JavaScript Rules But Microsoft Programming Languages Are On the Rise (zdnet.com)

Microsoft languages seem to be hitting the right note with coders across ops, data science, and app development. From a report: JavaScript remains the most popular programming language, but two offerings from Microsoft are steadily gaining, according to developer-focused analyst firm RedMonk's first quarter 2018 ranking. RedMonk's rankings are based on pull requests in GitHub, as well as an approximate count of how many times a language is tagged on developer knowledge-sharing site Stack Overflow. Based on these figures, RedMonk analyst Stephen O'Grady reckons JavaScript is the most popular language today as it was last year. In fact, nothing has changed in RedMonk's top 10 list with the exception of Apple's Swift rising to join its predecessor, Objective C, in 10th place. The top 10 programming languages in descending order are JavaScript, Java, Python, C#, C++, CSS, Ruby, and C, with Swift and Objective-C in tenth.

TIOBE's top programming language index for March consists of many of the same top 10 languages though in a different order, with Java in top spot, followed by C, C++, Python, C#, Visual Basic .NET, PHP, JavaScript, Ruby, and SQL. These and other popularity rankings are meant to help developers see which skills they should be developing. Outside the RedMonk top 10, O'Grady highlights a few notable changes, including an apparent flattening-out in the rapid ascent of Google's back-end system language, Go.

Comments

Using Stack Overflow is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

So the most fucked up and confusing languages will generate the most questions and get labeled as the most popular?

Re:Using Stack Overflow is stupid

[DavidHumus]

Or the language with the most newbies.

BS

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

As a guy who has spent most of his time in Microsoft dev environments, I can tell you the momentum is going in exactly the opposite direction: "how can we dump Microsoft/Oracle/IBM and how fast can we do it" is the current direction of the smart enterprise.

Re:BS

[fred6666]

Of course. Just like you can use Swift for something else than developing for Apple products.
Yet, they are not used outside mother's basements.

Could you name one major piece of software written in C# not specifically made to be executed on Windows? Without a visual studio project file in the source repository?

Re:BS

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Yes, and I've tried it. However, outside of non-trivial applications (and perhaps internal business apps developed with Xamarin), cross-platform support for C#-based apps is pretty poor.

Re:BS

[cheesybagel]

There's nothing wrong with Java in a business environment and elsewhere. The issue is with the way people THINK Java should be programmed, with design patterns, and Hungarian notation. The language itself and the runtime has its warts but it ain't actually THAT bad.

Now for high performance computing I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. Floating point performance in Java sucks and the mandatory garbage collection is another issue. Then again most of the proposed Java replacement have the exact same issues. Go also has a GC for example. Python is great, to write prototypes, but it has even worse performance than Java.

Re:BS

[Kjella]

As a guy who has spent most of his time in Microsoft dev environments, I can tell you the momentum is going in exactly the opposite direction: "how can we dump Microsoft/Oracle/IBM and how fast can we do it" is the current direction of the smart enterprise.

Every enterprise customer thinks what they have is terrible but usually end up switching to a different enterprise vendor and discover that it's equally terrible. Then they try home brew and discover that people develop in ten different languages with a hundred different frameworks and technologies and that Ruby on Rails, Python, PHP, Node.JS and ASP.Net don't mix well and start running consolidation and standardization projects and if you're really unlucky they call in SAP or some other big ERP to gut the whole mess. We still have a solution written in VB6, whatever you pick now expect you'll be stuck with it 10-20 years from now long after the fad is over and it's legacy technology you want to kill with fire.

Re:BS

[Prien715]

Here's a couple hundred. ...and that's just games based on the Unity game engine. One game, Hearthstone, has over 10 million players and its client runs on iOS/Android/Windows/macOS.

Re:BS

[fred6666]

Nice try, but

The Unity runtime is written in C/C++. This runtime is used in any build you create using the editor - for webplayers and plugins it is installed separate from your build, whereas it is included in it for stand-alones and other platforms such as iPhone and Wii.

The editor is built on the Unity runtime and additionally includes editor-specific C/C++ binaries.

Wrapped around the Unity core is a layer which allows for .net access to core functionality. This layer is used for user scripting and for most of the editor UI.

So most of the important code is C/C++.
And nothing tells me that API it isn't being developed on Windows using Visual Studio.
The main platform of these games is probably Windows, even though their very first game was developped for Mac OS X.

Re:BS

[fred6666]

I do.
But there is no killer application on Linux requiring mono. Hence, most people don't even bother installing it.
Unlike say, perl and python, which are must-have.
Is there a popular desktop environment, web browser, or even text editor for Linux written in C#? I understand some kid probably wrote a text editor for fun, but I meant something actually used?

CSS is a programming language?

[Prien715]

The top 10 programming languages [include]...CSS

That tells you all you need to know about this "study". CSS is a mark-up language -- not a programming language (unless you're on the sadistic side as it is technically Turing complete).

Re:I wish Linux had Visual Studio

[mcl630]

They do... it's called Visual Studio Code for Linux.

Re:Wrong place to look to plan your career skills

[Dutch Gun]

I'd first ask them what sort of programming career they'd be interested in, and then tailor my recommendations from there. There are many industries which are heavily skewed towards particular languages. Which do you think would be the most important language in the following fields?

* Videogame programming
* Web programming
* Enterprise application programming
* Mobile development
* Scientific and engineering programming

The languages a programmer would want to learn is likely different for each one of these career paths. In the case of my particular career (videogames), you'd be offering terrible advice. C++ completely dominates AAA game development, followed by C#, and a smattering of also-rans.

Programming languages don't exist in a vacuum. They all have strengths and weaknesses, and trying to distill them into a generic popularity contest is a mistake, at least when it comes to career choices.