Top 15 DevOps Programming Languages to Learn in 2024
Programming languages are one of the most important tools in the DevOps arsenal. Choosing the right programming language or languages for your application is essential for succeeding at DevOps and achieving continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD).
Given that there are hundreds of programming languages in existence, picking the top programming languages for DevOps can be tough. The fact that the popularity of different languages varies by geographic location is another challenge–it means that your view of what constitutes the “best” programming language may be clouded by the area where you happen to live.
There are a lot of positions in demand for engineers, architects, operations engineers, and software developers in the current world. Yes, I am talking about the very term DevOps. Generally, the DevOps skills consist of Linux skills, Coding skills, Scripting Skills, Operations skills, Cloud, Database skills and few important soft skills. It is hard work and interest to learn on a day-to-day basis is required for attaining these skills to become a DevOps specialist.
However, it is not impossible to attain these skills as well. Automation is one of the key requirements in DevOps. So you must know a few Operating systems, Programming Languages, and Scripting Languages.
Why DevOps programming Languages?
The DevOps position requires you to be good at programming and Scripting. DevOps engineers will get involved in Build, Deploy, Testing and release of the applications or software.
Not only that he/she will play a key role in Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, Continuous testing, app programming, automation, and the scripting phase of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).
Because of these requirements, DevOps engineers need to know key programming Languages used in the DevOps for any projects. There are a lot of programming languages and scripting languages but few are unique to DevOps. Here are the top programming languages that professionals working in DevOps should learn in 2022.
1. Python
This programming language came in to picture in 1980 and by 2022 is the best choice for many applications such as Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and the Internet of Things. The python has many standard libraries for different applications is the de-facto standard, so that you need not have to rewrite many codes available in python again. Python consists of vast libraries in itself. Thus it is preferred over many languages by the programmers. Also, it has become a very important language for DevOps engineers and Architects.
2. C/C++
This programming language is very old and because of its inherent features such as Polymorphism, Encapsulation, Inheritance, objects, class, and Abstraction. It is also stable, highly efficient and secure. C programming is still suitable for its data structures and excellent programming constructs. C/C++ are compliers and is suitable for many applications.
The Linux operating system is a highly secure and command level OS. You need shell command level programming to use Linux. Linux even though open sources, however, has many libraries and secure OS preferred many DevOps engineers. Bash and Power shell are built over Linux and are highly efficient. Because of its inherent features such as scalability, security and stable this OS is preferred by many organizations over many other OS.
3. GO
GO programming language also called Golang was introduced in 2008. This language is built on C and uses a compiler to compile codes. Go is one of the best choices for DevOps. Some of its features are it offers excellent performance, has an added advantage of concurrency and is a highly portable programming language.
4. Ruby
Ruby is similar to python and has many advantages. Like python, it consists of many modules written by the programmers and contributed to the development of Ruby. One can write a procedural code using Ruby and it also is written in Object-oriented programming if one wishes to write. Threads are common in ruby and can be used in programming. It is another choice for DevOps and preferred by many for its great features of Object-Oriented Design (OOD) and many inbuilt modules that you need not rewrite the code again.
5. Scala
The disadvantages of run time applications of Java were removed in Scala, however, all the advantages of Java such as OOD were introduced in Scala, which made it popular. You can use threads and OOD in Scala. It also consists of all the modular constructs of Java.
6. Bash
Bash is a scripting language that usually provides a command-line user interface for interactive command language and scripting. It is a commonly used Unix Shell that gives way to the development of thousands of Linux systems worldwide.
7. Java
Java is one of the most popular programming languages available in the market. And that’s why it is used more often in website programming and other applications. The design of Java is based on OOD concepts that were introduced in C++ earlier.
8. Javascript
Javascript is mainly a scripting language. You can use it for the client-side and server-side (with the help of Node.js) scripting in many web-based applications. It is one of the most preferred and popular scripting languages available today.
9. PHP
PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor is a server-side scripting language used mainly for Web-based applications. PHP has many built-in libraries and is an interpreter used for web-based scripting on Linux servers. PHP is as popular as Javascript and is used widely by many developers and enterprises.
10. Perl
Perl is a general-purpose, high level, interpreted and dynamic programming languages. It is used for GUI development, text interpretation, and processing, web applications, used with popular database integration and low/high-level apps. It is also widely called “the duct tape of the internet”. And is used for complex to simple tasks and is used for small to large projects.
11. SQL
SQL stands for Structured Query Language. It is used to query, modify and store data in backend relational databases. It is used widely and is the most popular database language. Its container supports many operating systems such as Linux, UNIX, Windows, and Mac. Because of its container support, it is widely used in DevOps for Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment. It’s very simple to learn and execute and supports the Build, test, deploy and release of DevOps.
12. Groovy
Groovy can be used as a scripting language and it is also consider as a top scripting languages for DevOps professionals. It was designed by James Strachan and developed by Guillaume Laforge, Jochen Theodorou, Paul King and Cedric Champeau. It was first released in the year 2003 and available under Apache license. It supports Java platform.
13. Microsoft powershell
Microsoft powershell or windows powershell is belongs to Microsoft and an open-source (yes you read it correct – opensource) automation framework and scripting language. It provides a command-line shell and scripting language which is integrated with the .Net framework and it can be embedded with other applications. If you have application infrastructure with windows than powershell is must for you. This scripting language is designed for system admin.
14. Terraform
Terraform is developed by Hashicorp and it is an open-source tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently, written in go programming language. Professionals use various tools to automate the provisioning of software. Terraform works on the same principle, infrastructure as code, but focusses on the automation of the infrastructure itself. It can provision any application written in any language to any infrastructure.
15. Ansible
Ansible is known as configuration management and application deployment tool but it can also be used to write scripts. It belongs to Red-Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and written by its community members. Ansible uses playbook to describe automation jobs, and it uses very simple language like YAML (It’s a human-readable data serialization language & is commonly used for configuration files, but could be used in many applications where data is being stored) which is very easy for humans to understand, read and write.