Niche programming languages for your dev career
What is the best programming language to get good jobs and make the best money? Java may be the "best programming language ever". And of course C# and PHP are always in demand. But away from the programming language mainstream, there are also ways to a good tech career on small side streets. With niche programming languages, you have the best chance of getting a job in specific areas. Because the range of trained developers is naturally much smaller here. That means less competition. Anyone who wants to earn money with programming and is also interested in an unusual field of work would do well to deal with the following exotic programming languages:
APEX - The Salesforce programming language
The customer relationship management tool Salesforce has become extremely important in recent years. Due to the spread of cloud computing, more and more companies are making targeted use of their opportunities to collect and analyze data about their customers - and thus to bind them even better. Apex is the object-oriented programming language developed specifically for the Salesforce platform, Force.com. Due to its similarity to Java and C#, it is easy to learn for developers who already know these programming languages. A database-like execution of the language gives developers many possibilities for application: fast bulk processing of data, SOQL and SPSL queries, and DMLs, among others. If you look at the salaries in the job offers for APEX specialists, the numbers are quite impressive. If you want to earn good money with programming, knowledge of Salesforce and APEX is a good idea.
Programming languages for AI
Lisp and Prolog are absolutely special languages for the mathematical and scientific area. Since their development, they have played an important role in science, not least in AI programming. Artificial intelligence has always been a fascinating field of work. Robotics and A.I. have long since outgrown science fiction novels; as happened with the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence will also find its way into our everyday lives. If you want to delve deeper into this area as a programmer, you have a good chance with Prolog as the most important logical programming language and with the predominantly functional languages of the Lisp family. When Lisp was born at MIT in 1958, the language was way ahead of its time. Many elements of Lisp have been carried over into later programming languages.
Other scientific programming languages
Yet another programming language dinosaur that has long been used in science is Fortran. To this day, engineers and scientists use this procedural language primarily for numerical calculations. Modern tools for problem solving in complex numerical and symbolic mathematics are Mathematica, Matlab and Maple. Anyone looking for an open source alternative will find it at GNU Octave.
An exciting area of application for these languages are, for example, the diverse problems in the area of model reduction or optimal control. Especially in vehicle development - not only, but of course also in the automotive sector for proactive vehicle dynamics - specially trained IT specialists are of great importance here.
There is no such thing as the best programming language for a steep developer career
As a rule, a niche programming language alone is of course not a qualification with which you can earn good money as a programmer. Job opportunities and average salary are often extrapolated to a single language in many ranking lists. However, these figures should always be treated with caution. It may be true that, on average, Java developers earn the best income. However, the entire skill package must always be right. Anyone who is well informed about the requirements placed on IT specialists in certain niche branches of industry and expands their skills accordingly will have the best chance of finding a good job.
