Programming languages have been used for generations, dating all the way back to the 1800s when they were used to give direction to music boxes, textile looms and player-pianos. Today, hundreds of languages are in use to power websites, software, applications, workflow processes and other tech systems worldwide.
For tech companies, choosing the perfect languages to build out their operations is a significant task; different language communities have distinctly different focuses, as well as different libraries and tools at their disposal. At iHerb, languages like Javascript, Sql, .Net and C# help developers at the e-commerce company list the 30,000 natural products it provides on its website.
One might assume leaders at iHerb look for engineering candidates with experience coding in those specific languages, right? That’s not the case, according to Director of Software Development Edmund Chang, who said dev team leaders look for skills that can complement the code that already exists, rather than particular language experience.
Which languages are hot right now? Do you look for specific languages on resumes, and if so, why?
Interestingly, every region actually has different “hot” languages. I think Java, Go and C# with a .Net core are either popular already or gaining popularity quickly. We don’t look for specific languages but for a style of language that would fit with what our codebase has been written in. So Java, C# and others are all the same to us.
We don’t look for specific languages but for a style of language.”
Going with Golang
What's a programming language you're not currently working with that you'd like to, and why?
Google’s Go. We would like to use it because it’s one of the hot ones and works well with the Kubernetes microservice architecture we've been moving toward.
