Choose the right programming language for your next project. This book offers a clear, comparative guide to 10 of the most influential imperative and object-oriented languages to help you program with confidence using the best-matched language for your applications.

The book is organized into chapters that each focus on the essential benefits of 10 popular languages, including C, C++, Java, C#, Kotlin, JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Go, Rust, and Julia. This curated selection reflects both historical and modern relevance, offering you a basic understanding of how different languages solve different problems. After learning the context of each language, you will explore the basic syntax, semantics, and key features, supported by practical examples. This book doesn’t aim to make you an expert in any language. Instead, you will gain the decision-making insight to navigate a multi-language world.

With so many languages to choose from, each with its own strengths and quirks, this book offers just enough depth while bridging the gap between beginner tutorials and dense reference guides. Whether you're expanding your skills, shaping tech strategy, designing a curriculum, or job searching, this book is a practical toolkit to simplify your options.

What You Will Learn: 

• Understand the core syntax, semantics and paradigms of 10 popular programming languages
• Identify the strengths and weaknesses of each language in various problem domains
• Gain historical and architectural context for each language with insight into future trends
• Compare languages using examples to highlight practical differences

Who This Book Is For: 

Beginning to Intermediate software developers, technical managers, architects, and job seekers looking for a crash course on the most popular programming languages. You should have some prior experience with software development, ideally with at least one language covered, to best benefit. 

Barry A. Feigenbaum, PhD, now retired, has decades of professional software engineering experience. During his career, he has worked for major industry-leading companies, such as IBM and Amazon, and most recently at Dell. He has worked on mainframe and midrange servers, and many applications for personal computers. He has developed software products, such as operating systems, assemblers/compilers, and word processors for multiple hardware architectures, in many key industry languages such as various assemblers, FORTRAN, PL/I, C/C++/C#, Python, JavaScript, Java, and Go. He has extensive experience in the full software development life cycle. Most recently, he was a lead on teams developing mission-critical microservices, most often written in Java, Go, and C++, that operate in large clustered environments.

Barry led the early development of the LAN support inside Microsoft Windows (he defined the SMB protocol that is the basis for both the CIFS (Windows) and the SAMBA (Unix and Linux) technologies). He has served as a software tester, developer, and designer as well as a development team lead, architect, and manager on multiple occasions. He was a key contributor as a developer, architect, and manager to several releases of PC-DOS (also MS-DOS) and OS/2. In these roles, he worked extensively with Microsoft on joint requirements, design, and implementation.

Dr. Feigenbaum has a PhD in Computer Engineering with a concentration in object-oriented (OO) software design and both a master's and a bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering. He has published multiple articles in technical magazines and juried journals. He has coauthored several books on IBM PC-DOS. He is the author of Go for Java Programmers, also published by Apress. He has spoken at numerous technical conferences, such as JavaOne. He has served on industry standard bodies. He has taught multiple college-level courses on data structures, software engineering, and distributed software as an adjunct professor at several universities. He has over 20 issued US patents.

Barry is widowed, has one son, and lives in Cedar Park, TX.