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Python Programming

'Unstoppable' Python Remains More Popular than C and Java (infoworld.com) 177

"Python seems to be unstoppable," argues the commentary on August's edition of the TIOBE index (which attempts to calculate programming-language popularity based on search results for courses, vendors, and "skilled engineers").

By that measure Python's "market share" rose another 2% in this month's index — to an all-time high of 15.42%. It is hard to find a field of programming in which Python is not used extensively nowadays. The only exception is (safety-critical) embedded systems because of Python being dynamically typed and too slow. That is why the performant languages C and C++ are gaining popularity as well at the moment.

If we look at the rest of the TIOBE index, not that much happened last month. Swift and PHP swapped places again at position 10, Rust is getting close to the top 20, Kotlin is back in the top 30, and the new Google language Carbon enters the TIOBE index at position 192.

InfoWorld notes it's been 10 months since Python first claimed the index's #1 spot last October, "becoming the only language besides Java and C to hold the No. 1 position." In the alternative Pypl Popularity of Programming Language index, which assesses language popularity based on Google searches of programming language tutorials, the top 10 rankings for August were:

1. Python, 28.11% share
2. Java, 17.35%
3. JavaScript, 9.48%
4. C#, 7.08%
5. C/C++, 6.19%
6. PHP, 5.47%
7. R, 4.35%
8. TypeScript, 2.79%
9. Swift, 2.09%
10. Objective-C, 2.03%

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'Unstoppable' Python Remains More Popular than C and Java

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  • its GIS (Score:2, Funny)

    by sdinfoserv ( 1793266 )
    The growth of python is likely being driven by the increase in GIS - Geographic Information Systems. Government (Fed, State, Local, Tribal, etc) GIS investment increasing significantly. Any mapping data, inventory (water lines, sewer lines, etc), watersheds, sea levels, traffic hot maps, parks and rec trails.. anything you can think of to map is being mapped. The king of mapping software is ESRI / ArcGis which uses python for automation and application integration development.
    • I'm sure it's more than just GIS
    • Re:its GIS (Score:5, Funny)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Saturday August 13, 2022 @02:55PM (#62786610) Homepage

      No, it's the ice cream industry! I can attest that almost all coding for ice cream vendors is done in Python, and that's across the entire industry - Baskin Robbins, Cold Stone Creamery, Carvell, and everybody else. Most ice cream vendors are even replacing existing Cobol code with Python, and that includes the mobile ice cream truck companies. It's a powerhouse.

    • Re:its GIS (Score:5, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Saturday August 13, 2022 @03:35PM (#62786694) Journal

      Python is popular these days because many universities use it as the first programming language they teach. That is the entire reason.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Rockoon ( 1252108 )
        Used to be BASIC or Pascal

        Congrats python lovers... you're BASIC
        • by ls671 ( 1122017 )

          Please don't compare BASIC to pascal. BASIC was never thought in university as far as I know, maybe in kindergarten schools.

          Comparing Python to BASIC is fine with me although. If it's true they now teach Python as a first language in universities, this really constitutes a sad race to the bottom...

          • by ls671 ( 1122017 )

            taught :)

          • Perhaps you should read a book about Python.
            Python is certainly above Pascal level, the only difference is dynamic versus static typing.
            Good, modern Pascal is OO-Pascal, you could argue that they are on the same level, but old school Pascal is no match Python.
            A matter of taste, plenty of languages use dynamic typing. Lisp, Smalltalk, Javascript instantly come to mind.

            this really constitutes a sad race to the bottom...
            That is complete nonsense.

            In university you teach concepts. Which language you use is rel

          • At my college around the turn of the century the first language taught was C, then C++, Java, VB 6, Bash scripting. I ended up working on the business side of things rather than coding, but today I write Python scripts for data analysis.

            Pythonâ(TM)s popularity might be due to non-coders using it. Iâ(TM)ll often use Python with Pandas to clean data that I might have used Excel or Tableau in the past and for data visualization, and generating documentation that will be printed in a report or other

          • I learned BASIC in 1982 on a Radio Shack TRS-80 in 8th grade math class. I made the screen print a smiley face with a "graphic" Hi there! using X/Y coordinates to paint each pixel. In 1997 I started using Delphi in a new job. Delphi is Pascal on steroids. Borland may no longer be around but Delphi [embarcadero.com] is. It's a shame more developers aren't using it.
            • by jma05 ( 897351 )

              Same progression for me as well, although in different years.
              RAD Studio gets expensive quickly, unless you earn Silicon Valley wages.
              I still occasionally use Free Pascal with Lazarus for personal GUI apps. IMO, it's still the best in that space. But I would not use Pascal for anything else today.

            • Don't forget the BASIC 2-Line Contest that ran in one of the Apple II magazines. I wrote a star cluster generator in Hires on my IIc in 2 lines.

          • Basic, most certainly was was used at the university level [wikipedia.org]. It was created at Dartmouth as a language to teach programming literacy outside of the STEM fields. It even was a language supported by the major hardware vendors.
        • Yep. It was FORTRAN, Pascal, and C for me. That was back in the 90's though.

      • by sfcat ( 872532 )

        That is the case for physics, chem E, and other hard science and engineering but not for CS. The reason for this is that universities are cheap with providing technical support for STEM research and the only support they get is basic system administration. And Python is a good sys admin language. So if you are a physics professor that needs to do some stats to evaluate the data from an experiment you use Python. Now there are at least 6 languages that are better suited to that task but a professor of Ph

        • I don't know of a major CS program that uses Python right now but I haven't looked in a couple of years so perhaps it has changed.

          It started changing 20 years ago. CMU was the first major university to use Python. Now even Berkeley and MIT have beginning level CS classes in Python.

          Your knowledge is way out of date. Better do some research and update it.

      • Its a completely different animal than a compiled program like c/c++. However it is very powerful for what it can do. Shell scripting has taken quite a back seat to python when it comes to parsing data. The days of feeding data through AWK/GAWK are gone and pythons ease of manipulating data from mysql or sqlite3 make it a far better tool for reports. (Like the damn annual traffic studies I have to send USAC every year based on CDR to determine contribution factors).
    • by sfcat ( 872532 )
      I doubt it is GIS. I would think it is more about data science. You know, the PhDs in Physics that for some reason do Machine Learning and other analytics work for most companies (even though Physics uses P-values and ML uses raw distributions so there is almost nothing in common between the two fields). And even though their job is to write code, the only language they know is Python (and they aren't learning another even though Python is very poorly suited for ML work). I would point at them as the re
    • by Kisai ( 213879 )

      Nah, the growth of Python is due to:
      - Blender
      - Davinci Resolve
      - Machine Learning
      - OBS
      - Many general purpose "scripting language" plugins

      Basically the competition in this space is Ruby and Lua.

      Javascript is used in this space, but it's the most unwieldy thing to integrate into anything that is not a web browser.

  • I'm more interested in what languages are actually used rather than what are popular darlings.

    https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]

    Another thing to know almost as useful as that, or more useful if job hunting, is what is in demand:

    https://bootcamp.berkeley.edu/... [berkeley.edu].

    • That statista site lists HTML/CSS as a programming language. IMHO, that immediately calls their statistics into question.
  • Rust (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Kristoph ( 242780 )

    I am surprised Rust is not on this list. Itâ(TM)s such a great language.

  • if only ... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pz ( 113803 ) on Saturday August 13, 2022 @02:48PM (#62786592) Journal

    If only Python could be changed so that ...

    (a) indenting whitespace was not syntactically important (we collectively understood that was a bad idea, what, fifty years ago?),

    and

    (b) it was faster than 1990s era Visual Basic 6. And before you flame me on that, I have a solid data point as I'm converting a VB6 application I wrote to Python. Even with numba's jit compilation and numpy, it's not faster than 20-year old VB6 that lacks basic optimizations like common subexpression elimination.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 )

      Or it could be that:

      a.) You're in the minority, because despite what you consider to be a bad idea, Python is wildly popular;

      b.) You're a bad Python coder, but you used to be good at VB6.

      • If only Python could be changed so that ...
        (a) indenting whitespace was not syntactically important (we collectively understood that was a bad idea, what, fifty years ago?),

        Or it could be that:
        a.) You're in the minority, because despite what you consider to be a bad idea, Python is wildly popular;

        Both can be true. Syntactically important white space is a bad idea and Python is popular despite this "feature".

        Also, the minority is perhaps larger than you think -- I also think it's a bad, and unnecessary, idea too -- and perhaps Python would be even more popular w/o this "feature". Personally, as far as scripting languages go, I'm more of a Perl fan -- having learned it before Python was invented...

        • Syntactically important white space is a bad idea and Python is popular despite this "feature".
          Obviously the Pythonists disagree ...

          So do I, despite that I do not really use Python.

          Why the funk should code not be syntactically interpreted according to it is visual layout?

          • Why the funk should code not be syntactically interpreted according to it is visual layout?

            Simply from a practical standpoint, losing/changing white space alters program logic. Using block delimiters, like braces, mitigates that issue completely. You can remove *all* the leading white space from a C/Java/Perl (etc) program and it will still function correctly, not so for a Python script.

            For example, there are (or used to be) cases where a copy/paste operation under X Windows would change tabs to spaces or trash the white space all together. This type of behavior affects things other than Pytho

            • For example, there are (or used to be) cases where a copy/paste operation under X Windows would change tabs to spaces or trash the white space all together.

              Not X windows as such: the copy/paste mechanism is completely blind to the data and the server takes no part other than assisting clients from negotiating the format and actually shuffling the data. If this happened, you had a program which had peculiar opinions on what data to send, or possibly a rather unusually opinionated clipboard manager.

              Both are p

          • Re:if only ... (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Saturday August 13, 2022 @11:00PM (#62787522) Homepage

            Why the funk should code not be syntactically interpreted according to it is visual layout?

            Because I can go into a codebase, swap a few spaces for tabs and create invisible vulnerabilities.

            Plus it prevents me from using layout to give semantic meaning to code, which makes bugs easier to spot.

            TLDR; It's a source of bugs.

            • Because I can go into a codebase, swap a few spaces for tabs and create invisible vulnerabilities.

              That would be a bit odd in a modern setup. CI is pretty popular these days, and it's a very good idea to run tests to do style/format checks. Cuts down the amount of bikeshedding in reviews immensely.

        • by jma05 ( 897351 )

          > Syntactically important white space is a bad idea and Python is popular despite this "feature".

          Significant whitespace was the first thing I noticed about Python and loved it for it when I picked it up 20 years ago. Since then, I wanted it everywhere.
          Like you, I also learnt Perl before Python, but had less investment in it than you. I instantly knew I would be dropping Perl, as soon as I saw Python. Syntax is superficial though, although it touches us emotionally. Python had a focus on elegance that Per

      • by vux984 ( 928602 )

        "a.) You're in the minority, because despite what you consider to be a bad idea, Python is wildly popular;"

        It's wildly popular because its useful in a lot of current growth areas, in spite of the semantic indentation, not because of it.

        But there isn't a single real advantage to semantic whitespace.

        Let me be clear -- Indentation is good, consistent indentation is good, and indentation to reflect semantics is good, but whitespace should reflect semantics not define them, and it should be done with a pretty-p

      • No, whitespace indentation depency IS a bad syntax, popularity doesn't make it good.
    • it is wildly known that vb6 is faster than python. i wonder if that will still be true after python's upcoming release

      • by jma05 ( 897351 )

        Unlikely. The next version is just 22% faster on average.
        That's not enough to bridge the gap between a dynamically typed language with one that has optionally explicit static typing and a native compiler. The difference is in orders of magnitude. Python is meant for very different use cases.

    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      I don't think there's general agreement that whitespace indentation is a bad idea. I'm not really fond of it, it's it's not that bad. I think of it as a quirk, and there isn't a language without its quirks.

      • I don't think there's general agreement that whitespace indentation is a bad idea.

        There is a general agreement that it is a controversial feature; this discussion comes up every time. Being so divisive means it should be somehow addressed. At this point in time the only answer was the dev was arrogance such as the "from __future__ import braces -> SyntaxError: not a chance". If you are use C and you prefer Pascal block delimiters, the C community will tell you "just do #define BEGIN { and #define END }, now have fun." Python authors know it's controversial, know a part of their users

        • the C community will tell you "just do #define BEGIN { and #define END }
          That most likely would break tool support in IDEs and everything that wants to analyze code.

    • " (we collectively understood that was a bad idea, what, fifty years ago?)"

      Then how did makefiles happen 46 years ago?

      • Knowing that something is a bad idea doesn't stop everyone. Some people want to watch the world burn. Semantic whitespace is an unnecessary complication.
        • Semantic whitespace is an unnecessary complication.
          No, they are a simplification.
          The code executes/compiles exactly as it looks. Can't be so hard to grasp.

          • No, they are a simplification.
            The code executes/compiles exactly as it looks. Can't be so hard to grasp.

            Personally I find it inane. Hard to believe a modern language would be intentionally structured to behave in this manner.

          • The code executes/compiles exactly as it looks.

            Unless somebody sneaks in a tab character or two, in which case you've got a code exploit.

      • as explained by the author of the original Make, Stuart Feldman:

        I used tabs because I was trying to use Lex (still in first version) and had trouble with some other patterns. ...
        So I gave up on being smart and just used a fixed pattern (^\t) to indicate rules.
        Within a few weeks of writing Make, I already had a dozen friends who were using it.
        So even though I knew that "tab in column 1" was a bad idea, I didn't want to disrupt my user base. So instead I wrought havoc on tens of millions.

        I have used that exam

    • Python users disagree with (a)
      Regarding (b) you are just dumb.
      Visual Basic is compiled to machine code, Python is not.

    • by jma05 ( 897351 )

      > (a) indenting whitespace was not syntactically important (we collectively understood that was a bad idea, what, fifty years ago?),

      No, we didn't. It's just your opinion because you never managed to get used to it. You just need a properly configured editor and you don't need to think about it. Complaining about significant white space, or about not needing semicolons, are superficial things people complain about when they only occasionally and reluctantly use a language. Don't fight it, embrace it, and

  • What's it actually comparing? Not all these languages are appropriate, or even used, for all the same/similar applications. In some sense it's like comparing apples and oranges. Python or Java vs. JavaScript -- really? The "popularity" being measured may simply be a reflection of the types of projects or the people implementing them.

    • It's comparing the popularity among educators, not professionals. Students use google. Professionals use the reference manual. Also, TIOBE has a financial interest in getting people to build large applications in untyped languages.

      • Everyone uses google.

        Takes much too long to find what you need in a reference manual. And most of the time the questions are spanning several topics/manuals.

        The manual you are new to the topic, and if it is written well. Did not see a well written one since decades, though.

    • by godrik ( 1287354 )

      You can read the methodology of TIOBE. But essentially they count searches on popular search engines. So there is a bias to the methodology; in particular beginners probably generate a lot more searches than experts. I wouldn't put too much faith in the accuracy of the ranking but that probably gives an idea of popularity.

  • Oh cool (Score:5, Funny)

    by mobby_6kl ( 668092 ) on Saturday August 13, 2022 @03:40PM (#62786704)

    It looks like Monkeypox is becoming more popular as well!

    • by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

      I had a discussion the other day where it boiled down to "X is better than Y because everyone uses it". My retort was "Millions of people eat Mc Donalds ... doesn't make it any less shit"

      The fact python is considered a programming language when its a scripting language makes my skin crawl as it is (guess what that fucking interpreter is written in script kiddies), but the fact that there's one of these top 10 lists every 6 weeks is absolutely annoying

      • "X is better than Y because everyone uses it". My retort was "Millions of people eat Mc Donalds ... doesn't make it any less shit"

        Sadly, that's about the response I'd expect from most these days. Average society has discarded nuance in favor of overly simplistic biased views. After all why take the time to weigh pros and cons when you can be on the "winning" side with a 10 second utterance? Being "right" is all that matters, and the programming crowd is no exemption to that maxim.

        The fact python is considered a programming language when its a scripting language makes my skin crawl as it is (guess what that fucking interpreter is written in script kiddies)

        Well, given that there are many CS classes using Python as an introductory language, that shouldn't surprise you. Granted it's a scripting language, but wh

        • Well, given that there are many CS classes using Python as an introductory language, that shouldn't surprise you.

          It's also proof that Python is the "lowest common denominator" of programming languages.

        • They line between a scripting language like BASH and a real programming language like C is blurry.

          Just because Python is interpreted does not really but it on the Scriptig side of that blurry line. Consider it a full fledged language like Java, C#, C++ etc.

          If you really want to put it on the other side, you have a real big rat tail of other languages that then also suddenly would need to be classified alike.

      • The fact python is considered a programming language when its a scripting language makes my skin crawl

        It's a programming language. Get over it.

        • It's a programming language. Get over it.

          Right? I've seen this complaint for YEARS. Never got a good explanation of precisely what is the difference between a scripting language and a REAL language, other than that the author usually strongly prefers the latter.

          I'm not personally a huge fan of python for a variety of reasons. I use it somewhat regularly and it's fine, but I don't love it in the same way I love C++ and shell scripting. Then again I prefer my coffee black and think American coffee is grossly

          • BASH is Turning complete too. But if you use it for math, you will experience pain.

            A scripting language is middle management. It exists between the OS (or shell) and the executables. It organizes and controls, but when it tries to do any heavy lifting, its performance sucks.

            If you use Python as a scripting language that glues together C and FORTRAN modules, you will get good performance. If you use Python to do all the work, it will grind with 10x, 100x, 1000x, or more in performance penalty.

            IN CONCLU

          • I know I'm shaking my fist at clouds, but my one and only fundamental problem with python is the indentation thing, because it has caused me problems personally. Just copying and pasting between two different editors can break your code. EOL characters were an advance in programming technology...

  • ...now either you code in python or in matlab. I am looking for a new job.
  • Know the audience (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday August 13, 2022 @03:44PM (#62786722)

    Python is very popular among tech-adjacent people because the barrier for entry is low - it's easy to quickly pick up enough to be able to hack together something that's useful without being an expert.

    And that's not intended as an insult. It's similar to what we used to use BASIC for, way back in the day.

    Python is certainly also used by professionals (it's all over the place in RHEL, for instance)... but I doubt those are the people driving all the web searches that determine these particular rankings.

  • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Saturday August 13, 2022 @03:45PM (#62786724)

    In the alternative Pypl Popularity of Programming Language index, which assesses language popularity based on Google searches of programming language tutorials, the top 10 rankings for August were:
    1. Python, 28.11% share
    ...

    So... Python ranks highest in number of people trying to figure out how to use it.
    Not sure that's the metric to aspire to. :-)

  • I find that I am using python a fair bit recently, it seems like an ok language and there are libraries for everything you can think of. I am surprised that go and rust didn’t make the list, they are growing in popularity very quickly. I like working with go for anything web based.
    • by jma05 ( 897351 )

      Rust is one of the hardest languages to pick up for an average programmer (but very rewarding once they do). Python is probably the easiest.
      Most people need a scripting language. Few need a systems programming language. They have very different use cases.
      Go is in the middle.
      Most people don't choose a language, they pick an ecosystem. Python's ecosystem is just wider.

  • by 4wdloop ( 1031398 ) on Saturday August 13, 2022 @04:37PM (#62786838)

    So what? Perhaps uses of Python become more popular. Each tool is good for certain uses. How popular is Python in deeply embedded (as in "your electric toothbrush") applications?

    • Python is the glue holding a lot of data centers together. I don't like programming in Python and I will likely stick primarily with C/C++ for the rest of my life, but I'm willing to admit that a whole lot of people are using it in the services that I need every day.

    • I believe the answer is written in the summary somewhere ...

    • by godrik ( 1287354 )

      No, you can't you Python in toothbrush!
      Toothbrushes need to be rigid. Snakes are too bendy!

  • Thanks, Slashdot, for constantly reminding me how popular something is. I might have forgotten.

  • How did Tiobe come up with the magic formula for a monthly clickbait slashdot article?

    Cobble together some percentages from _search engine queries_ no less (and also every month people reply here how that's a bad measure for popularity), and boom, it's news?

  • And people look down on Basic. Phyton really has an ugly syntax, any language which has dependency on whitespace indentation should never be used.
  • Unstoppable Python sounds like a porn movie.

    That is all.
  • Number of search results is an awful and arbitrary method for determining language popularity. For that matter, why not make a poll, ask an ouija board, or put a chicken in front of a keyboard to see what language it types (Perl would win that one)?

    How about we look at actual code instead? Github, the most popular source code hosting service, regularly counts how much code is written by looking at pull requests. They publish the results here: https://octoverse.github.com/#... [github.com]

    When we look at actual code

  • Experienced developers may take courses for new languages. They already know C and others. That variable seems heavily weighted towards Python.

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