython

Hi

I want to build a tool to check asset availability (video, images, etc.) from third-party vendors. These vendors have APIs. However, this process should run daily basis and update the database with the status. This is a kind of separate process. I need to know what will be the good approach and technology for this?

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Replies (5)
Hannes Holst
at 365 Consulting Services Ltd. · | 7 upvotes · 342.6K views
Recommends
on
PythonPython

hi - I think this depends on how you want to provide the information to the user. If you want to build a Wordpress-plugin: PHP If you want to build your own website: Python+Django / PHP / JavaScript+Node.js As Desktop application?

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anas mattar
Technical Lead at DPO International · | 3 upvotes · 329.6K views
Recommends
on
PHPPHP

for what technologies you should use, this is depend on what technology do you prefer? your should think best structuing for your code because each API vendor has different to a nother one so it's better no merege code vendores together. your code must be using SOLID principle pattern and some design pattern such as Factory Pattern

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Recommends
on
GolangGolang

The major advantage of Go is that you can run queries in parallel. Fire off a Go thread for each vendor and each thread can check the availability of assets from a specific vendor and update the database. Go supports hundreds of threads with ease.

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anas mattar
Technical Lead at DPO International · | 1 upvotes · 325.6K views
Recommends
on
C#C#GolangGolangPHPPHP

your decision depend on what language do you know. if you know php you can use laravel framework

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Oluwafemi Lawrence
Recommends
on
GolangGolang

Hi, I would recommend Go because of strongly-typed nature which makes a developer more productive as it is less error prone compared to the other dynamic-typed language. Go also has cron-job library(powered by goroutines) that can help with your automated tasks.

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Needs advice
on
C#C#F#F#
and
KotlinKotlin

Hi there. I want to expand my coding toolset. So I want to learn a second backend language besides Kotlin. Kotlin is fantastic. I love it in every aspect, and I think I can never return to Java. And also why should I? It is 100% interoperable with java and can co-exist in every project.

So my question here is. Which language do you think will bring me more joy? I think F#; it is more like Kotlin. Then C# (it's more or like 100% java). But, let's say I learn F#. Is it 100% interoperable like Kotlin? can they live side by side? Can I, then, apply to .NET jr jobs after a while, for example, or is C# the holy cow? I would like to learn .Net.

If it is the worst and only C# is acceptable, then which language should I learn? Dart? Go?

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Replies (3)
Recommends
on
C#C#KotlinKotlin

Exceptional decision to go with Kotlin. For the other story, go full with C#. "is C# the holy cow? Yes it is.". Specially now when netCore is crossplatform and you can build asp.net core applications on Windows, Linux and macOS via Visual Studio Code which is also multiplatform. Nothing will beat C# in the near future. Also, at the end of 2021 Microsoft will release Net 6.0 which will include MAUI.

"For those new to .NET MAUI (standing for .NET Multi-platform App UI), Microsoft says it's "the evolution of Xamarin.Forms extended from mobile to desktop scenarios with UI controls rebuilt from the ground up for performance and extensibility."

So, C# all the way sire!

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Recommends
on
C#C#

animefanx1,

First let's get your questions sorted: Which language do you think will bring me more joy?

This you will have to decide for yourself, I am a long time C# developer and have seen it grow into a very compelling platform. The language and I'd compare it more to Kotlin than Java (by a long margin). More on .NET in a bit.

say I learn F#. Is it 100% interoperable like Kotlin?

You can have 100% interop with a caveat, your F# libraries have to implement certain guidance in order to be referenced from C#. Some (dare I say most) of the differences between F# and C# are predicated on language constructs that are not available in C#. For instance F# functions that return Unit.

can they live side by side?

Yes.

Can I, then, apply to .NET jr jobs after a while, for example, or is C# the holy cow?

I don't know if I take your meaning, but let me say this: Learning either C# or F# will likely force you to understand concepts such as garbage collection, primitive types, etc. which apply to all .NET languages, thus a lot of the effort you put into .NET is bound to pay off regardless of your choice.

If it is the worst and only C# is acceptable, then which language should I learn? Dart? Go? You can't go wrong with any of these and I venture to say whether you select C#, F#, Dart or Go as your next adventure, your willingness to learn will take you to try other languages, some which mey not even exist yet!

PS1: .NET is an end to end environment now. With the introduction of Blazor and Razor pages one does not need JavaScript or other browser scripting languages, it even interops with JavaScript. PS2. Microsoft is working on unifying .NET. Soon there will be only one version: .NET 5! Caveat: Some features such as WinForms will still be specific to the windows environment but all of those are likely things you don't need in Mac or Linux

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Recommends
on
GolangGolang

I think you can learn go instead C#. C# is cool, but Golang also cool. It can run on any OS without specific software. C# can run on linux too but it's only the .NET Core as I know. But golang is flexible. So try it and decide what do you think about Golang

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Needs advice
on
PowerShellPowerShell
and
PythonPython

I am technical support. I work daily with Windows Server / Exchange, Active directory. I would like to learn scripting and automation to make my life easier. I just started learning PowerShell but not really sure about the correct study path from where I can start. I am taking some courses on Udemy and YouTube. Is it enough?

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Replies (3)
Recommends
on
PowerShellPowerShell

My first foray into programming was with powershell and it continues to be an enormous help for me in my career (caveat being that I have primarily worked on windows boxes). That being said, PowerShell is a weird language that has some unique syntax and operators that don't translate well to other languages. Python is weird too, but for other reasons (spacing!). I suspect you'll get more immediate benefit spending some time on Powershell since your working in an environment that fully supports the ps toolset.

As for learning, I read "PowerShell Toolmaking in a Month of Lunches" and found that helpful. However, I think your course of study is sufficient. Think the most return for the effort was just messing around in the powershell IDE on my local computer and working the Microsoft documentation.

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Witt Allen
DevOps Engineer at Provisions Group · | 5 upvotes · 116K views
Recommends
on
PowerShellPowerShell

Taking courses on Udemy and YouTube will be helpful I'm sure, but don't neglect the power of practice. If you work largely with Windows right now, pick powershell. Take opportunities to convert the knowledge you already have (example: unlocking an account in Active Directory or adding an email alias in Exchange) from a manual process to a powershell method. Sometimes that's a single cmdlet (Unlock-AdAccount) and sometimes it's a script.

Once you have a good understanding of variables, the pipeline, and foreach loops, you'll be in a position to accelerate your learning. Looking up Microsoft docs is part of the process :)

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Recommends
on
PowerShellPowerShell

I would consider reading "Powershell for sysadmins" from No Starch Press. Start small with the ActiveDirectory and AzureAd modules. Start with read only operations like pulling AD Group Members into a variable and then pipe that variable into a .csv file with Export-CSV cmdlet. Once you feel more comfortable with the syntax, specific cmdlets, and piping data start looking at specific techniques like using hashtables (dictionaries) and globbing. From there you can begin to construct your own functions and modules. Just start small and don't let yourself get overwhelmed.

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Needs advice
on
C#C#JavaScriptJavaScript
and
ReactReact

Hi Everyone,

I have some experience working with JavaScript and React and will now try to learn C# - could you please share some similarities and differences between JS and C# and what rookie mistakes I should watch out for when learning C#?

Also, any tips & good practices are greatly appreciated :)

Thank you

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Replies (4)
Pavel Kalugin
Software Engineer at Paralect · | 9 upvotes · 195.2K views

If you want to learn C# to write some backend code you can also check out Node.js which is basically JavaScript running outside the browser. You can create any kind of web servers, APIs, scrapers, automation scripts, etc using all the same JavaScript.

A good entry to Node is Express.js. It is the most common web framework for Node. It's well documented and there are a lot of educational materials for it.

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Hameed Moshood
Recommends
on
C#C#

C# is .net framework of a programming language specially different from the programming languages you're used to. If you learn C# you will be experienceed in coding with VIsual Basic .net and also creating web development using ASP and this ASP also include JavaScript function.... I urge you to learn it

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Kudos Beluga
Recommends
on
F#F#Node.jsNode.js

I prefer functional programming because it produces less buggy code (thus I recommend F#), and is simply better to learn this paradigm earlier on in your coding career rather than later. It can also do most stuff C# can do, namely code with .NET core. If you're going to learn .NET then you should learn Node.js+Express first though before doing web development with C#/F#

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Ross M.
System Architect at MomentFactory · | 2 upvotes · 178.4K views
Recommends
on
C#C#JavaScriptJavaScript

I think you can manage to find something about this topic. it's pretty popular one. ex: https://www.educba.com/c-sharp-vs-js/

Something I don't see discussed enough over the internet is the performance difference. I don't think you should worry about this. 95% of the time you won't notice the difference on your day to day projets. You will know what you need in terms of performance when you get there.

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Needs advice
on
GolangGolangPythonPython
and
RustRust

I am a beginner, and I am totally confused, which of these 3 languages to learn first. Go, Rust, or Python. As my studies are going which of them will be easy to learn with studies that is, I can learn and do my studies also. Which one of them will be easily handled with my studies, and will be much much useful in future?

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Replies (17)
Recommends
on
PythonPython

python is a good language to start for the beginner.

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Will Vandebelt
Recommends
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GolangGolangPythonPython

Python is a great language to learn as a beginner. However, Go is really easy to learn as well and has a much more powerful standard library that will allow you to build very complex and powerful applications in the future. Go is becoming a standard in Cloud computing and concurrency. Both of which are very advanced but important.

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Recommends
on
PythonPython

I have experience in all three languages, and you should learn python first. These are three different languages (read: tools) to solve different problems you may have. Python is a high level language you can use for writing cross-platform scripts, web servers, AI, websites (e.g. Django) and the list goes on. Python can be used for most programming tasks while being the easiest to learn of the three and probably the most productive as well.

A lot of tech companies start out with Python for their web services, but due to Pythons slow speed and the pain that comes with dynamically typed languages when the code base grows, switch to Go later on when they need to scale. Go is a systems language that thrives when used for high performance cloud/web or networking services. Go is used in performance critical networking situations such as Twitch's streaming services and Uber's geofence services. It's also very clean and simple syntax that makes it very easy to quickly understand what code does.

Python is an interpreted language and Go is a garbage collected language, but Rust is a highly performant and reliable compiled programming language without the extra baggage of runtime memory management. Rust forces you to follow coding patterns that assure memory safety. This makes Rust a perfect fit for high performance algorithms, game engines or safety-critical systems, but would be overkill for web servers or scripts on modern hardware.

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Recommends
on
GolangGolang

I'd definitely start with Go. I know Python, Go and quite a few other languages.

Rust is not easy to learn as a beginner.

Python has way too many features to be called "easy" to learn. While it is very forgiving to beginner mistakes it feels like playing in a puddle of mud. It does not teach you clean programming at all. Unless of course you like messy.

Go on the other hand is very easy to learn. As a professional you can learn the entire language in under 2 hours. I have already given the tour of Go (https://tour.golang.org/) to complete beginners and they went through it very thoroughly and thereby knew the entire Go language in less than 5 days. While it is very easy to learn and very easy to read, it is quite strict on other things, guiding you to write clean code. For one it is a typed language and it is good to learn very early about types.

Knowing the entire language is of course not all there is to know. There is the standard library and a lot of other libraries to get to know in every language. Also one has to learn patterns in every language, get experience on how to structure code, dig deeper into the language itself to understand its inner workings, etc. That takes years in every language.

That being said, it depends very much on what you want to do with a language. If you want to go into ML and science you definitely need Python. If you want to go into cloud computing, distributed servers (which in my opinion any server should be nowadays), use Go. If you want to do systems level programming, e.g in hardware programming, use Rust.

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Kudos Beluga
Recommends
on
PythonPython

Rust is probably a bad choice for starting out. It is a low level language where garbage collection is not done automatically, and has to get you thinking about all the technical aspects. It is statically typed and compiled, so it's very strict with how you code. I do love Rust though, it's a nice language. Golang is also compiled and statically typed, but it aims to be for quick development, which makes it a better choice for starting out.

Python though can be great for starting out and getting a hold on how to program. You don't need to worry about things such as types, garbage collection, or an overwhelming amount of data types. Since I'm a JavaScript fanboy I can't help but say another great popular choice to start is JavaScript 😁

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on
C#C#PythonPython

If all you want is a gentle intro and have access to tools and libs that can help with your tasks, Python is the way to go. It's ecosystem is huge and the language is easy to pick up. However, if you are aiming to get into software industry, I'd highly recommend you also pick up another classic language like C++/C#/Java. It really helps you cement some CS & programming fundamentals and get more familiar with the concept of software design and software architecture. Not saying you cannot achieve good architecture in Python or Go, but traditionally you have more materials covering these classic OOP languages. And once you learn them, you can apply your knowledge to other languages and it helps you understand other languages faster.

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Python has the broadest reach as it's been around the longest; rust is much more difficult for a beginner to learn; I work with Go every day and it's probably the most productive general use language.

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Stanislav Petrov
Senior Software Engineer at GfK · | 3 upvotes · 301K views
Recommends
on
PythonPython

If you start learning programming I'd suggest Python language. I have no experience with Go and Rust so I cannot give you advice for them.

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Recommends
on
PythonPython

Python is the easiest of the languages to learn, and while the slowest in production, it will teach many of the basic fundamental concepts of programming, especially if you're not going to be doing anything low level or at a system level.

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Amity International School Sec Gurugram
Vice Cyber Captain at Student · | 1 upvotes · 300.7K views
Recommends
on
PythonPython

Python, because its the easiest to learn as a beginer. Its often called "English without grammar" because its terms and writing style is quite similar to English. Python also has a diverse range of applications like Web App, Desktop App, Data Science etc

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I agree with most of the other answers here. Python is the best choice because it is super user-friendly, has an easy syntax, and can do many complex things in relatively fewer lines.

While Rust is a more recent and a great language nonetheless, it is slightly more complicated as it involves compiling and the syntax isn't so great.

And Go is the not a great choice either. While it has a decent syntax, keep in mind that Go won't be of much use unless you plan on working in Google. Even if you want to learn it, you can do so later.

I hope this helped you in making your decision, and welcome to the world of programming! I hope you enjoy.

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Recommends
on
GolangGolangPythonPython

Go and Python are going to be much easier to learn than Rust. The memory management for Rust is pretty hard to wrap your head around when you are first learning how to do basic things with the language. Get familiar with programming first, then learn Rust.

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Recommends
on
GolangGolang

Study, machine learning = Python | High performance computing, safety-oriented programming = Rust | Backend, feel productive with less runtime performance drawback = Go

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Recommends

I'd choose python because with a good knowledge of python and it's libraries, you could do literally anything. Also it has a relatively simple structure, so it won't be tough for a beginner.

Later on if you wish to learn Rust and Go, please do by all means.

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Recommends
on
PythonPython

Python is a great language to start programming with, there is an awesome python course on coursera by Dr. Charles Severance called Programming for everybody, check it out :)

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Recommends

Learn/start with C; don't rush after buzz words. Python is easy to learn but you would not get the underpinnings of memory and pointers, an important aspect of programming.

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Recommends
on
PythonPython

Python is the best programming language for starting out as it is quite easy to learn, but it also is very powerful and you can do plenty with it. It will be useful for a long time. Python is my recommendation.

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Decisions about C#, F#, and Python

2 major challenges for which JS comes as a handy tool, 1st its integration with AWS SDK was at par as Python and .net and the solution comes to hand with the reverse proxy solutions for the application to be running as an instance taking the situation of inside organization demography of resources expertise over the technology.

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Alexandre Desroches
Founder & Developper at Finance D · | 71 upvotes · 339K views

I had a goal to create the simplest accounting software for Mac and Windows to help small businesses in Canada.

This led me to a long 2 years of exploration of the best language that could provide these features:

  • Great overall productivity
  • International wide-spread usage for long-term sustainability and easy to find documentation
  • Versatility for creating websites and desktop softwares
  • Enjoyable developper experience
  • Ability to create good looking modern UIs
  • Job openings with this language

I tried Python, Java, C# and C++ without finding what I was looking for.

When I discovered Javascript, I really knew it was the right language to use. Thinking of this today makes me realize even more how great a decision this has been to learn, use and master Javascript. It has been a fun, challenging and productive road on which I am still satisfied.

Obviously, when I refer to Javascript, it is not without implying the vast ecosystem around it. For me, JS is a whole universe in which almost every imaginable tools exist. It's awesome - for real. Thanks to all the contributors which have made it possible.

To be even clearer about how intense I am with Javascript, let's just say that my first passion was music. Until, I find coding with Javascript! Yep, I know!

So in conclusion, I chose Javascript because it is versatile, enjoyable, widely used, productive for both desktop softwares and websites with ability to create modern great looking user interfaces (assuming HTML and CSS are involved) and finally there are job openings.

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Python has become the most popular language for machine learning right now since almost all machine learning tools provide service for this language, and it is really to use since it has many build-in objects like Hashtable. In C, you need to implement everything by yourself.

C++ is one of the most popular programming languages in graphics. It has many fancy libraries like eigen to help us process matrix. I have many previous projects about graphics based on C++ and this time, we also need to deal with graphics since we need to analyze movements of the human body. C++ has much more advantages than Java. C++ uses only compiler, whereas Java uses compiler and interpreter in both. C++ supports both operator overloading and method overloading whereas Java only supports method overloading. C++ supports manual object management with the help of new and delete keywords whereas Java has built-in automatic garbage collection.

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Kirill Mikhailov

Go is a way faster than both Python and PHP, which is pretty understandable, but we were amazed at how good we adapted to use it. Go was a blessing for a team , since strict typing is making it very easy to develop and control everything inside team, so the quality was really good. We made huge leap forward in dev speed because of it.

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Chose
PythonPython
over
ScalaScala

I am working in the domain of big data and machine learning. I am helping companies with bringing their machine learning models to the production. In many projects there is a tendency to port Python, PySpark code to Scala and Scala Spark.

This yields to longer time to market and a lot of mistakes due to necessity to understand and re-write the code. Also many libraries/apis that data scientists/machine learning practitioners use are not available in jvm ecosystem.

Simply, refactoring (if necessary) and organising the code of the data scientists by following best practices of software development is less error prone and faster comparing to re-write in Scala.

Pipeline orchestration tools such as Luigi/Airflow is python native and fits well to this picture.

I have heard some arguments against Python such as, it is slow, or it is hard to maintain due to its dynamically typed language. However cost/benefit of time consumed porting python code to java/scala alone would be enough as a counter-argument. ML pipelines rarerly contains a lot of code (if that is not the case, such as complex domain and significant amount of code, then scala would be a better fit).

In terms of performance, I did not see any issues with Python. It is not the fastest runtime around but ML applications are rarely time-critical (majority of them is batch based).

I still prefer Scala for developing APIs and for applications where the domain contains complex logic.

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Context: Writing an open source CLI tool.

Go and Rust over Python: Simple distribution.

With Go and Rust, just build statically compiled binaries and hand them out.

With Python, have people install with "pip install --user" and not finding the binaries :(.

Go and Rust over Python: Startup and runtime performance

Go and Rust over Python: No need to worry about which Python interpreter version is installed on the users' machines.

Go over Rust: Simplicity; Rust's memory management comes at a development / maintenance cost.

Go over Rust: Easier cross compiles from macOS to Linux.

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E Tidalgo

I use Powershell for everyday scripting, text manipulation, simple REST api testing and other tasks. My choice to use Powershell was primarily based on availability. At the time (2010), every company machine I was using or going to use was Windows and guaranteed to have Powershell. Python was an option but not guaranteed to be installed on every machine. The choice was not based on ease of use, flexibility or support.

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Ing. Alvaro Rodríguez Scelza
Software Systems Engineer at Ripio · | 12 upvotes · 353.9K views

I was considering focusing on learning RoR and looking for a work that uses those techs.

After some investigation, I decided to stay with C# .NET:

  • It is more requested on job positions (7 to 1 in my personal searches average).

  • It's been around for longer.

  • it has better documentation and community.

  • One of Ruby advantages (its amazing community gems, that allows to quickly build parts of your systems by merely putting together third party components) gets quite complicated to use and maintain in huge applications, where building and reusing your own components may become a better approach.

  • Rail's front end support is starting to waver.

  • C# .NET code is far easier to understand, debug and maintain. Although certainly not easier to learn from scratch.

  • Though Rails has an excellent programming speed, C# tends to get the upper hand in long term projects.

I would avise to stick to rails when building small projects, and switching to C# for more long term ones.

Opinions are welcome!

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We’re a new startup so we need to be able to deliver quick changes as we find our product market fit. We’ve also got to ensure that we’re moving money safely, and keeping perfect records. The technologies we’ve chosen mix mature but well maintained frameworks like Django, with modern web-first and api-first front ends like GraphQL, NextJS, and Chakra. We use a little Golang sparingly in our backend to ensure that when we interact with financial services, we do so with statically compiled, strongly typed, and strictly limited and reviewed code.

You can read all about it in our linked blog post.

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Timm Stelzer
VP Of Engineering at Flexperto GmbH · | 18 upvotes · 601.1K views

We have a lot of experience in JavaScript, writing our services in NodeJS allows developers to transition to the back end without any friction, without having to learn a new language. There is also the option to write services in TypeScript, which adds an expressive type layer. The semi-shared ecosystem between front and back end is nice as well, though specifically NodeJS libraries sometimes suffer in quality, compared to other major languages.

As for why we didn't pick the other languages, most of it comes down to "personal preference" and historically grown code bases, but let's do some post-hoc deduction:

Go is a practical choice, reasonably easy to learn, but until we find performance issues with our NodeJS stack, there is simply no reason to switch. The benefits of using NodeJS so far outweigh those of picking Go. This might change in the future.

PHP is a language we're still using in big parts of our system, and are still sometimes writing new code in. Modern PHP has fixed some of its issues, and probably has the fastest development cycle time, but it suffers around modelling complex asynchronous tasks, and (on a personal note) lack of support for writing in a functional style.

We don't use Python, Elixir or Ruby, mostly because of personal preference and for historic reasons.

Rust, though I personally love and use it in my projects, would require us to specifically hire for that, as the learning curve is quite steep. Its web ecosystem is OK by now (see https://www.arewewebyet.org/), but in my opinion, it is still no where near that of the other web languages. In other words, we are not willing to pay the price for playing this innovation card.

Haskell, as with Rust, I personally adore, but is simply too esoteric for us. There are problem domains where it shines, ours is not one of them.

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Pros of C#
Pros of F#
Pros of Python
  • 351
    Cool syntax
  • 292
    Great lambda support
  • 264
    Great generics support
  • 210
    Language integrated query (linq)
  • 180
    Extension methods
  • 94
    Automatic garbage collection
  • 89
    Properties with get/set methods
  • 83
    Backed by microsoft
  • 71
    Automatic memory management
  • 61
    Amaizing Crossplatform Support
  • 46
    High performance
  • 42
    LINQ
  • 37
    Beautiful
  • 34
    Great ecosystem of community packages with Nuget
  • 26
    Vibrant developer community
  • 23
    Great readability
  • 21
    Dead-simple asynchronous programming with async/await
  • 19
    Visual Studio - Great IDE
  • 17
    Open source
  • 16
    Productive
  • 15
    Strongly typed by default, dynamic typing when needed
  • 15
    Object oriented programming paradigm
  • 12
    Easy separation of config/application code
  • 11
    Great community
  • 10
    OOPS simplified with great syntax
  • 9
    Cool
  • 9
    Operator overloading
  • 8
    Good language to teach OO concepts
  • 8
    Events management using delegates
  • 8
    High-performance
  • 7
    Linq expressions
  • 7
    Unity
  • 6
    Conditional compilation
  • 6
    Coherent language backed by an extensive CLR
  • 5
    Top level code
  • 5
    Comprehensive platform libraries
  • 5
    Organized and clean
  • 4
    Concise syntax, productivity designed
  • 3
    Lovely
  • 2
    Statically typed
  • 1
    Sophisticated overall
  • 1
    Far more sleek and sphisticated than other languages
  • 1
    Interfaces
  • 0
    Interfaces
  • 53
    Pattern-matching
  • 42
    Makes programming fun again
  • 38
    Type providers
  • 32
    Delightful
  • 30
    Frictionless
  • 26
    Static type inference
  • 21
    Composable
  • 19
    Ml syntax
  • 17
    REPL
  • 17
    Succinct
  • 10
    DDD
  • 9
    Making invalid states impossible
  • 7
    Great community
  • 7
    WebSharper
  • 7
    Language support for units of measure
  • 6
    Functional Programming
  • 6
    Powerful
  • 5
    Beautiful Code
  • 5
    Compact
  • 5
    Multiplatform
  • 5
    Functional paradigm
  • 5
    Computation Expressions
  • 5
    Open source
  • 5
    Less bugs
  • 5
    Productive
  • 4
    Allow use JS and .NET libraries
  • 4
    Object oriented features
  • 4
    Fun to write
  • 1.2K
    Great libraries
  • 958
    Readable code
  • 844
    Beautiful code
  • 784
    Rapid development
  • 688
    Large community
  • 433
    Open source
  • 391
    Elegant
  • 280
    Great community
  • 272
    Object oriented
  • 217
    Dynamic typing
  • 77
    Great standard library
  • 58
    Very fast
  • 54
    Functional programming
  • 47
    Easy to learn
  • 45
    Scientific computing
  • 35
    Great documentation
  • 28
    Matlab alternative
  • 28
    Productivity
  • 28
    Easy to read
  • 23
    Simple is better than complex
  • 20
    It's the way I think
  • 19
    Imperative
  • 18
    Free
  • 18
    Very programmer and non-programmer friendly
  • 17
    Machine learning support
  • 17
    Powerfull language
  • 16
    Fast and simple
  • 14
    Scripting
  • 12
    Explicit is better than implicit
  • 11
    Ease of development
  • 10
    Clear and easy and powerfull
  • 9
    Unlimited power
  • 8
    It's lean and fun to code
  • 8
    Import antigravity
  • 7
    Python has great libraries for data processing
  • 7
    Print "life is short, use python"
  • 6
    Flat is better than nested
  • 6
    Readability counts
  • 6
    Rapid Prototyping
  • 6
    Fast coding and good for competitions
  • 6
    Now is better than never
  • 6
    There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious
  • 6
    High Documented language
  • 6
    I love snakes
  • 6
    Although practicality beats purity
  • 6
    Great for tooling
  • 5
    Great for analytics
  • 5
    Lists, tuples, dictionaries
  • 4
    Multiple Inheritence
  • 4
    Complex is better than complicated
  • 4
    Socially engaged community
  • 4
    Easy to learn and use
  • 4
    Simple and easy to learn
  • 4
    Web scraping
  • 4
    Easy to setup and run smooth
  • 4
    Beautiful is better than ugly
  • 4
    Plotting
  • 4
    CG industry needs
  • 3
    No cruft
  • 3
    It is Very easy , simple and will you be love programmi
  • 3
    Many types of collections
  • 3
    If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a g
  • 3
    If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad id
  • 3
    Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules
  • 3
    Pip install everything
  • 3
    List comprehensions
  • 3
    Generators
  • 3
    Import this
  • 2
    Flexible and easy
  • 2
    Batteries included
  • 2
    Can understand easily who are new to programming
  • 2
    Powerful language for AI
  • 2
    Should START with this but not STICK with This
  • 2
    A-to-Z
  • 2
    Because of Netflix
  • 2
    Only one way to do it
  • 2
    Better outcome
  • 2
    Good for hacking
  • 1
    Securit
  • 1
    Slow
  • 1
    Sexy af
  • 0
    Ni
  • 0
    Powerful

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Cons of C#
Cons of F#
Cons of Python
  • 15
    Poor x-platform GUI support
  • 8
    Closed source
  • 7
    Fast and secure
  • 7
    Requires DllImportAttribute for getting stuff from unma
  • 3
    Microsoft tend to ignore F# preferring to hype C#
  • 2
    Interop between C# can sometimes be difficult
  • 1
    Hype
  • 1
    Type Providers can be unstable in larger solutions
  • 53
    Still divided between python 2 and python 3
  • 28
    Performance impact
  • 26
    Poor syntax for anonymous functions
  • 22
    GIL
  • 19
    Package management is a mess
  • 14
    Too imperative-oriented
  • 12
    Hard to understand
  • 12
    Dynamic typing
  • 12
    Very slow
  • 8
    Indentations matter a lot
  • 8
    Not everything is expression
  • 7
    Incredibly slow
  • 7
    Explicit self parameter in methods
  • 6
    Requires C functions for dynamic modules
  • 6
    Poor DSL capabilities
  • 6
    No anonymous functions
  • 5
    Fake object-oriented programming
  • 5
    Threading
  • 5
    The "lisp style" whitespaces
  • 5
    Official documentation is unclear.
  • 5
    Hard to obfuscate
  • 5
    Circular import
  • 4
    Lack of Syntax Sugar leads to "the pyramid of doom"
  • 4
    The benevolent-dictator-for-life quit
  • 4
    Not suitable for autocomplete
  • 2
    Meta classes
  • 1
    Training wheels (forced indentation)

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What is C#?

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

What is F#?

F# is a mature, open source, cross-platform, functional-first programming language. It empowers users and organizations to tackle complex computing problems with simple, maintainable and robust code.

What is Python?

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

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What are some alternatives to C#, F#, and Python?
Java
Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!
JavaScript
JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.
Golang
Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.
HTML5
HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.
PHP
Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.
See all alternatives