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Which Programming Language Is Most Popular - The Final Answer? (zdnet.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: Following a common technique among political pollsters, a technology columnist combined the results from various measures of programming language popularity for a more definitive answer about the most important languages to study. He used IEEE Spectrum's interactive list of the top programming languages, which lets you adjust the weight given to the number of job listings and number or open source projects, then combined it with the TIOBE Index (which is based on search engine results), and the PYPL Index, which checks the number of tutorials for each programming language on Google.
The results? "The top cluster contains Java, C, Python, and C++. Without a doubt, you should attain familiarity with these four languages." He points out they're not tied to a specific programming platform, unlike languages in the second cluster -- JavaScript, C#, PHP, and Swift -- while the last two languages in the top 10 were Objective-C and R. "The C-family of languages still dominates. Java, C++, C, C#, and even Objective-C are all C-based languages. If you're only going to learn one language, you should pick one of those." But his ultimate advice is to "learn multiple languages and multiple frameworks... Programming is not just an intellectual exercise. You have to actually make stuff."
The results? "The top cluster contains Java, C, Python, and C++. Without a doubt, you should attain familiarity with these four languages." He points out they're not tied to a specific programming platform, unlike languages in the second cluster -- JavaScript, C#, PHP, and Swift -- while the last two languages in the top 10 were Objective-C and R. "The C-family of languages still dominates. Java, C++, C, C#, and even Objective-C are all C-based languages. If you're only going to learn one language, you should pick one of those." But his ultimate advice is to "learn multiple languages and multiple frameworks... Programming is not just an intellectual exercise. You have to actually make stuff."
If they include javascript, why not perl? I find it hard to believe that there are more R programmers than perl scripters.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
It hasn't been done because it's impossible without placing severe restrictions on the definitions and syntax of the language. English (like most human languages) were designed with context in mind, something that often is not available at compile time and could cause different actions to take place should the context at execution time not match those the programmer envisioned when they gave them.
Instruction: Robot, discipline the dog with a newspaper.
Assuming the order is being stored for future use, what should the robot do?
A) Wait for the dog to steal the morning paper, then discipline it?
B) Purchase a newspaper, find the dog and begin whacking it?
C) Make a note that any time the dog requires discipline that it ought to use a newspaper instead of a magazine?
Of course popularity matters.
1. More popular languages you can find less expensive developers for...(or more total developer talent for a given amount of money)
2. More popular languages are likely to have stackoverflow posts with examples for every single basic task and explanations about what errors mean. (before you gloat about how you don't need help from SO, have you ever faced goddamn C++ linker errors? Might as well have an Ouija board out to find out what the mistake is)
3. More popular languages work on more computers and are likely to continue to work in the future
4. More popular languages tend to be faster. Usually a shit ton faster. Java has gone from a bloated mess to a bloated mess that is often within spitting distance of C on performance shootouts. That's from the popularity spurring further development. C is almost always king of the hill and nothing is faster. Python? Rust? Whatever n00bs. Those languages may be nice to write complex code that only gets run occasionally but if you need high end performance they aren't going to cut it.
Don't forget shell scripts.
I do development in C and many other languages, but I bet that most of the code I write is in posix sh, bash or perl.
Some quite advanced systems are written as scripts. When timing is not essential, it can be a rational choice. And even then, the majority of a system can be written as scripts, with only the timing-critical components being compiled code.
Actually it gets compiled down to Machine Code. Assembly Language is simply Machine Code rendered in a human readable format.
e.g. ld a,1 in Z80 assembler would be 3E01 in HEX
Oh, the memories. To this day I can remember on my ZX81 hand-assembling 2A0C40, which loads the display file base address into the HL register pair. Calculating all those relative jumps... ugh :(