C Top Programming Language For 2016, Finds IEEE's Study (ieee.org)

IEEE Spectrum, a highly regarded magazine edited by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, has released its annual programming languages list, sharing with the world how several languages fared against each other. To assess the languages the publication says it worked with a data journalist and looked into 10 online sources -- including social chatter, open-source code production, and job postings. The publication has rated C as the top programming language this year, followed by Java, Python, C++, and R. From their article:After two years in second place, C has finally edged out Java for the top spot. Staying in the top five, Python has swapped places with C++ to take the No. 3 position, and C# has fallen out of the top five to be replaced with R. R is following its momentum from previous years, as part of a positive trend in general for modern big-data languages that Diakopoulos analyses in more detail here. Google and Apple are also making their presence felt, with Google's Go just beating out Apple's Swift for inclusion in the Top Ten. Still, Swift's rise is impressive, as it's jumped five positions to 11th place since last year, when it first entered the rankings. Several other languages also debuted last year, a marked difference from this year, with no new languages entering the rankings.The publication has explained in detail the different metrics it uses to evaluate a language.

Comments

Re:As a C programmer

[goose-incarnated]

Meaning there is a preference towards more lower level coding, allowing detailed and measured controls over each line of code, at the expense of maintainability and programming time.

I sorta agree with the rest, but this statement is dead wrong - if you want it reusable you write it in C. Anything written in Python/.Net/etc is only usable from a miniscule subset of languages, while the libzip.so on your system is reusable from everything. This is why the practical/engineering types write it in C - if they chose Python they'll have to rewrite it should they ever decide to use some other language. When they write it in C it need never be rewritten.

The problem with the software engineering/programming people is that they don't care about reusability, and it shows; once the project is done they move on to the next one. The people producing C libraries (like myself) are happily reusing the libraries we wrote two decades ago without having to rewrite them to use in another language. The people producing Python or C++ libraries abandon those libraries when they move to a new language - they don't have a choice.