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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."

50 of 401 comments (clear)

  1. This again? by Dunbal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seriously Miss Universe is only once a year. Yet I'm seeing "which is the most popular language" every month or so here. Who gives a shit? Certainly not your CPU. It all gets compiled down to assembly anyway. THAT is the most popular language, even if few humans code in it nowadays all computers read it.

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    1. Re:This again? by Jonner · · Score: 5, Informative

      "Assembly" is not a programming language. Rather, there is at least one "assembly language" for each CPU instruction set. More importantly, compilers rarely produce any kind of assembly language any more, though there are various types of intermediate representations used by interpreters and compilers. Every CPU executes instructions in a machine language. There are several such languages in common use, most importantly those understood by the x86 and ARM families.

    2. Re:This again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      Who gives a shit?

      People interested in remaining relevant in an industry that changes at an unprecedented pace (yes, even compared to beauty pageants)

    3. Re:This again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Assembly" is not a programming language. Rather, there is at least one "assembly language" for each CPU instruction set

      An assembly language you say?...so humans can program in it? Kind of like a programming language?

      More importantly, compilers rarely produce any kind of assembly language any more

      They do if you pass the -S flag.

      Every CPU executes instructions in a machine language. There are several such languages in common use, most importantly those understood by the x86 and ARM families.

      Yeah, computers execute machine code, assembly is the language humans write to generate machine code. Thanks.

    4. Re:This again? by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Informative

      He's not even right in a pedantic way. Assembly languages are programming languages. Not a very easy set of languages, to be sure, but then again neither is Brainfuck.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    5. Re:This again? by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 2

      I'm not a programming expert at all, and in fact whenever I need to automate something, the best I can do is write something in bash or make something GUI driven in powershell.

      But, it's my understanding that Assembly is psuedocode that translates more directly into machine code than say C. Unless you want to argue that CPU architectures directly interpret words like PUSH, INT, CALL, JMP, etc, then why wouldn't assembly be considered a programming language in the same vein as anything else?

    6. Re:This again? by dgatwood · · Score: 2

      He's not even right in a pedantic way. Assembly languages are programming languages.

      No, the OP is right in a pedantic way. Assembly language isn't really a language, but rather a loose collection of related languages.

      As for the other poster's comment that it is basically just human-readable machine language, so is C, but nobody argues that C isn't a programming language. :-D

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    7. Re:This again? by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 2

      I'm seeing "which is the most popular language" every month or so here.

      Don't blame the editors. They don't read read slashdot, so how would they know?

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    8. Re: This again? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 5, Informative

      and the original 1983 version of Pascal.

      I think the 1970 version of Pascal just got offended!

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    9. Re:This again? by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Funny

      assembly is the language humans write to generate machine code. Thanks.

      Some might. I enter it directly by bit-banging on the RS232 port with a hatpin.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    10. Re:This again? by DrXym · · Score: 2

      Not quite. Assembly language normally contains conveniences like pseudo instructions, constants, macros, effective addresses etc. that stop programmers from completely losing their minds.

    11. Re:This again? by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 4, Funny

      Which language would you have sex with?

      Perl, obviously, it has the most holes in it and sucks the hardest. There are countless ways to get fucked by Perl.

    12. Re:This again? by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 5, Informative

      It all gets compiled down to assembly anyway.

      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

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    13. Re:This again? by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well developers should be concerned about that.
      If you are a Perl Programmer, or Ruby programmer, and you see that your favorite language is falling off the list, perhaps it may be important to your career to brush up on the popular languages. I myself rarely do C or C++ programming, mostly Python, C# and Java. However every once in a while I will do and do some C/C++ coding on it to see what is new and discover things that I had learned in other languages had also been in C/C++ or was recently added to it. While my professional work, doesn't need me to use C/C++ knowing that it is still a popular language means I should keep up some practice in it.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    14. Re:This again? by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Assembly isn't hard, however it is tedious. You have a relatively small set of commands that do simple things. So for example if you want to print something. You will need to assign the memory address/registers for your text, populate that memory address with the data. Tell where it will look for that set of data, then call the interrupt that will have the video processor turn your string to text.

      or you can use printf that does all that, and more for better performance, as it can buffer the data set and display the data more efficiently. Because the person who wrote the printf probably spent a lot of time to get that command right, while if you are working on your own app. You probably don't have the time to recreate all that work for a simple result.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    15. Re:This again? by neilo_1701D · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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 :(

    16. Re:This again? by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 2

      > Assembly language usually normally contains conveniences ...

      Minor quibble. FTFY.

      On the Apple 2 computers you can use the mini-assembler built into ROM -- which IS the raw assembly it generates.

      CALL-151
      !
      300: LDA $C000
        BPL $300
        STA $C010
        RTS

      The OP is ignorant of what assembly language even is.

    17. Re: This again? by Stele · · Score: 3, Funny

      It's not really Pascal unless you're programming it in the original Klingon version.

    18. Re: This again? by WallyL · · Score: 3, Funny

      and the original 1983 version of Pascal.

      I think the 1970 version of Pascal just got offended!

      I think the 1623 version of Pascal just got offended!

  2. Re:What the Idiotic Hell./ by Dunbal · · Score: 2

    They could always have asked "What computer language should Brad and Angelina's divorce be coded in?"...

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  3. My Precious by ramorim · · Score: 5, Funny

    As you can C there is only one Programming Language to rule them all :)

  4. What about English? by EzInKy · · Score: 2

    I'm amazed that computers still can not simply take commands spoken by the average speaker of the nearly universal language "English" and perform those instructions to the letter. Curly braces, tabs, spaces, none of that should matter.

    --
    Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
    1. Re:What about English? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      English can, and should be, logically structured. Is its complexity that is holding back from the use by the masses?

      English can be precise if you choose your words carefully. But you will soon find that you are saying or typing WAY more than if you used a real programming language to do the same thing.

      Would you rather type: for (int i = 0; i < 10; ++i) {

      Or: Using an integer with at least 32 bit precision initialized to zero, test if the integer is less than 10, and if so perform the specified task, and then increment the integer, and repeat the test.

      Which would you rather debug?

      Do you think mathematicians should also eschew mathematical notation?

      Do you think chemists should describe molecules in English, rather than using formula or diagrams?

    2. Re:What about English? by EmeraldBot · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I would rather use the language that enables the most users to instruct their computers on what they want done. Stupid battles over curly braces and punctuation does nothing to further this goal. Humans have understood how to interpret human language, it is high time we taught our machines to do the same.

      You completely dodged his point. Seriously, go to a mathematician sometime, tell him to write everything in pure English. None of this quadratic stuff, we only live for "x equals minus b plus or minus the square root of b squared plus 4 times the value of a times c divided by the value of 2 times the value of a". Because that's much more accessible and readable than some scratch marks, clearly.

      Next up will be the elimination of slang, yes?

      --
      "Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
    3. Re:What about English? by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 2

      Hello, "normal" computer language IS mathematical.

      All your arguments are entirely touchy-feely in nature. And your example is nonsense.

      Basically, you want the computer to know *precisely* what you mean no matter how *imprecise* your instructions are, and this is very likely Never Ever Gonna Happen.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    4. Re: What about English? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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?

    5. Re:What about English? by sysrammer · · Score: 2

      ...Humans have understood how to interpret human language, it is high time we taught our machines to do the same.

      I agree. This language is already written. COmmon Business Oriented Language, by the grace of Admiral Grace

      --
      His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
    6. Re: What about English? by arth1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It should not take a PhD to ask a machine to sum 1 + 1.

      (Presuming you meant "calculate 1 + 1" or "add1 and 1")
      It doesn't take a PhD. It doesn't take any education at all. Most kids these days know how to do that in multiple languages.

      But the problem is that the English or any other spoken language isn't formal.
      In the above calculation, what did you mean by 1? An abstract integer? A cardinal number? A measure between 0.5 and 1.5?
      And what is it supposed to do with the result of the above calculation? You didn't specify, so did you want it to discard the result? Execute it? Present it to you? How, exactly? Visual, audible, or tactile? As binary? With uncertainties like 2 +/- 1?
      And what should it do after that? Stop? Halt? Redo? Run NOP cycles until the cows come home? You didn't say.

      You have to be explicit and not ambiguous when you tell a computer to do something. We humans try to guess what you mean from the context, but a computer doesn't have that luxury. You have to provide the context. Doing so is much easier in a programming language than in English. Programming languages have a well-defined context, and you know what an instruction sequence will do. The languages are designed to avoid ambiguity.

      With human languages, you don't. You have to guess from context.
      If your wife says "lay down on the bed", you don't cut open a pillow and start to lay little feathers on the bed. You second-guess her and presume she meant "lie on the bed for an unspecified period of time".
      And if you say "make me one with everything", you expect different results depending on whether you address a hot dog seller or a zen master.
      Context is everything. And the computer doesn't have your context unless you first feed it to it.

    7. Re:What about English? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

      Humans have understood how to interpret human language, it is high time we taught our machines to do the same.

      I also think in addition to a magic computer language, we ought to issue free unicorns to everyone.

      Humans are intelligent, computers are not. Human language makes use of this feature, so humans can fill in the mising bits when a fellow human says somthing ambiguos or thats not quite rite and so on. Even so, plain English is full of ambiguities and imprecision. That's (a) why mistakes happen and (b) jargon dialects happen. People don't speak in jargon to be shitheads (despite the opinions of some people), jargon develops because speaking in "plain" English would be too slow and imprecise.

      So, OK, let's play a game. No human knows how to do everything, so let's assume that I don't know how to sort things in order. Obviously I do, but whatever I know you'll always be able to find something I don't know that you will need to describe step by step. So, assume I don't know how to sort.

      Now describe to me in English how I can sort, using step by step instructions.

      And no cheating: if you say "arrange them so that they are in alphabetical order", you're just telling me to sort them without saying how.

      So go on. Stop taking ill informed digs at people you've never met by complaining about curly braces and indentation and actually put some thought behind your position.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    8. Re: What about English? by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

      D) Write stories about how naughty the dog is and publish them in the FT.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    9. Re:What about English? by fnj · · Score: 2

      Natural language computer instruction is a tantalizing goal. It would be very convenient for the human to employ, but singularly challenging for the computer to interpret. How the hell is it supposed to divine that a water pistol is not something made of water (nor does it shoot projectiles), and a wood stove is not made of wood. Is a wood table something intended to support wood?

      The reason Siri works is because it is presented with stupidly simplistic queries, and we accept crazily imprecise answers from it. I was struck by how cool and desirable the Star Trek computer was; how it instantly gave good usable responses to any kind of imprecise questions. But I quickly realized that the scenarios were unrealistic.

      "Captain, the ship is weirdly fucking up".

      "Computer, what is wrong?"

      How come the computer never replied "Imprecise query.", perhaps following up with "What do you mean, "wrong'? Do you mean 'mistaken', 'dishonest', 'immoral', 'unjust', 'incorrect', or 'unsuitable'?" Consider how ambiguous it is to ask "What's wrong with you?" It could mean "In what way do you feel ill?" Or it could mean "Why do you accept abuse?" or "why do you behave irrationally?" (usually with the word 'wrong' heavily emphasized). If you say "I feel badly", that actually means "the mechanism by which you experience physical contact is impaired".

      Anyone discussing the concept of natural language computer instruction had damn well better have read The Number of the Beast (Heinlein, 1980), and clearly understand the pitfalls it outlines.

  5. Most popular language by SeriousTube · · Score: 2

    Pascal.

  6. Re: PHP by darkain · · Score: 2

    What defines a "programming language" anymore to where PHP doesn't fall under this? C/C++ can be ran from an interpreter or JIT compiler. HipHop can compile PHP into native code. So what separates them?

  7. Php tied to platform? [Re:PHP] by Tablizer · · Score: 2

    Indeed. The "money" languages are Php, C-sharp, and Java, for good or bad.

    I'm curious why the intro called Php "tied to a specific programming platform". I'd like clarification on that.

    1. Re:Php tied to platform? [Re:PHP] by dgatwood · · Score: 2

      And JavaScript, too....

      Maybe they meant "some of the languages in the second tier"?

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    2. Re:Php tied to platform? [Re:PHP] by Princeofcups · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.
    3. Re:Php tied to platform? [Re:PHP] by h33t+l4x0r · · Score: 2

      R is actually useful to learn whereas Perl scripters are mosty just old guys who never picked up Python.

  8. Re:What the Idiotic Hell./ by Tablizer · · Score: 2

    Relax, ranting about programming languages is how geeks blow off steam to keep us from doing sinister things like hacking Trump's barber to put afro-sauce into the formula.

  9. Which programming language! by Camel+Pilot · · Score: 5, Funny

    Man I am falling behind... I have never heard of the Which programming language and here we are told that it is the most popular. And I thought I was a software professional. BTW just so I have straight is it WHICH or Which or just which - I don't want to embarrass myself at the next meeting when I propose we do the next project in Which.

    1. Re:Which programming language! by dogvomit · · Score: 2

      Do they program in Which in What? (Motherfucker.)

  10. Re:What the Idiotic Hell./ by Pseudonym · · Score: 2

    “Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California.” – Edsger Dijkstra

    --
    sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
  11. Re:What the Idiotic Hell./ by ShooterNeo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  12. Re:What the Idiotic Hell./ by DrXym · · Score: 2

    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.

    Rust is a compiled language. It uses the same backend as Clang to produce optimized code. The code it produces as fast as C and C++ while still providing protection against data races and a raft of other issues that can crash or destabilize something written in C or C++.

    So while it may not ever gain the popularity of C or C++, the implication that its slow is wrong.

    And besides, in the real world, speed is not the only consideration. Time to market is important, reliability is important, maintenance is important, portability is important. High level languages have become popular because they avoid a lot of the nasty pitfalls that are found in the likes of C and C++. Even if there is a performance trade off, it might be seen as worth it if the code is delivered on time and meets the requirements.

  13. Re:What the Idiotic Hell./ by ShooterNeo · · Score: 2

    But it isn't as fast as C. Look at the benchmarks.

  14. Re:Yeah, but... by arth1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  15. Re:Editors: Please stop posting stupid topics by Nemyst · · Score: 2

    No it doesn't, C#'s just classified under the second category because it's still largely Windows-centric. I'm guessing SQL often isn't reported because it's being used through an application written in another language.

  16. Murphy Says... by sycodon · · Score: 4, Funny

    It will be the language least suited to your task, but insisted upon by your managers.

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
  17. Re:What I learned from this article by Nemyst · · Score: 2

    I'm talking about places where you don't even have the memory space to load up the basic libraries for Python (or hell, even C). If you can fit Python in your microcontroller, then awesome, I'm not a C fan in the slightest but I understand why sometimes it's the only choice (or one out of a very limited selection).

  18. Re:Java is not C-based by jetkust · · Score: 2

    It is "C-based" because of the syntax. That is exactly what it means.

  19. Perl... by DrYak · · Score: 2

    but I bet that most of the code I write is in posix sh, bash or perl

    Perl, yeah. I like it a lot too.

    But sometimes I need to be able not only to write, but also read what I've written.
    To determine what a piece of code actually does.

    Or if it was simply my cat walking over the keyboard.

    Or it it was my cat that successfully patched a mission critical Perl-script by randomly walking across my keyboard...

    ~~~

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]