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Programming Java Python

JavaScript, Python, Java: Redmonk's Programming Language Ranking Sees Lack of Change (redmonk.com) 30

Redmonk's latest programming language ranking (attempting to gauge "potential future adoption trends") has found evidence of "a landscape resistant to change." Outside of CSS moving down a spot and C++ moving up one, the Top 10 was unchanged. And even in the back half of the rankings, where languages tend to be less entrenched and movement is more common, only three languages moved at all... There are a few signs of languages following in TypeScript's footsteps and working their way up the path, both in the Top 20 and at the back end of the Top 100 as we'll discuss shortly, but they're the exception that proves the rule.

It's possible that we'll see more fluid usage of languages, and increased usage of code assistants would theoretically make that much more likely, but at this point it's a fairly static status quo. With that, some results of note:

- TypeScript (#6): technically TypeScript didn't move, as it was ranked sixth in our last run, but this is the first quarter in which is has been the sole occupant of that spot. CSS, in this case, dropped one place to seven leaving TypeScript just outside the Top 5. It will be interesting to see whether or not it has more momentum to expend or whether it's topped out for the time being.

- Kotlin (#14) / Scala (#14): both of these JVM-based languages jumped up a couple of spots — two spots in Scala's case and three for Kotlin. Scala's rise is notable because it had been on something of a downward trajectory from a one time high of 12th, and Kotlin's placement is a mild surprise because it had spent three consecutive runs not budging from 17, only to make the jump now. The tie here, meanwhile, is interesting because Scala's long history gives it an accretive advantage over Kotlin's more recent development, but in any case the combination is evidence of the continued staying power of the JVM.

- Objective C (#17): speaking of downward trajectories and the 17th placement on this list, Objective C's slide that began in mid-2018 continued and left the language with its lowest placement in these rankings to date at #17. That's still an enormously impressive achievement, of course, and there are dozens of languages that would trade their usage for Objective C's, but the direction of travel seems clear.

- Dart (#19) / Rust (#19): while once grouped with Kotlin as up and coming languages driven by differing incentives and trends, Dart and Rust have not been able to match the ascent of their counterpart with five straight quarters of no movement. That's not necessarily a negative; as with Objective C, these are still highly popular languages and communities, but it's worth questioning whether new momentum will arrive and from where, particularly because the communities are experiencing some friction in growing their usage.

It's important to remember Redmonk's methodology. "We extract language rankings from GitHub and Stack Overflow, and combine them for a ranking that attempts to reflect both code (GitHub) and discussion (Stack Overflow) traction. The idea is not to offer a statistically valid representation of current usage, but rather to correlate language discussion and usage in an effort to extract insights into potential future adoption trends."

Having said that, here's the current top ten in Redmonk's ranking:
  1. JavaScript
  2. Python
  3. Java
  4. PHP
  5. C#
  6. TypeScript
  7. CSS
  8. C++
  9. Ruby
  10. C

Their announcement also notes that at the other end of the list, the programming language Bicep "jumped eight spots to #78 and Zig 10 to #87. That progress pales next to Ballerina, however, which jumped from #80 to #61 this quarter. The general purpose language from WS02, thus, is added to the list of potential up and comers we're keeping an eye on."


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JavaScript, Python, Java: Redmonk's Programming Language Ranking Sees Lack of Change

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  • I love PHP. Why do so many coders put down PHP? I am an amateur coder but PHP for years has always been fun for me to debug and write with.
    • Re:PHP (Score:4, Interesting)

      by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Saturday September 14, 2024 @11:55AM (#64787471)

      Enterprises don't want to use that because of the perception and sort of truth that PHP isn't meant for clear separation of UI/UX and backend application code. Better to do the UI in some framework such as React or something and the backend is a bunch of API services written in something else. Idea is that you have a separate UI team and backend services team that can fuck up only their own code.

      • Thanks this perspective actually makes me understand the concerns better.
    • by ls671 ( 1122017 )

      Needing to re-factor your code every time a new version of php comes out is a pain. I have code I wrote in another language in 2000 and it still runs fine in the latest version.

    • by _merlin ( 160982 )

      The biggest problem PHP has is that it's an "easy" language:

      • Easy languages like PHP (and Visual BASIC) tend to attract amateur programmers who can throw something together that works, but lack the skills to properly structure their code. PHP also does nothing to pressure you to structure your code, either. This tends to create an unmaintainable mess of spaghetti code and non-obvious coupling/dependencies.
      • It's easy to quickly throw together a prototype in PHP as a proof of concept before you rewrite it pr
    • PHP has been a disaster since the beginning. People start out as novice programmers who don't know about better with PHP and it happily lets them shoot themselves in the foot. It's as if the language was specifically designed to encourage it, even. Also check out https://reddit.com/r/lolphp [reddit.com] for a long list of PHP fails. Go update your WordPress and all plugins, too. You know it needs it.

    • Top 5 tiers in no particular order

      Tier 1 - Java/C/C++
      Tier 2 - C#/.net
      Tier 3 - SQL
      Tier 4 - JavaScript/Typescript
      Tier 5 - Python/scripting language

      Correlate the languages with paying jobs and the Red Monk list will be quite different.

      Now, if we could only get language design teams at the major vendors to stop turning each language into a Frankenstein of the cool features from each language.

      No amount of the language designer loving Lisp will encourage developers using a C style language to write Lisp like code

    • Neither is Sass, Rich Text Format. Saltstack, Puppet and Bicep, are configuration languages. GLSLbis a shader language. All of which appear on their list

      • Neither is Sass, Rich Text Format. Saltstack, Puppet and Bicep, are configuration languages. GLSLbis a shader language. All of which appear on their list

        Agreed, it is a pretty useless and meaningless list.

  • by Anonymous Coward
    99 code rankings on the wall
    99 code rankings
    pick some down, mix them around
    100 code rankings on the wall.
  • Scala: Weâ(TM)re a JVM shop but I donâ(TM)t like Java

    Objective-C: I havenâ(TM)t learned Swift yet

  • by mattventura ( 1408229 ) on Saturday September 14, 2024 @01:46PM (#64787595) Homepage

    One thing I've noticed is that languages seem to be more likely to adopt features from other languages. For example, Java has virtual threads now, which reduces some of the advantage that Golang has over it in heavily asynchronous tasks. GIL-less Python will eliminate one of the major downsides of Python. Typescript has polished the JS turd enough to make it a usable language.

    At this point, getting traction for a new language is incredibly difficult. You not only have to fight the uphill battle of other languages having massive collections of libraries, but also the fact that your language's killer feature could very likely be integrated into an existing language.

    • Java always had virtual threads.

    • At this point, getting traction for a new language is incredibly difficult. You not only have to fight the uphill battle of other languages having massive collections of libraries, but also the fact that your language's killer feature could very likely be integrated into an existing language.

      In the case of Rust, you've got a legion of C++ developers who hate it because they view it as a threat to their existing code. It's a problem for them not only because Rust outclasses their language in every way, but because they've got a huge amount of sunk cost spent into it and they know they can't get Rust's killer features (mainly temporal safety without GC and data race safety) without throwing out all of their existing code anyways.

  • A bit old since it doesn't include Python or Rust, but this should help [imgur.com] some debating what their favorite language is.

  • Why change your language when ai writes most of the code? High level Code language is just a translation layer like machine code now. Language are generic.
  • Any "ranking" system that doesn't rank completely separately...

    o Markup (HTML, CSS, Markdown, aa_macro, LaTeX, etc.)
    o Interpreted (Python, Perl, Ruby, Javascript, SQL, etc.)
    o Compiled (c, c++, c#, etc.)
    o Metal (Assembly)

    ...I find to be both entirely unserious — and mildly hilarious. What they're doing here is just like counting the number of grapefruit to determine the level of interest in pizza.

  • Most rankings like these are completely useless because they base language popularity on the volume of code rather than the quality of the work produced using a particular language. What value do 1000 garbage student projects with hundreds of questions on StackOverflow have in comparison to an actual, real-life, money-making product? None.

  • as a programming language

Don't tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done. -- James J. Ling

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