GitHub's Four Most Popular Programming Languages Remain: JavaScript, Java, Python, and PHP (thenewstack.io) 144
A recent TechCrunch article claimed to have identified the best indicator of programming language popularity: GitHub's annual "State of the Octoverse" reports. So Austin-based technology reporter Mike Melanson explored the new verdict in GitHub's 2018 report:
It felt to me like the overarching theme of the numbers was one of quiet stasis for the year past, at least when it comes to those languages deemed the cream of the crop. One of the first graphics offered in the post shows the top languages according to the number of repositories created and we see that everything seems to be flowing along, just as it has for the last decade. While GitHub points to a "steady uptick" for JavaScript after 2011, it looks like this list of languages hasn't changed much over time. [The graphic shows the four most popular languages -- every year since early 2014 -- have been JavaScript, Java, Python, and PHP.]
When we look at the top languages according to the number of contributors, we see a similar story, with the top four languages mirrored. In this chart, of course, we see that Ruby is on a steady decline, while Typescript is on a steady rise. The only surprise to be seen here is that C, after a brief uptick in popularity, has taken a bit of a nosedive over the past year. Either way, seven of 10 languages have the same exact ranking....
Finally, beyond the language rankings themselves, GitHub offers a wonderful analysis of just what it is that makes a particular language popular in 2018, boiling it down to three key characteristics: thread safety, interoperability, and being open source.
GitHub's report also identifies its fastest growing languages over the last year -- including Kotin, TypeScript, Rust, Python, and Go. "This year, TypeScript shot up to #7 among top languages used on the platform overall, after making its way in the top 10 for the first time last year," the report notes.
"TypeScript is now in the top 10 most used languages across all regions GitHub contributors come from -- and across private, public, and open source repositories."
When we look at the top languages according to the number of contributors, we see a similar story, with the top four languages mirrored. In this chart, of course, we see that Ruby is on a steady decline, while Typescript is on a steady rise. The only surprise to be seen here is that C, after a brief uptick in popularity, has taken a bit of a nosedive over the past year. Either way, seven of 10 languages have the same exact ranking....
Finally, beyond the language rankings themselves, GitHub offers a wonderful analysis of just what it is that makes a particular language popular in 2018, boiling it down to three key characteristics: thread safety, interoperability, and being open source.
GitHub's report also identifies its fastest growing languages over the last year -- including Kotin, TypeScript, Rust, Python, and Go. "This year, TypeScript shot up to #7 among top languages used on the platform overall, after making its way in the top 10 for the first time last year," the report notes.
"TypeScript is now in the top 10 most used languages across all regions GitHub contributors come from -- and across private, public, and open source repositories."
Web languages (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Web languages (Score:5, Informative)
I know a lot of C/C# people use GitLab and BitBucket because they give you free private repos. With GitHub free accounts can only make public repos.
Web developers are used to doing everything in public, because everyone gets to see their code and most of it is using public frameworks anyway.
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So, a website with programming tools is primarily used by people who use web technologies.
It is not a "web site", it is a source code repository, aka version control system.
And the only thing you could remotely call web related "technologies" are JavaScript and PHP ... Python is a language and a platform, so is Java.
Meanwhile, most C++ people are probably just all self-hosting repos. ... or it would be in public accessible repos .
Yes, and shockingly the C++ crowed produces probably not much open source code
Kotlin (Score:3)
It's kotlin.
Taking bets on how long /. will take to fix the typo. My bet is "after the heat death of the universe".
Where is C??? (Score:2)
Re: Where is C??? (Score:2)
Well, before C there was B, before which there was BCPL (the language MUD 1 was written in - making BCPL the most important language in the universe). Before that was CPL. And before that, darkness.
Python is popular (Score:3)
not because it's such a great language - it's good alright, but no better than a lot of others - but because when you need to do something, you can be almost certain there's an easy-to-use module to do exactly what you need out there.
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lest perhaps embedded and mobile.
...or anything that needs to be used six months from now. By then there'll be a new, slightly incompatible version.
Need a reference guide... (Score:1)
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Try Javascript.
(it probably isn't what you think it is...)
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Re: Need a reference guide... (Score:2)
Writing a reference to how PHP works is like writing a reference to how the law works. It's not designed with any cogent theory of operation; it's more of a mish-mash. If you need to know the details, you need to wade through the tangled mess of design.
Popularity !== Best (Score:5, Insightful)
By this retarded logic McDonalds is gourmet food with the *billions* it serves. Hint: It isn't.
Likewise, shit languages like Javascript and PHP, are popular because any code monkey can use them. But ignoring a problem doesn't make it go away. i.e. Memory management. To paraphrase JWZ, "Now you have two problems." This attitude of just throw more hardware at it is naive and non-scalable for certain problems.
Almost no one cares about performance, minimal code libraries, and non-bloated apps. The lower the bar for programming the worst this is going to get.
It's no surprise that "Worse is Better" W.R.T. programming languages has taken off. This has been happening for 30+ years.
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JavaScript and PHP are fine if they are used how they were intended to be used: glue languages handling events and HTML templating. If you write OS's or entire GUI engines in them, or try to make them replace RDBMS, you deserve to be fucked.
Re: Popularity !== Best (Score:2)
Since no one uses those languages for those things, then JavaScript and PHP must be fine languages.
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PHP has a good paradigm: when people criticize it, they always criticize the details of the implementation, not the overall concept. Admittedly there are enough implementation mistakes to ruin the cake.
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But you have to admit, it somehow feels cool, once you know it. Try programming Euclid's algorithm in a single line in another language. In Javascript you can do it like this:
var xyGcd = function gcd(a,b){ return b ? gcd(b, a%b) : a; }(x, y);
.
Re:Popularity !== Best (Score:4, Insightful)
APL: âOE/(^/0=Aâ.|X)/AâââOES/Xâ
Awk: 'function gcd(p,q){return(q?gcd(q,(p%q)):p)}{print gcd($1,$2)}'
Dc: [dSa%Lard0] [dup rollup rem] while pop.
K: gcd:{:[~x;y;_f[y;x!y]]}
Perl 6: my &gcd = { ($^a.abs, $^b.abs, * % * ... 0)[*-2] }
R: %gcd%" - function(u, v) { ifelse(u %% v != 0, v %gcd% (u%%v), v)}
Scheme: (define (gcd a b) (if (= b 0) a (gcd b (modulo a b))))
Re: (Score:2)
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Most of those look like there was noise on the modem when you typed them.
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You could knock that out in APL from the 60's.
Re: Popularity !== Best (Score:2)
proc gcdE {a b} {expr {$b==0? $a: [gcdE $b [expr {$a%$b}]]}}
Tcl is important in this debate as it was an early rival to Javascript, being incorporated into a number of web browsers as opposed to merely being something that could be included.
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Its popular because its the easiest thing to use for a rank beginner. Want to learn C? You need a compiler and you'll be doing console apps for a long time. Want to learn Java? You need to deal with the JDK, and you need to write console apps or make ugly Swing apps. Want to learn Python? Compiler again, and I don't even know if there is a ui library. Then we have build systems.
Want to learn javascript? You need a browser, and can jump right into a graphical app. If your goal is to learn how to pro
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Swing apps are not ugly. They look usually like your OS GUI. If you use an ugly OS ... your problem. ... no need for a compiler. ... just use Rhino or Node or any other JavaScript interpreter.
There are plenty of C interpreters
Python is not compiled, it is either run by an interpreter or in an REPL environment.
Javascript easily runs standalone
In PHP it is as easy as in any other language to separate GUI code from back end code. But for toy projects it is easier to mix it and unfortunately toy projects have t
They're still not bundled with the OS (Score:2)
Want to learn C? You need a compiler
There are plenty of C interpreters ... no need for a compiler.
Let me try to guess what grandparent is really getting at: Neither a C compiler nor a C interpreter ships with the operating system included with most desktop and laptop computers. You typically must install Visual Studio or Xcode.
Python is not compiled, it is either run by an interpreter or in an REPL environment.
A Python interpreter does not with the operating system included with most desktop and laptop computers. You typically must download and install Python at Python.org, and a stand-alone executable created by bundling the interpreter, standard library, required third-party modules,
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My Mac came with Python, gcc and PHP preinstalled.
No idea what a modern Ubuntu will install by default, though.
Windows ... oh yeah.
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First, macOS has for a long time shipped some ancient version of Python, often even older than what Debian or Ubuntu LTS ships. (Ubuntu 18.04 currently comes with Python 3.6.) This has confused users who saw, for example, a SyntaxError when a program uses with (program written for 2.5 -2.6 when macOS was shipping 2.4), a "command not found" when a program's shebang line specifies python3 (Python 3.x when macOS was shipping only 2.x), or await (introduced in 3.5). Users have ended up having to install Xcode
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> Python.org installer packages for macOS
I stand corrected: one can obtain recent Python for macOS the same way one obtains Python for Windows. However, that still doesn't mean developers can count on recent Python being shipped with macOS.
Python 2, Python 3, the whole shebang (Score:2)
I think MacOS ships with some scripts that require that older version of Python, so it's really there to support the system, not user development.
Then it's an implementation detail of macOS, much as msvcrt.dll is on Windows [microsoft.com]. In any case, it weakens the claim that Apple ships an environment for running downloadable applications written in mainstream Python.
I still don't get why they didn't make the Python 3 interpreter backward-compatible with a switch at the top of the script.
Currently #!/usr/bin/env python launches the legacy (Python 2) interpreter if installed, and #!/usr/bin/env python3 launches the modern Python interpreter if installed. On Windows, the .py extension is associated with py.exe, a short program that reads the shebang line and execs the appropriate int
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Most people who already own a perfectly good PC that happens to run Windows aren't going to spend $799 for a new Mac mini to run one application.
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GNU/Linux distros come with Python. macOS comes with possibly outdated Python. But the lion's share of desktop and laptop install base is Windows. Last I checked, Windows came with PowerShell and cscript (a JavaScript interpreter), not Python.
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The primary criticism of PHP these days is the library. Yes, a lot of work has gone into cleaning things up, but PHP is weighted down by a lot of legacy cruft. This is true of most languages as they evolve, but PHP's beginnings were so mucky, that supporting legacy code has bequeathed to PHP programmers a gawdawful set of core libraries. But if you stick to the modern feature set, it's no better and no worse than many scripting languages.
I still have a thing against Javascript. I find it tiresome and ineleg
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Weird that somebody who cares about "maintenance and re-use" would choose Python, a language famous for it's non-backwards compatibility.
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Weird that somebody who cares about "maintenance and re-use" would choose Python, a language famous for it's non-backwards compatibility.
There is exaggeration, there is wild exaggeration, then a lot of space, and then there is this statement. The Python developers decided to fix a few small but painful issues in the language, backported the fixes to the old version, supported both versions for about a decade, documented it well, and now Python is `famous for it's non-backwards compatibility'?
Re: Popularity !== Best (Score:2)
However, if you had access to sufficient libraries for underlying functions and some helper macros, you could program in Python without ever leaving C.
Or you could use a source to source compiler to translate Python into equivalent C.
In either case, you get things done, but then have a single environment rather than many. Every interpreter and every standard library you rely on is a potential source of bugs, so if the machine only ever sees one, you've got a major advantage.
And that's without you, personall
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Yes, console game devs, HFT (High Frequency Trading), and HPC (High Performance Computing), are some of the exceptions. That's why I put the qualifier: Almost
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All those programming languages are perfectly fine if used correctly. You're mixing up shit languages with shit programmers.
Some languages are much better than other when it comes to expressing your exact intent as a programmer.
Re: Popularity !== Best (Score:3)
Not necessarily.
A language that isn't type safe is inherently going to have a higher defect density unless the programmer is using strict software engineering methodology. It is also less capable of optimizing, as it cannot determine if the constraints necessary are met.
They also have certain limitations. I'd hate to see the NAG or Netlib libraries rewritten in Javascript. Rewriting OpenMPI or HDF5 in Python might be doable, but would the result be useful?
Re:Popularity !== Best (Score:5, Insightful)
Likewise, shit languages like JavaScript and PHP, are popular because any code monkey can use them.
No, they're "popular" because that's all there is.
In a web browser? What can you use that isn't JavaScript?
On an ISP-hosted web server? What do they give you except PHP?
Plus: Most JavaScript/PHP is written in the form of unimportant little snippets, that's why it ends up on GitHub.
Do ISPs still bundle web hosting? (Score:2)
In a web browser? What can you use that isn't JavaScript?
HTML and CSS. And if you absolutely need interaction beyond link navigation, form submission, and checkbox collapse/radio tabs, you can use any language that isn't JavaScript but transpiles to JavaScript or compiles to WebAssembly. Or you can skip a web browser and provide a set of native applications for the end user to download, optionally audit, optionally compile, and install.
On an ISP-hosted web server? What do they give you except PHP?
I wasn't aware that home ISPs were still bundling web hosting now that most subscribers were putting their work in silos [indieweb.org] such as
Re: Popularity !== Best (Score:3)
Any browser that supports plugins could theoretically support other languages.
https://www.tcl.tk/software/pl... [www.tcl.tk]
Such as this one.
https://webperl.zero-g.net/ [zero-g.net]
Or this one.
But web programmers show no serious interest in either. That could be because of install base, but then that's because of install base and not because the options aren't there.
Strawman (Score:3)
Nice try, but neither the title nor the article state that those languages were the best.
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I've seen plenty of code monkeys writing C and Java. The languages are by themselves hardly more complicated than PHP, yet are far more vulnerable to the 'just buy a bigger server' paradigm.
PHP sol
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JavaScript is actually a very fine language.
It only has two flaws: historically bad integration into browsers, aka incompatible ideas how the DOM should work/be accessed and handling of primitive types. E.g. automatic coercion.
If you think otherwise, you are a programmer who has not much clue about programming languages. are popular because any code monkey can use them. This actually indicates clearly that you have no clue about programming languages ...
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People who shit on javascript are nearly universally poor programmers, its almost a reliable indicator.
All languages have quirks and foibles; but javascript is an amazingly flexible and powerful little language. Its as near a perfect unification of LISP and C++ as you could ask for, all wrapped up in a beautiful async event loop.
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By this retarded logic McDonalds is gourmet food with the *billions* it serves. Hint: It isn't.
Likewise, shit languages like Javascript and PHP, are popular because any code monkey can use them.
Who said they were "gourmet"? The summary said they were most popular, on a repository website.
Anyway, different strokes for different folks. Being usable by people outside of a guild is actually a feature. Maybe not a feature that you are interested in, but a feature nonetheless.
Re: Grumpy old men stick to Cobol (Score:3)
Not really. I just see some impressive circles.
Python is just BASIC with libraries, just as BASIC is Fortran without libraries.
Everything old is new again. That's why it's called a revolution.
The web folks embrace new ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... solutions and methods of development within hours.
I'm a relatively conservative developer in the web camp and it amazes me day in and day out how the web folks just automate away truckloads of menial tasks with some new tool that came along last week. A first look into npm has everyone joking but a second look reveals how they use their tools at hand to automate just about everything and get to go home early every other day. Example: many web centric repos on GitHub are actually used as distribution servers with a completely automated process for end-user software updates attached. And while many would think "OMG, how could you?"this is actually pretty smart. Another thing is this newfangled NoSQL fad which should better be called "We don't do relations and normalization". However, think about how often one-to-many is resolved outside of its original relational trail (almost never) and suddenly these super flat high speed data dumps aren't that stupid an idea.
Conclusion: That the web camp basically owns and drives development methodologies and PLs these days doesn't surprise me the least and if you're some C++ snob I'd be careful to judge too quickly.
My 2 eurocents.
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Unless you are a really big org, why can't regular RDBMS be used for the same thing? (And RDBMS are getting "scale-ier" over time.) That way when you do need something that RDBMS already provide, you don't
Re: The web folks embrace new ... (Score:2)
NoSQL is a very old concept. MUMPS has a hierarchical database built into it. DB4 and GDBM are arguably just as NoSQL as Memcached. OODBMS predate Memcached as well.
Web developers don't drive anything, just as change directory developers didn't drive the BBS scene, although those were the most common utility.
Common misconception (Score:1)
... assuming other languages aren't made out of C++
C++ disappeared up its own backside (Score:4, Insightful)
The language is now so large and complicated because the ISO committee just won't leave well alone, that its a virtual cliff face for newcomers to climb in order to learn it. So thats the next generation lost. And even the current generation of C++ coders such as myself have given up learning the latest drafts of esoteric garbage that have been shoe-horned into it by people who clearly have too much time on their hands. I stopped at the 2011 iteration of the language, 2014 and 2017 have passed me by because it appears to be a law of dimishing returns leaning the new stuff and frankly I have better things to do with my free time.
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You are lucky that you have projects that use C++11 ... my Java projects usually feel like being stuck around 1995 ...
Well, lambdas in the new C++ standards are likely a good thing ... but I don't have a full catalog of 2014 and 2017 features in my mind anyway :D (I mean: I don't even remember what all got added, but I always read up the new changes ... double & ... what exactly was that for again?)
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"You are lucky that you have projects that use C++11 ... my Java projects usually feel like being stuck around 1995 ..."
Thats the problem - you can't just learn the new stuff, you have to learn *everything* because any C++ program you work on might have syntax from the 80s up to the latest draft.
You have the opposite problem in java - a fairly stable syntax with only useful stuff added now and then, but libraries and frameworks that breed like rabbits with a new one along every year thats going to be The Ne
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Well, ... so no closures, no templates ... oops we have no generics, and half the planet does not grasp the difference between generics and templates ...
most recently added language features should have been there from the beginning.
But some SUN idiots claimed: "to beat MS we need to have a simple language"
More is better. Yes. Because the things we have now "more" were a serious lack before. Languages like Kotlin, Groovy, Scala exist for a reason: pure Java simply sucked till Java 9 extremely badly!
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Given that everything in java inherits from Object templates are not required. They were simply put it to keep some purists happy and serve little practical purpose other than to have some errors occur at compile time rather than runtime.
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Given that everything in java inherits from Object templates are not required.
Perhaps you want to read up what a template is. Inheritance and "macros" are two completely different concepts and if used properly work orthogonal.
Your argument would make a limited amount of sense if Java would work like SmallTalk and had dynamic message dispatch instead of static compiled method calls.
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The mistake is to think that you need all of C++, you don't, especially not if you are a beginner.
You can write C++ like you write C if you want, or on the opposite, go all smart pointer and not write a single "delete" yourself. You can completely ignore templates except for the minimum requited to use the STL (that's if you are using the STL). Not using exceptions is totally fine, a lot of projects don't. And if you want you can use lambdas but no classes.
Each feature is a tool for a job, but you don't hav
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Thats all nice in theory, but in practice in a job you'll be working on all styles of C++ and you DO need to know all of it to be effective. Ditto when it comes to interviews. "Yeah, I'm no beginner but whats dis lambda shit? You not needin that bro!" isn't going to get you a job.
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I write C and C++ everyday but if I were contemplating writing something new and without some incredibly good reason I would be hard pressed to convince myself to use
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You forget the micro controller space where code is 99% C and C++
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Re: Interesting: No C++ (Score:2)
You must also consider age and stability.
If a program is mostly stable, large numbers of forks are unlikely.
If a program is very old, it's more likely to be still in a Perforce, Arch, Hg, CVS or SVN repo.
There are other sites (sourceforge, gforge, bitbucket, gitlab, and so on), which older source is unlikely to migrate from unless there's obvious need.
And then there's the Microsoft Take-over.
Re: These aren't programming languages (Score:2)
I'd probably not have used quite such coarse language, but ultimately you're correct. A scripting tool is not a language, it is a scripting tool.
"Javascript" isn't really just one language (Score:1)
The problem with these sorts of studies is that the definition of what a "language" is has changed radically over the past 10 years.
React, Angular, Vue and other frameworks may have their roots in Javascript, but the programming experience can be radically different and the code may look alien and indecipherable to those unfamiliar with each flavor. If we're going to use the linguistic metaphor of "languages" to describe code, then we must consider these to be new languages as they are not understandable b
Re: "Just fix the hardware problems in software" (Score:2)
Whether or not that's true, you agree that it's a new language albeit hosted.
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No we don't. That's like claiming C++ for linux and C++ for windows are different languages. An argument like this is just foolish, nobody would agree with that. A language is a set of syntax. A bunch of libraries and frameworks you use doesn't change that. Its still all Javascript.
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The framework adds its own vocabulary. One has a call for this, another one has a call for that, they both have a call for the other but use different names. Once the frameworks start taking over they might as well be different languages.
Cockney rhyming slang and valspeak are both technically English, but I suspect speakers of one have trouble understanding the other. Or medical jargon and legalese.
Re: "Javascript" isn't really just one language (Score:2)
Is Jython the same language as Java?
If no, then a hosted language is not the same as the hosting language.
As for C++, suggest comparing a Visual Studio 6 C++ program or even a VS2015 C++ program with a GCC C++ program, an Intel C++ program or a Green Hills C++ program.
They are not the same. Those five compilers all support stuff that the others cannot run. Porting between them is a serious pain.
Even just porting between VS6 and VS2015 is agony. And what's with this "oh, we deprecated POSIX"?
No, if you don't
Flawed metric, IMHO (Score:3)
> the top languages according to the number of repositories created
In the web and mobile days you will obviously see more and more stuff in PHP, Python, Java and the likes.
And fewer in C, C++.
IMHO you'd not even just count *all* projects.
Because a project like Linux [github.com] (99.999% C) cannot count the same as a python-based or java-based toy project.
You'd better count the overall number lines of code. Or, better, the overall number of modified lines of code at any time.
Then you'd discover the real truth.
Re: Flawed metric, IMHO (Score:2)
Look around where?
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Github's defaults probably contribute to this. You have to setup a repo according to Linguist.
For example, I have a Github repository that's a whole lot of C and Objective-C. However my help documentation is written in HTML/CSS, and uses Apple's JavaScript. There's a little bit of XSLT used for generating documentation, and the end result, if I don't configure Linguist, Github reports my project as being HTML and JavaScript.
The most important part of the project is pure C, but unless I manually configure th
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So, you'd favor verbose languages or languages that are so unreadable it's better to rewrite the whole unit?
Re: Flawed metric, IMHO (Score:2)
Bad programming is language agnostic.
Like Joe Armstrong used to say (Score:1)
Ruby Decline (Score:2)
Re: Ruby Decline (Score:2)
But then all the other languages for people who don't know how to program are doing well.
Misleading (Score:3)
There are many ways of measuring popularity.
Would a thousand copies of a change directory utility be one project or a thousand?
Would a thousand line tightly-written program that has a million users be considered equal to a thousand line badly-written program with five users including the programmer's mother?
Does a verbose language get counted the same way as a clean language?
Does a language that inspires errors and thus fixes count as being as active as a language that inspires trust?
How would you differentiate fixes from upgrades?
These are serious questions. You could develop an AI to examine language characteristics, type of use,and unique addresses of downloads, but I see no obvious way to use any such metric and no serious possibility of such a metric being accepted. You'd get just as many arguments.
We all look at metrics to tell us something profound. In truth, you're going to get a better answer from CowboyNeil.
Interesting breakdown (Score:2)
Each problem space is likely to settle on its own most popular tool. Java fills the role of megalithic system design suitable for huge teams and projects. PHP dominates at generating web pages. Python has several niches in academia, control systems, and online news media. JavaScript runs the web front end, and also is the goto for writing network code to tie together web services et al.
New languages need to fill a niche better than the current crop in order to become dominant.
Oxford comma (Score:2)
I'm just posting to thank the submitter and/or EditorDavid for using the Oxford comma.
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Nah... Since they turned it into a script, it's gotten much better. Get with the times man!
Re:JAVA What? (Score:5, Informative)
Have an Android device? YOu know, the smartphone owned by over 80% of the world? Over 90% of the apps on there are written in Java.
Work with servers? A large amount of backend webservices are still written in Java. Especially large scale ones.
It isn't used much for desktop apps, but its used pretty much everywhere else.
Re:JAVA What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Work with servers? A large amount of backend webservices are still written in Java. Especially large scale ones.
If they are not written in Java then in Groovy, Scala or Kotlin, running on the JVM, using the Java infrastructure like web serves such as Tomcat or Jetty, running big data frameworks/tools like Hadoop, Spark or Cassandra.
The snobs out there simply don't realize that 90% of their daily computer interaction that involves something else than their own computer or tablet reaches out to backends written (partly or completely) in Java, may it be FB, Amazon, Twitter, or their bank, booking a ticket for a plane or a theatre.
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It is a nightmare to upgrade and 80% the upgrade breaks the software and you have to work with the developer for a week to fix it.
My company used to be all PHP and we made the switch to mostly Java a few years ago (we still maintain some php stuff on the admin side). In our experience your statement applies more to PHP then Java. We started at Java 1.6 and are now on 11. It was slightly rocky going from 8->10 but it just involved adding libraries that were split out of the JDK (it took all of a few minutes on Google to figure this out, no where near a week of fixing). Even targeting the latest version was basically just updatin
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There is a huge amount of server-side application and server code written in Java. Consider all the Java application servers available on the market (e.g. from IBM, Oracle, Red Hat, etc.) in addition to more lightweight servlet containers (e.g. like Apache Tomcat). There's also a huge community around Spring. Java is not dead. Even if all new development on Java stopped now the existing code-base would keep Java relevant for years.
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If you think Java is dead and no one programs in it, then you must have an extremely small circle of programmers.
Java is perfectly... adequate. (Score:2)
If you're developing a web application, use Java if you want people to know what you're doing. It'll be slow but it'll generally work and it'll be portable.
For faster web apps, you might want to use Wt and C++, but expect it to be hell to maintain.
For robotics, Java was specifically created with that application in mind.
So there are domains where you should use it.
Upgrading us a pain, yes. That's why you put unstable features into a support library. Then you never update the app, you only update the support
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Wonder what this bot was coded in.