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Java Named Top Programming Language of 2015 (dice.com)
Nerval's Lobster writes: What was the most popular programming language of 2015? According to the people behind the TIOBE Index, Java took that coveted spot, winning out over C, Python, PHP, and other languages. "At first sight, it might seem surprising that an old language like Java wins this award," read TIOBE's note accompanying the list. "Especially if you take into consideration that Java won the same award exactly 10 years ago." Yet Java remains essential not only for businesses, it continued, but also consumer-centric markets such as mobile development (i.e., Google Android). That being said, even big languages can tumble. (Dice link) Objective-C tumbled from third place to 18th in the past 12 months, thanks to Apple's decision to replace it with Swift. In 2016, TIOBE expects that "Java, PHP (with the new 7 release), JavaScript and Swift will be the top 10 winners for 2016. Scala might gain a permanent top 20 position, whereas Rust, Clojure, Julia and TypeScript will also move up considerably in the chart."
What has been your most-used (or best-loved) programming language of the last 12 months?
Java took that coveted spot, winning out over C, Python, PHP, and other languages. "At first sight, it might seem surprising that an old language like Java wins this award," ...
Interesting comparison, singling out Java as "old". Python is older. From Wikipedia:
Age doesn't matter. Usefulness does. My top language: Perl - First appeared 1987; 29 years ago.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Hardly anybody is a "rabid fan" of Java. It's a mature, full-featured language with a healthy (perhaps leading) ecosystem of APIs, tools, developers, and training materials, that is considerably faster compared to scripting languages in many situations. This is reality, not fandom.
This.
I don't like Java. It's the worst of the "curly brace languages" IMO. But I still find it vastly better than the scripting languages, even Python. The ability to find problems at compile time is very important indeed.
I like C# better, but it's a hard sale for Linux server code. I like C++ better for my own code, but I have vastly more confidence in my ability to train a fresh college hire to write safe code in Java than in C++. Hell, I enjoy writing C code more than Java code, but it's not very productive where Java is used today.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The runtime was actually never particularly bad. Java mostly got its bad rap from poor Swing performance (not as smooth, and not as good looking as the native apps). People perceived that "visual lag" as the language being slow, while in reality it has always been pretty damn fast.