Slashdot Mirror
The 2018 Top Programming Languages, According To IEEE (ieee.org)
New submitter rfengineer shares a report: Welcome to IEEE Spectrum's fifth annual interactive ranking of the top programming languages. Because no one can peer over the shoulders of every coder out there, anyone attempting to measure the popularity of computer languages must rely on proxy measures of relative popularity. In our case, this means combining metrics from multiple sources to rank 47 languages. But recognizing that different programmers have different needs and domains of interest, we've chosen not to blend all those metrics up into One Ranking to Rule Them All. [...] Python has tightened its grip on the No. 1 spot. Last year it came out on top by just barely beating out C, with Python's score of 100 to C's 99.7. But this year, there's a wider gap between first and second place, with C++ coming in at 98.4 for the No. 2 slot (last year, Java had come third with a score of 99.4, while this year its fallen to 4th place with a score of 97.5). C has fallen to third place, with a score of 98.2.
For example, I like 2 spaces for tabs for tighter indentation, but I can't do that in Python because the language designers decided that 4 spaces is exactly right for everyone
That is not the case. 4 is recommended, but you can use any number of spaces in Python.
I'd start counting flaws but I don't have all day. At least these are readily apparent.
HTML is not a programming language. It's a markup language, and although one might be able to coerce HTML5 and CSS3 together into being Turing complete that's an emergent property best thought of as a bug.
SQL is a query language. Fairly sophisticated data manipulations can be done with it, but it's typically used with an actual programming language to develop applications.
Arduino isn't a language at all. It's a hardware device which can be programmed in various languages. There is an approved IDE but more than one language supports the platform.
Cuda is not a language, but a toolkit for GPU programming that's used from multiple different languages.
Shell and assembly are each more than one language. May as well by that logic call Clojure, Scheme, and Racket part of Lisp. Call JavaScript and ActionScript both ECMAScript.
The method of looking at searches for "X programming" specifically gives an advantage to languages that don't lend themselves to search or need disambiguation like C, Go, Python, Ruby, R, S, D, shell, assembly, or Crystal. Languages with distinct names like Perl, Erlang, JavaScript, Smalltalk, ActionScript, or Matlab don't generally need such qualification.