73
Is there any use in learning an "easy" programming language?
(sh.itjust.works)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2026
73 points (96.2% liked)
Programming
27160 readers
339 users here now
Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!
Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.
Hope you enjoy the instance!
Rules
Rules
- Follow the programming.dev instance rules
- Keep content related to programming in some way
- If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos
Wormhole
Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
It us totally OK to start easy.
Scheme (for example Guile) or Racket are great beginner languages, because they have a very minimal core, and at the same time a lot of power. Created by teachers, they also have great guides.
Clojure is also a fantastic Lisp language, extremely elegant and very powerful. Its user community has many experienced programmers, and it is very friendly.
Python is probably the most popular choice for beginners. It has a nice tutorial and countless libraries, which allows to put programs together from components. But its build and packaging system is notoriously messy (though it seems improving) and can get in the way when doing more complex stuff later. Its user forums also suffer currently most from AI slop.
I wouldn't recommend Go language for beginners. It is relatively simple, true, but although it is well-geared to its main target - web applications - it has serious pitfalls with concurrency, which can lead to arcane bugs and a lot of hair-pulling.
You could also start with Rust. The language is larger than others, that's true. But you do not need to learn it all at once. Also, it has best-in-class online tutorials, books and documentation. Its compiler error messages are extremely helpful. And its build and packaging system are so much easier to use than almost anything else. This matters for beginners, too, since this allows you to put together interesting programs quickly.
Um, I have to disagree with your points on Go/Rust. You make Rust sound like the easier language, when in reality it just isn't.
And what concurrency thing are you talking abou with Go? Goroutines/channels are pretty decent in Go.
I probably wouldn't tell anyone to learn Rust unless they truly desired it specifically for a certain task.
Rust is also harder to get into because everything you want to do requires a package, but on the other hand Go is much easier because of its expansive standard library.