Which programming language should I learn?
That’s the most common question for aspiring software engineers, and the answer is always: It depends on your preferences and what you want to build.
But perhaps you want to take another route and learn the language companies pay you the most for.
If that’s the case, this post is for you.
Let’s dive in.
The StackOverflow Survey
StackOverflow is the OG site where developers find answers to their questions and share knowledge with others.
Every year, they do a survey and ask thousands of professional developers a wide range of questions.
Such as:
What’s your salary?
Luckily, they also ask:
Which programming, scripting, and markup languages have you done extensive development work in over the past year?
Great! Let’s see which programming language pays the most.
Cleaning the data
First, I must ensure we’re not dealing with apples and oranges to compare relevant salaries.
A developer in the US earns significantly more than someone similar in most other countries, and I only want to look at full-time employees with pure developer roles.