Developers Love Trendy New Languages, But Earn More With Functional Programming: Stack Overflow's Annual Survey (arstechnica.com)

Stack Overflow has released the results of its annual survey of 100,000 developers, revealing the most-popular, top-earning, and preferred programming languages. ArsTechnica: JavaScript remains the most widely used programming language among professional developers, making that six years at the top for the lingua franca of Web development. Other Web tech including HTML (#2 in the ranking), CSS (#3), and PHP (#9). Business-oriented languages were also in wide use, with SQL at #4, Java at #5, and C# at #8. Shell scripting made a surprising showing at #6 (having not shown up at all in past years, which suggests that the questions have changed year-to-year), Python appeared at #7, and systems programming stalwart C++ rounded out the top 10.

These aren't, however, the languages that developers necessarily want to use. Only three languages from the most-used top ten were in the most-loved list; Python (#3), JavaScript (#7), and C# (#8). For the third year running, that list was topped by Rust, the new systems programming language developed by Mozilla. Second on the list was Kotlin, which wasn't even in the top 20 last year. This new interest is likely due to Google's decision last year to bless the language as an official development language for Android. TypeScript, Microsoft's better JavaScript than JavaScript comes in at fourth, with Google's Go language coming in at fifth. Smalltalk, last year's second-most loved, is nowhere to be seen this time around. These languages may be well-liked, but it looks as if the big money is elsewhere. Globally, F# and OCaml are the top average earners, and in the US, Erlang, Scala, and OCaml are the ones to aim for. Visual Basic 6, Cobol, and CoffeeScript were the top three most-dreaded, which is news that will surprise nobody who is still maintaining Visual Basic 6 applications thousands of years after they were originally written.

Comments

cargo-culted copypasta

[KiloByte]

So a website devoted to copy+paste programming gets Javascript at #1? Oh so surprising...

Re: cargo-culted copypasta

[reanjr]

If people are using Stack Overflow for copy-paste programming, then that's a testament to the quality and flexibility of the code found there.

I've personally spoken to lots of devs too intimidated to even ask questions on Stack Overflow because their impression is they aren't smart enough to properly ask.

So while your impression might be true for some visitors, there are obviously lots of talented people on there as well writing that code that gets copied.

HTML?

[per unit analyzer]

I call BS on any survey or programmer that considers HTML a programming language.

Re:HTML?

[mrun4982]

The addition of CSS doesn't change anything. HTML and/or CSS are not programming languages.

Re:HTML?

[Sesostris III]

To be fair, they didn't. The exact title of that particular survey item is "Programming, Scripting, and Markup Languages".

Re:How to Earn Zero: Learn to Code

[Kellamity]

Maybe you're just trying to deter people from coding to reduce your competition.

Dear blog,

Today I put step one of my devious plan into action. I went to the Slashdot forums, and posted on every programing related story about how there are no paid coding jobs.

Soon, the people will think there are no jobs and find other careers. Then... all the coding jobs will be mine! BWAHAHWHA!!

Re:StackOverflow is NOT the place for good stats

[technosaurus]

I write my ECMAScript as if it were "Magical C". It ends up being easier to follow and compilers tend to optimize it better.

Re:JAFL

[jawtheshark]

The differences between C/Java/Pascal and Haskell, Lisp and Prolog aren't merely syntactic.