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Java Named Top Programming Language of 2015 (dice.com)

Posted by timothy on from the because-of-the-taste dept.

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?

8 of 358 comments (clear)

  1. Really??? by scunc · · Score: 5, Funny

    Java topping the list of programming languages is like Donald Trump topping the polls for the Republican nomination: they both have their rabid, energetic fan-bases, but most of the rest of us are just sick to our stomachs wondering how it happened and waiting for it to be over ...

    1. Re:Really??? by lgw · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.
    2. Re:Really??? by buddyglass · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Most Java "fans" I know are considerably less "rabid" than devotees of more trendy languages (I'm looking at you, Ruby). Just my experience.

    3. Re:Really??? by swilver · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    4. Re:Really??? by Penguinisto · · Score: 5, Funny

      Forget Java...

      Visual Basic jumped up - from #17 to #13, which leads me to ask one small question...

      ...what the hell is *WRONG* with you people!?

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
  2. Old? by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 5, Informative

    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:

    • Java - First appeared 1995; 21 years ago
    • C - First appeared 1972; 44 years ago
    • Python - First appeared 1991; 25 years ago
    • PHP - First appeared 1995; 21 years ago

    Age doesn't matter. Usefulness does. My top language: Perl - First appeared 1987; 29 years ago.

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  3. Ubiquity and Longevity by zapadnik · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Ubiquity and Longevity are important. It takes a while to create Big software projects, so fad du-jour languages have an Achilles Heel here. Java is pretty much ubiquitous and is very long-lived (so far).

    When you have large code bases and lots of people trained in a technology then you tend to use it even more. WORA (Write Once Run Everywhere) is a killer feature, and Java system written on architectures that are now less used (i386, Irix, AIX, Solaris, etc) work pretty much painlessly on new hardware. Java scales from the massive to the miniature and thanks to the talented people at Sun, Oracle and OpenJDK the performance of Java is pretty phenomenal.

    I personally am writing a jet combat flight simulator (which I'm mostly keeping under the radar, for now) in Java. I never have to worry about multi-threaded CPU performance. Seriously, never. I only spend time worrying about the bottlenecks in the GPU. Java and OpenGL (via JoGL) are a potent combination. I will never go back to C++ if I can help it - Java libraries and tooling (I love IntelliJ IDEA and the JDK's VisualVM) are so much better. Long live Java !

  4. Re:Why for new projects though? by tsotha · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From a project management perspective Java is a pretty safe choice for a new project. On long projects people come and go - I can find replacement Java programmers in short order. As much as I love clojure, I would never do a large project with it at work because it's too difficult (and expensive) to find competent lispers.