BENGALURU: In today’s times, language is rarely a barrier, thanks to technology. But within the world that builds technology, there is a curious mismatch – programmers who know new languages are preferred over those that are stuck to legacy ones. And unfortunately, data show that a large percentage of the student population in India has become comfortable coding in the languages of the past. A survey of coding preferences in India and the United States by recruitment platform HackerRank is particularly illuminating. About 30 per cent of Indians surveyed still code in C++, while the US has already taken the leap to Java and Python. While there is technically nothing wrong in knowing one language over the other, the advantages of knowing the right language are many: better pay, better opportunities, and for India, a better industry-ready workforce. In United States, Java takes the cake with 25 per cent, closely followed by Python. In comparison, a fifth of the people surveyed lean towards Java in India. A look at the computer science syllabus of Visvesvaraya Technological University, which governs at least 196 engineering colleges in Karnataka, shows why: C and C++ are taught in colleges as full courses, while critical industry requirements like Java, artificial intelligence and game theory are cast away as electives. Electives in engineering colleges are a one-off course, a teaser into a new world that students may pick up if they are interested. Predictably, the interest for the topic remains limited to the duration of that course. Natural language processing and python do not even make it to the syllabus. In contrast, computer science divisions of IIT Delhi and Bombay show a fair mix of courses that is of use in the real world today. This links to the larger problem of students not being industry-ready at a time when India cannot get enough of its technologists. Infosys boasts of a massive campus in Mysore. In reality, what it is saying really is, ‘We need a big space to train all the graduates before they are job-ready.’ Back to the subject of languages, and here’s what C++ allows you to do, and why Java is better than C++: One can readily build complicated and sophisticated programs in Java, thanks to the numerous libraries it has. Python allows for fast development with text processing capabilities, an important skill in the datahungry world that we live in. C++, on the other hand, allows coders access to the deepest labyrinth of the system, but requires coders to reinvent the wheel every time. But programmers in India are not using C++ to exploit its awesome capabilities. They are using it because that’s the language they have grown comfortable with, and a system that most enterprises now use for their legacy systems. Back in 2009, Massachusetts Institute of Technology substituted an older language called Scheme with Python for its undergraduate computer science classes, with most of the content taught in the context of real-world engineering problems. The response to this was mixed, but the writing on the wall was clear: coding is an art, but for the art to be useful in an industrial context, embracing the right language was critical. Knowing the latest tools gives students a confidence to try their hand at starting a venture.