Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Top Programming Languages 2025

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 467 posts

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#21

Post by brap »

the_af wrote: post #14
brap wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re working in a large team, and you’re not locked into the MS stack, and you’re not doing anything that needs to be super performant… Java is, by far, your best option. The tooling and ecosystem aren’t great compared to some of these languages, but Java itself can be pretty damn good. I used to be a hater many years ago but I’ve since grown to love it.

What is wrong with Java's tooling and ecosystem? Asking because it used to be the default a decade or so ago, with a vibrant ecosystem, so I find your remark surprising.

Maven/Gradle don’t come close to the simplicity of npm, for example

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#22

Post by torben-friis »

As a backend dev (mostly working in fintech) I feel weirdly unable to find a target language to move to.

After working with Node and Ruby for a while I really miss a static type system. - Typescript was limited by its option to allow non strictness.

Nothing catches my eye, as it’s either Java/.Net and its enterprisey companies or Go, which might not be old but feels like it is, by design. Rust sounds fun, but its usecases don’t align much with my background.

Any advice?

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#23

Post by AtlasBarfed »

brap wrote: post #12
daft_pink wrote: post #5

It’s amazing where java is.

If you’re working in a large team, and you’re not locked into the MS stack, and you’re not doing anything that needs to be super performant… Java is, by far, your best option. The tooling and ecosystem aren’t great compared to some of these languages, but Java itself can be pretty damn good. I used to be a hater many years ago but I’ve since grown to love it.

And you can code Groovy on top of it, still my favorite programming lang.

I too would like some illustration of why the tooling (Intellij, etc) is insufficient. Maybe gradle as a build system? Although I have to say with LLMs, gradle build scripting is a LOT easier to "build" out.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#24

Post by christophilus »

fuzztester wrote: post #15
christophilus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently picked up Hare, which is quite obscure, and Claude was helpful as a better— albeit hallucinogenic— Google. I think LLMs may not lead to as much ossification as I’d originally feared.

What is your impression of Hare? I had looked at it recently while checking out C-like languages. (Others included Odin and C3.) I read some of the Hare docs and examples, and had watched a video about it on Kris Jenkins' Developer Voices channel, which was where I got to know about it.

I like it much more than Zig, and while I like Odin’s syntax more, Hare is more focused on the types of tooling I want to build, so I find Hare’s stdlib preferable. Give it a spin. It’s a simple language.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#25

Post by zenmac »

fuzztester wrote: post #19
armSixtyFour wrote: post #7

huh. This seems to suggest there are more Rust jobs than Ruby. Wild considering how insanely popular Ruby was 10 years ago.

Ruby became popular mainly because of Rails, which has gone down somewhat in popularity in recent years. That may be why Ruby is less popular now than it was 10 years ago. Also, they (Ruby and Rails) got popular much before 10 years ago, like around 2006 / 2007, when the Web 2.0 wave was starting. I had worked on a couple of dot-com projects in Ruby on Rails at that time, that is how I know.

And Python got popular cause of LLM AI thing. It is a shame, cause it is quite slow. I had some good time with jython back in the 2 days, but really wished something more elegant (nim/rust/ocaml) has taken over this AI thing instead of python.

One thing is for sure, don't get tight down to one language cause it is popular today. Go with whatever make sense for you and your project.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#26

Post by pornel »

It's hard to find good data sources for this, especially that StackOverflow is in decline[1].

IEEE's methodology[2] is sensible given what's possible, but the data sources are all flawed in some ways (that don't necessarily cancel each other out). The number of search results reported by Google is the most volatile indirect proxy signal. Search results include everything mentioning the query, without promising it being a fair representation of 2025. People using a language rarely refer to it literally as the "X programming language", and it's a stretch to count all publicity as a "top language" publicity.

TIOBE uses this method too, and has the audacity to display it as a popularity with two decimal places, but their historical data shows that the "popularity" of C has dropped by half over two years, and then doubled next year. Meanwhile, C didn't budge at all. This method has a +/- 50% error margin.

[1]: https://redmonk.com/rstephens/2023/12/14/language-rankings-u... [2]: https://spectrum.ieee.org/top-programming-languages-methodol...

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#27

Post by TheDong »

torben-friis wrote: post #22

As a backend dev (mostly working in fintech) I feel weirdly unable to find a target language to move to. After working with Node and Ruby for a while I really miss a static type system. - Typescript was limited by its option to allow non strictness. Nothing catches my eye, as it’s either Java/.Net and its enterprisey companies or Go, which might not be old but feels like it is, by design. Rust sounds fun, but its use…

Take a page from janestreet's book: use ocaml.

Rust is also a general purpose language, there's no reason you can't use it for just about any problem space.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#28

Post by AtlasBarfed »

Given how mediocre LLMs are, I don't see this happening anytime soon... but I think a "better" LLM (that puts the "language" into large language model) can seamlessly translate between programming languages.

Right now, it's apparent to me that LLMs are mostly tuned in the programming space for what n-gate would call "webshit", but I think it is a clear (to me) evolutionary step towards getting much better "porting" ability in LLMs.

I don't think that is in the priority list of the LLM companies. But I think it would be a real economic boon: certainly there is a backlog of code/systems that needs to be "modernized" in enterprises, so there is a market.

Ultimately I wonder if an LLM can be engineered to represent code in an intermediate form that is language-independent to a large extent, and "render" it to the desired language/platform when requested.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#29

Post by 7thaccount »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #18
chamomeal wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s grating to see Haskell compared to labview, regardless of context lol

Haskell is a fun language... LabView is a kick in the pants... I'd wager it is the installed base keeping LabView on life support. =3

Labview seems like a pain (I haven't used it), but I guess it's super useful for some uses. I recall SpaceX uses it for controlling launches. It comes with models for all manner of hardware.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#30

Post by gt0 »

I'd like to see some clarity in these stats, it can't just be me that finds it hard to believe that there are significantly more Python jobs than Java. I wonder if job listings are saying "Python, C++" or something, so that's a point for Python, even though, the job is < 1% Python just for test rigs or something.
Post reply on HN