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Java Python Stats

7,000 Developers Report Their Top Languages: Java, JavaScript, and Python (jetbrains.com) 194

"JetBrains released its State of Developer Ecosystem 2019 report, which found while Java is still the most popular primary language and JavaScript is the most used overall, Python is gaining speed," reports SD Times: The report surveyed about 7,000 developers worldwide, and revealed Python is the most studied programming language, the most loved language, and the third top primary programming language developers are using... The top use cases developers are using Python for include data analysis, web development, machine learning and writing automation scripts, according to the JetBrains report. More developers are also beginning to move over to Python 3, with 9 out of 10 developers using the current version.

The JetBrains report also found while Go is still a young language, it is the most promising programming language. "Go started out with a share of 8% in 2017 and now it has reached 18%. In addition, the biggest number of developers (13%) chose Go as a language they would like to adopt or migrate to," the report stated...

Seventy-three percent of JavaScript developers use TypeScript, which is up from 17 percent last year. Seventy-one percent of Kotlin developers use Kotlin for work. Java 8 is still the most popular programming language, but developers are beginning to migrate to Java 10 and 11.

JetBrains (which designed Kotlin in 2011) also said that 60% of their survey's respondents identified themselves as professional web back-end developers (while 46% said they did web front-end, and 23% developed mobile applications). 41% said they hadn't contributed to open source projects "but I would like to," while 21% said they contributed "several times a year."

"16% of developers don't have any tests in their projects. Among fully-employed senior developers though, that statistic is just 8%. Like last year, about 30% of developers still don't have unit tests in their projects." Other interesting statistics:
  • 52% say they code in their dreams.
  • 57% expect AI to replace developers "partially" in the future.
  • "83% prefer the Dark theme for their editor or IDE. This represents a growth of 6 percentage points since last year for each environment.
  • 47% take public transit to work.

And 97% of respondents using Rust "said they have been using Rust for less than a year. With only 14% using it for work, it's much more popular as a language for personal/side projects." And more than 90% of the Rust developers who responded worked with codebases with less than 300 files.


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7,000 Developers Report Their Top Languages: Java, JavaScript, and Python

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    The problem is that these tend to be self-selecting in various ways, which can warp the actual reality into all sorts of fun house mirages.

    One of the most unpalatable truths is that most programmers aren't much good and never will be. Their likes and wants reflect that.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17, 2019 @07:03AM (#58774924)

      That's what I was thinking. JetBrains, a company who I associate with an IDE primarily used for Java development, finds that most developers use Java.

      • Well, duh. Java IDE is their flagship product.
        • Yes and no.
          They have plenty of IDE's that are centered around the Java one, e.g. PHPStorm for PHP and WEBStorm for JavaScript.
          Obviously the standard IDE supports JavaScript out of the box and I assume you can install a PHP plugin.

          Android Studio is also based on IntelliJ

          • Out of the box, yes, if you have a license. The free community edition of IDEA does not support the PHP plugin. Annoying, but it makes sense because buying a license for PHPStorm wouldn't make any sense otherwise.
      • by lgw ( 121541 ) on Monday June 17, 2019 @08:49AM (#58775240) Journal

        That's what I was thinking. JetBrains, a company who I associate with an IDE primarily used for Java development, finds that most developers use Java.

        JetBrains makes IDEs for most languages. You might say "JetBrains, a company that makes IDEs for Java, Javascript, and Pythoin finds those languages popular", but they also make IDEs for C++ and many others.

        The nice thing is, you can get them all for one license fee.

        • Fair enough but how many C++ devs are using JetBrains? I've only heard of it used in the context of Java, JS and maybe Python if they are already using one of the former.

          • by lgw ( 121541 )

            Fair enough but how many C++ devs are using JetBrains?

            Those I know who use it say it's the best option around, even for Windows development. If JetBrains has the same "spooky auto-complete" they do for other languages, I could see why (especially since MS Intellisense seems to get worse over time).

            • especially since MS Intellisense seems to get worse over time
              That is normal for C++ ... I forgot more about C++ than most people on /. ever knew about it.

          • I've only heard of it used in the context of Java, JS and maybe Python

            RubyMine is considered gold for those doing RoR development and I've seen devs not want to even approach on a project without "proper" tooling which would include RM.

        • by HiThere ( 15173 )

          Well, I just looked at their Python IDE and was unimpressed. I went back to using geany, which is what I generally use for any language except Java (Netbeans) or C++ (varies, often KDevelop).
          (Now that I think of it I should give Anjuta another trial.)

        • JetBrains makes IDEs for most languages. You might say "JetBrains, a company that makes IDEs for Java, Javascript, and Pythoin finds those languages popular", but they also make IDEs for C++ and many others.

          It still contains a bias depending on how other IDEs stack up. e.g. If most of the popular IDEs for C++ didn't have a version for Java, Javascript, or Python, then JetBrains' sample would overrepresent developers using those languages. There's a reason the random telephone poll was so beloved (as lon

      • by jeremyp ( 130771 )

        Well yes.

        This survey is completely worthless, being heavily skewed towards languages supported by Jetbrains products.

    • by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Monday June 17, 2019 @07:53AM (#58775040)

      For fun, Ill program in whatever language I feel like. Rust, C, Python, R, Swift....
      For work when I need to choose a language for a project I have to make a lot of decisions.
      1. How easy is it for the company I am working for is it to hire additional/replacement developers to work on this project. Obscure or Fad Languages have a hard time finding developers, especially ones with some real experience on their belt. These ranking stories, while may not be accurate, at least let me know what particular langues seem to have wide usage.

      2. What platform are you developing for. If my project requires a front end, 99% of the time, the front end is going to be web based, because of #1 and it eases the problem for software deployment. That being the case, I have to use Javascript. As there isn't a browser side language that is widely supported for it. On the server side, if it is a back end script, while my normal Go To is Python, because Python works on Windows and Linux, However I like to avoid using PIP and installing 3rd party modules as much as possible, so I may use a Powershell script on windows, in cases where I need to do some Windows calls, that isn't easily supported by Python. If it is a back end to a Web Application, it comes down to how much control I really need, for basic stuff C# does the trick if I am in Windows Server Land, if the product is expected to run on multiple platforms Java is a good language, and python can do the trick as well. But Java is still a bit mature on many aspects.

      3. Openness/Long term support of the software langue. I like Open Languages such as Python, because its success isn't tied to quarterly profits. Microsoft lately seems to be making .NET a bit more open and accessible without an expensive cost to develop. Oracle is screwing Java over every day. So while I would rather put my efforts in Java, I don't see a positive future on it.

      4. Performance needed. How fast does the program need to run. For the most part these high level interpreted languages are fast enough. However if I need to design for extreme performance, C/C++ or Rust may be a good candidate. If I know I am limited to a single hardware, then I may inlay the C code with assembly.

      The last option is actually how much I actually like the language. I have chosen PHP, and Javascript not because they were good languages, or coding in them makes me happy. but because for the needs and time they were the best options to choose from.

      • I am the same way. I program for what is needed. If I need a basic script to do some mechanics, I use Bash. If I need to do more complicated tasks, it depends on the platform and architecture. C or C++ work well on Linux, C# on Windows, Swift or Objective C on Macs.

        Java works as well, and is cross platform, but it lags behind Python and other languages these days.

      • Oracle is screwing Java over every day. So while I would rather put my efforts in Java, I don't see a positive future on it.

        Java will outlive Oracle. They barely influence it today and nearly every Java shop has switched to OpenJDK with no issue, including my job.

        Esoteric discussions about programming languages drive me up the wall. Yeah, every modern language is more "fun" than Java. Java is #1 for many other reasons, particularly after you release the 1.0 version of your product.

        Java can do everything known on the server side and I can quickly get up to speed on any Java project I've ever downloaded. It is very unif

    • Hate to bring up that SAD man, but it's relevant to pointing out that just because people vote for something doesn't make it the best. Do total sales, which are like votes, make McDonalds and Starbucks the best food?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      "One of the most unpalatable truths is that most programmers aren't much good and never will be"

      even more unpalatable: same goes for doctors

    • by Anonymous Coward

      47% use public transport. That means this is only programmers in a few select cities. And probably India.

    • But these aren’t just any old rankings, these come from JetBrain. JetBrain is...

      Okay, I’ve never heard of them either.

    • The problem is that these tend to be self-selecting in various ways, which can warp the actual reality into all sorts of fun house mirages.

      I'm not even sure where they found 7000 web developers who take the bus to work and code in their dreams.

  • No need to read (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17, 2019 @05:51AM (#58774730)

    Here we go again.

    You don't even have to read the summary. You can tell what subgroup was asked just by looking at the result.

    • Here we go again.

      You don't even have to read the summary. You can tell what subgroup was asked just by looking at the result.

      Yep.

      Visual BASIC used to be "loved" in its heyday. It introduced a whole generation of people into coding. Where's the Github repositories full of Visual BASIC code...?

      • Where's the Github repositories full of Visual BASIC code...?

        "Visual Basic" on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] states that VB6 mainstream support ended in 2005, and extended support ended in March 2008, one month after GitHub [wikipedia.org] was founded. Its successor, VB.NET [wikipedia.org], was positioned as a transitional technology, and developers appear to have inferred that new development ought to be in C#, which has the same semantics as VB.NET with syntax more similar to Java.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    And 97% of respondents using Rust "said they have been using Rust for less than a year. With only 14% using it for work, it's much more popular as a language for personal/side projects." And more than 90% of the Rust developers who responded worked with codebases with less than 300 files.

    I can't wait to see the explanations from the Rust pushers for THAT.

    (grabs popcorn!)

  • So from TFA: (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LordHighExecutioner ( 4245243 ) on Monday June 17, 2019 @06:33AM (#58774858)
    Java and Javascript are the most popular languages for 60% of professional web developers. This does not make them the most popular languages among all software developers.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      I'd be amazed if any programmer liked having to use JavaScript. It's "popular" because it is the lingua franca of the web and people have to use it, not that they want to.

      • I'd be amazed if any programmer liked having to use JavaScript. It's "popular" because it is the lingua franca of the web and people have to use it, not that they want to.

        If you approach it with a C-programmer mentality then expect to hate it, yes, but it's kinda cute if you really bother to learn it.

        ("cute" in a twisted, functional-programming sort of way).

      • It's possible to develop a web application with only HTML, CSS, and a server-side programming language. The user would interact with it through link navigation and form submission. A non-single-page web application is more practical than a lot of devs give it credit for.

      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        There actually are those who like it. Or if not, there are trolls who pretend to be programmers who like Javascript, but I've no reason to doubt that them, and tend to believe they're honest.

      • JavaScript is against popular believe by people who never used it: an elegant and very nice language.

        It has two problems:
        a) historically bad implementations of the DOM in web browsers.
        b) stupid decisions about autocasting numbers and strings or nulls back and forth or interpreting them as booleans

        No idea about a), but I believe it is fixed meanwhile. While b) is not truly fixed, people use modern languages like CoffeeScript and TypeScript, or even Dart to compile to JavaScript.

        Obviously it is ok not to like

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday June 17, 2019 @08:24AM (#58775134)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Guess it depends on the enterprise. Our ERP is a mix of VG/EGL and "plain" Java w/ JSPs, and the JSPs are using AngularJS, etc. No consoles, 3270, etc. anymore, all web based and has been for 20 years.

      • Professionally I never worked on a backend, that was not Java. And luckily I never worked on one where the server technology was JSF/JSP :P

        However I'm at the moment in a project where it is under consideration to write a REST backend in PHP.

        which you would have thought would be the biggest software development sector right now.
        I think in terms or "products" it is mobile development.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Going by experience, popularity usually correlates more with it being crap that the opposite.

  • How time changes ... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Back in the 60's it was fortran, cobol, asm

    Back in the 80's it was C, Pascal, asm

    Computers which brought the space ships to moon and back ran programs that were lean, mean, and speedy

    Even in the 80's the 'lean' and 'speedy' traditions were still being followed.

    No more.

    Bloat came abroad in the 90's, and the problem of bloat got worsen.

    I used to write (embedded) programs that ran under 4K of RAM. Under CP/M we had programs that ran happily within 32K or less RAM.

    Remember the Commodore machine? I wrote a music

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Now people are running simple code five layers deep in abstraction. An ESXI virtual machine with a docker image using python virtualenv all to parse some text.

    • by Chozabu ( 974192 )
      Really? I get the impression that although in relative terms more people are writing non-optimal code, the number of people writing optimal code may have increased.

      Anyone working on Linux, low-level pixel operations (GLSL, HLSL), game engines, embedded devices or various other areas probably has "optimal" as one of their top prioritys.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      No it isn't sad really. Programming by itself is the means to an end. Focusing on the delivered functionality has been massively more beneficial rather than trying to squeeze some more efficiency from your code. If the hardware constraint is not there then why bother? Professional programming is full of non computer scientists and they all do fine.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Apps back then also did a lot less. A modern music notation app can load and save a variety of formats, uses high resolution graphics for usability, can print to arbitrary imaging devices, multitasks and benefits from all the OS services like a standard file requester with management functions built in.

      Since RAM is so cheap now it's a worthwhile trade-off. I'm an embedded developer, 4k RAM is luxury to me, but when I'm writing desktop apps I just throw C# and WPF at the problem because it's not worth the ef

      • And they have unlimited undo/redo. A friend of mine made a QBase plugin that had and "undo tree", you could go back every path and go forward every other path again and select two versions (or more?) and let them play same time.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      I lived through all that and all that you say is true. But it's tiresome. There are orders of magnitude more code out there today than in the 80s, doing orders of magnitude more work, written by orders of magnitudes more programmers. Not all of them are capable of writing assembly or understanding big O. Many are basically business people writing scripts. That's ok. There is still lots of interesting optimization work available from DB internals to device drivers to numerical processing if you like to write

    • Optimization is no longer important for them

      Optimization is no longer an option for them. FTFY

      In all seriousness though, when you have something along the lines of integrate a call recording service for a VoIP product into a claims entry system and you have exactly 10 business days to have that coded, tested, and ready for integration into the website. After that, we need you to write up freight forwarding rules that will need to be remotely called by our external hosts. You need to write a coherent API, secure it, and have that ready to push to o

      • Three, it's embedded, give me a freaking break. Call me when you need to interface three different data cubes with 4TB of sales data into something that looks pretty for the sales people who can't make up their mind on anything.
        Why are you so harsh on him?
        He most certainly will be able to code that in hand optimized asm on the ethernet chip of a Raspberry Pi!!
        But I guess he would sneer on the challenge as the that small controller already has "to much RAM!" It would simply be to simple ...

    • Computers which brought the space ships to moon and back ran programs that were lean, mean, and speedy
      Actually, no.
      The small computers at that time used to run a VM (in about 2k memory, the other 32k where ROM, I guess the VM was in the ROM), and the flight software or astronavigation software was written in the VM byte code, because those computers where so super primitive that is was hard to code for them directly. Well, for us it would be easy, I simply guess electric engineers at that time had not the e

  • How distributed? Among 100 million?
    What is a "developer" anyway?
    Are those who write yaml or json for AWS to be considered as Developers?

  • "Seventy-one percent of Kotlin developers use Kotlin for work."

    What are the other 29 percent using?

    • by tepples ( 727027 )

      "Seventy-one percent of Kotlin developers use Kotlin for work."

      What are the other 29 percent using?

      Something else for work and Kotlin for hobby projects.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    What is the age break down of the 7000 respondents and the break down by years of experience. It is easy to see why Python, Javascript, and Java would appeal to newbies in the profession. These top three languages are what they learned in college, after all.

    The author's comments also indicate how shallow the industry is, that is covered by this survey, since testing is not a priority. Can you imagine a major release of the Linux operating system with zero testing prior to release? Do you want to do onli

    • I still have yet to see any reason not to simply keep using Python if you learned it easily and it does what you need. Programming in Java properly is more like writing a legal document. There is a need for that for sure, but that doesn't dismiss the vast need for 5-15 minute emails.
      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        The reason to not use Python is that it's slow. Also, it's so abstracted from the hardware, that interfacing to it can be difficult.

        OTOH, most code is I/O bound, even in Python, so faster code doesn't help. And most code doesn't need to worry about things like assembler flags.

        It all depends on what you're doing.

        • And Java isn't slow??
          • by HiThere ( 15173 )

            There are degrees and degrees. Good Java code runs faster than good Python code that does the same thing, *IF* the code is compute bound.

            OTOH, Python has lots of libraries standard that are written in C and optimized, where Java libraries are generally written in Java. So if the impedence match between the code and the library isn't too bad, for things that are highly library dependent, Python can actually be faster.

            But for most code that isn't heavily library bound or I/O bound, Java is substantially fas

  • Here's the transportation breakdown from the article:

    21% Telecommute
    18% Walk
    14% Bike
    47% Public Transport
    3% Motorcycle
    32% Car
    2% Other

    A 137% Commute is pretty impressive! There's probably a description of multi-modality here, but I would need to see the actual survey to say for certain. Regardless, that's some great average vehicle ridership!

  • Hint: It's not April 1st, guys.

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