Virtual and augmented reality are becoming more accepted technologies in app and website design for businesses. Right now, gaming continues to be where most VR or AR coding is done, but demand is growing across several sectors, including health care, education, and tourism. For businesses, VR or AR coding can be used for collaboration, training, product design, and product demonstrations. As the use of and demand for VR and AR tools increase, so will demand for programmers who can create these technological tools. Fortunately, the core of VR design lies in programming languages that are already popular and widely used for other purposes.
C# was designed by Microsoft engineer Anders Hejlsberg in 2000 as a general-purpose language. It was released as a closed-source product, but in 2004, an open-source version named Mono was released. The language includes strong typing, component-oriented, imperative, functional, declarative, and generic programming disciplines. Mono later joined the Microsoft stable of products but remains open-source.
C++ was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C language. The language has evolved over time and now has generic, functional, and objected-oriented features along with the ability to manipulate low-level memory. Typically, it is used as a compiled language, and many compilers are available across multiple platforms. It was initially designed for large systems and resource-contained software but is also used in other contexts, including video games and e-commerce.
Java is a general programming language designed to allow programmers to “write once, run anywhere,” which means that properly complied Java code can run on all Java-supporting platforms without needing to be recompiled. It’s a class-based, high-level, object-oriented language. The syntax is similar to both C and C++. It was designed by James Gosling, who at the time worked for Sun Microsystems.
JavaScript confirms to the ECMAScript specification. It features dynamic typing, first-class functions, curly-bracket syntax, and prototype-based object orientation. JavaScript is part of the backbone of the Internet, along with CSS and HTML. The majority of browsers have a JavaScript engine built in to properly execute this code.
Python’s design philosophy is that the readability of code should be emphasized. It depends on an object-oriented approach that assists coders in creating code that’s clear, logical, and scalable. Python was developed to succeed the ABC programming language at the end of the 1980s, and it’s still a highly popular coding language.
Visual development tools are a form of software that assists coders in the development of new software programs and apps. They include GUI builders, debuggers, compilers, and visual programming tools. Sometimes they are grouped in with other programs in a developer’s toolkit. They allow programmers to create code to conform to the human mind instead of in the language that the computer thinks in.
Apple developed Swift as a compiled, multi-paradigm, general-purpose programming language and released it in 2014. The language was designed as a successor to Objective-C, which Apple had been using since the 1980s. It was specifically designed to work with the huge library of Objective-C code Apple already owned and used. Due to the use of the Objective-C runtime library, Swift, C++, and Objective-C can all run in the same program.