South Africa's most in-demand programming languages

Hanno Labuschagne

Hanno Labuschagne

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South Africa's most in-demand programming languages

Aspiring software developers and coders in South Africa should aim to develop proficiency in multiple programming languages, rather than specialising in a particular discipline, according to local software development companies which spoke to MyBroadband.

MyBroadband contacted Synthesis, Codehesion, and Code College to find out about the latest development trends, and what the most in-demand languages in South Africa are.
 
I'm looking at expanding into data science field and working on my SQL skills, surprised not to see it on the list, for longevity should I not waste my time with this old language and rather be making a shift to Python with its AI potential?
 
Zukat said:
I'm looking at expanding into data science field and working on my SQL skills, surprised not to see it on the list, for longevity should I not waste my time with this old language and rather be making a shift to Python with its AI potential?
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SQL databases aren't going anywhere, you can't go wrong honing your SQL skills. People are all hopping on the NoSQL bandwagon, but IMO this is just a fad. SQL is king.

I love Python, it is, at it's heart, a scripting language, but it has grown into an immensely powerful platform. If you're looking for an area to focus, Python is the way.
 
Zukat said:
I'm looking at expanding into data science field and working on my SQL skills, surprised not to see it on the list, for longevity should I not waste my time with this old language and rather be making a shift to Python with its AI potential?
Click to expand...
Well Java (and C#) has the entire Apache suite, so spark, jena, etc., plus MS is pushing it hard for .Net, so F# is a good pick.
Go is also doing pretty well due to simplicity and it's pretty fast, libraries.
dgcarter said:
SQL databases aren't going anywhere, you can't go wrong honing your SQL skills. People are all hopping on the NoSQL bandwagon, but IMO this is just a fad. SQL is king.

I love Python, it is, at it's heart, a scripting language, but it has grown into an immensely powerful platform. If you're looking for an area to focus, Python is the way.
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No, each has their own advantage, the do everything in NoSQL is definitely a fad, but NoSQL is not going to disappear any time soon.
There are so many use-cases where NoSQL is a better idea, e.g. relationships that aren't really "fixed" like how many authors can a book have? What structure does every website have? Etc.
 
dgcarter said:
SQL databases aren't going anywhere, you can't go wrong honing your SQL skills. People are all hopping on the NoSQL bandwagon, but IMO this is just a fad. SQL is king.

I love Python, it is, at it's heart, a scripting language, but it has grown into an immensely powerful platform. If you're looking for an area to focus, Python is the way.
Click to expand...

You can't beat a proper relational database system like MySQL or SQL Server for high volume transactional work loads. The number of junior devs I've encountered who have close to zero SQL skills is shocking. Whatever your flavour of SQL, this should be an essential skill that all devs have.
 
deweyzeph said:
You can't beat a proper relational database system like MySQL or SQL Server for high volume transactional work loads. The number of junior devs I've encountered who have close to zero SQL skills is shocking. Whatever your flavour of SQL, this should be an essential skill that all devs have.
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Note the keyword of transactions there.
 
Zukat said:
I'm looking at expanding into data science field and working on my SQL skills, surprised not to see it on the list, for longevity should I not waste my time with this old language and rather be making a shift to Python with its AI potential?
Click to expand...

You need both IMO. In the real world you will very likely be fetching data with SQl to use in Python, or something.

Moreover: without understanding the fundamentals of RDBMS you will not be able to communicate effectively with the custodians of the data you need for your whizzbang AI project.

I would strongly recommend also that you have your linear algebra and calculus taped. Languages are tools, you need to know what to do with them.
 
deweyzeph said:
You can't beat a proper relational database system like MySQL or SQL Server for high volume transactional work loads. The number of junior devs I've encountered who have close to zero SQL skills is shocking. Whatever your flavour of SQL, this should be an essential skill that all devs have.
Click to expand...

Strongly agree. LOL at all the NoSQL folks creating dimensional models to speed up poorly performing queries recently. BUt yea, right tool for the job. NoSQL has its place.
 
deweyzeph said:
The company said object-oriented and procedural programmers will eventually be considered legacy, due to the increasing demand of software being required to run in a distributed way.
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That's the funniest thing I've read all day.
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Agreed. For us things are functional at the highest level of code, but the backend, which is 99% of the development, is procedural and OO code.
 
Scala and F# amongst the most sought after programming language skills in ZA :ROFL::ROFL::ROFL:

Terraform is a programming language:ROFL::ROFL::ROFL:
 
Johnatan56 said:
Well Java (and C#) has the entire Apache suite, so spark, jena, etc., plus MS is pushing it hard for .Net, so F# is a good pick.
Go is also doing pretty well due to simplicity and it's pretty fast, libraries.

No, each has their own advantage, the do everything in NoSQL is definitely a fad, but NoSQL is not going to disappear any time soon.
There are so many use-cases where NoSQL is a better idea, e.g. relationships that aren't really "fixed" like how many authors can a book have? What structure does every website have? Etc.
Click to expand...

Yes, this is a very valid point. There is definately scope for NoSQL. But it's by no means a replacement for SQL.
 
deweyzeph said:
You can't beat a proper relational database system like MySQL or SQL Server for high volume transactional work loads. The number of junior devs I've encountered who have close to zero SQL skills is shocking. Whatever your flavour of SQL, this should be an essential skill that all devs have.
Click to expand...
Amen to this brother.
 
Thor said:
I will never say that - I will say it's pretty adapt for web.
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I love PHP

Daemons, message queue eaters, shell scripts, web.

It's got curly braces and is awesome.

I used to be a perl hacker.
Now everything is #!/usr/bin/php
 
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