What is DevOps?
DevOps is a set of practices and tools that integrate development and IT operations. It combine two sets of skills: developers and IT professionals who work closely to improve software quality, delivery speed, and reliability.
A DevOps engineer emphasizes on using lightweight automated tools and processes to increase productivity and responsiveness. This practice helps streamline customer support, feature development, deployment, testing, and monitoring.
DevOps facilitates collaboration, communication, and continuous improvement. So, DevOps engineers must learn specific programming and scripting languages to accelerate improved software releases and deliver them more frequently.
A good DevOps engineer should know several programming or scripting languages. The more coding languages they know, the better they will be at streamlining operations and building software efficiently.
This blog highlights some of the top programming and scripting languages that every DevOps engineer should learn to improve their career.
Top Programming Languages for Every DevOps Engineer
As a DevOps engineer, it is very important to learn programming languages. Some o the top languages that DevOps engineer should learn are
- Python
- Java
- Javascript
- Galong
- PHP
- Perl
- Ruby
Python
Python is one of the most important scripting languages for DevOps engineers. The language can adapt to diverse environments and use cases, which makes it an attractive option for DevOps teams.
Python is compatible and versatile across many platforms, including Windows, Linux, and macOS. Moreover, Python is one of the few scripting languages, which is applicable for developing a wide array of applications, from the native and web apps to machine learning.
Python’s clean syntax, dynamic typing, and open-source access make it an attractive choice for beginners and advanced programmers alike. While Python is not the fastest option, its broad support and powerful libraries make up for its shortcomings.
Java
Java is a high-level programming language that every DevOps engineer should learn. As a general-purpose programming language, Java is applicable for developing software for various platforms.
DevOps teams often use this language for building web applications because they can quickly integrate it into the existing codebases. This feature makes it easier for them to adapt to new technologies without rewriting large application parts.
Java supports object-oriented programming and garbage collection systems, multithreading features, and provides support for distributed applications.It is also a language suitable for server-side applications.
Java is one of common programming languages that developers use in embedded systems because it allows them to connect electronics using standard protocols like I2C and SPI.
Javascript
DevOps engineers use JavaScript scripting language to create interactive, dynamic visual effects and interactivity for clients-side applications, including those that run on websites, desktop apps, or mobile apps.
JavaScript is suitable for creating web forms and validating user input. In addition to its relevance as a programming language, JavaScript serves as a runtime environment that executes web applications written in other scripting languages.
JavaScript’s multi-paradigm style is too complicated for beginners. So it’s best to learn other programming languages like Python and Java before exploring JavaScript.
Galong
Golang (also known as Go) is a statically typed, compiled language that runs on Google Go programming platform. “Go” is one of the fastest programming languages DevOps engineers can use to develop web apps, command-line tools, and desktop applications.
Google created this programming tool as a low-overhead, high-performance alternative for other languages like Java or Python. Since it’s compiled, Golang apps have fast startup times and are usually less resource-intensive than interpreted languages like JavaScript.
This language perfectly fits large software projects and big data analytics. “Go” has this edge over other languages because it allows programmers to use more runtime optimizations, such as constant folding and dead code elimination.
PHP
PHP is among one of the most popular open-source scripting languages for web development. Developers mainly use PHP to build a wide range of web applications, from small personal blogs to large-scale business websites.
The programming and scripting language is suitable for building both static and dynamic websites. Moreover PHP allows the developers to integrate payment processors, social media channels, and widgets.
Developers use this language independently. Sometimes, they combine PHP with other scripting languages like JavaScript and SQL. Combined with these other languages, PHP allows us to build a more well-rounded website.
Perl
A DevOps engineer uses PERL for web development, data analysis, networking, system administration, and machine learning. PERL is one of the best scripting languages in the DevOps field because of its flexibility, reliability, and its ability to run on any operating system.
The most common feature of PERL’s is to serve as a software framework. The PERL framework contains collections of modules that work together to create complex applications.
The frameworks are typically based on the same programming language, but we can create them using different tools or languages. The PERL framework makes it easy to build complex applications by allowing programmers to combine different parts into complex systems.
Ruby
Ruby is one of most preferred scripting languages for automating repetitive tasks in an IT environment. This dynamic and interpreted programming language is an efficient DevOps tool for web development, data science and unit testing.
Ruby is a fast-growing scripting language in the IT industry today because it has a small learning curve. Beginners can easily start without having any solid programming experience.
DevOps engineers mainly use Ruby to create small web apps, such as simple CMS platforms. Ruby also supports complex applications, such as messaging platforms and e-commerce websites. Ruby is relevant for building web services and creating APIs (Application Programming Interfaces).
Conclusion
Choosing the right programming language to learn to become a DevOps engineer is puzzling. To select your ideal language we have to think about the kind of projects that we want to work on as a DevOps engineer.
Also we have to consider the difficulty of the language and also identify whether there are any closely-related languages that are easier to grasp. These considerations will help in making the best choice for DevOps career.
