Live data from Hacker News

Top Programming Languages 2025

spectrum.ieee.org

241–250 of 467 posts

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you should probably add kotlin and java together as well. They share the same purpose, use the same VM, usually live in the same project, have native compatibility, are used with the same frameworks, etc.

JS is a valid TS, Kotlin is not a valid Java (only at a bytecode level, but then you might as well combine all JVM languages).

> Kotlin is not a valid Java

But you can easily have both of them in the same project (e.g. when slowly moving to kotlin) and have them interop.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#242

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…

Rust is general purpose. You can use it for anything. But use the best tool for the job. Ecosystem matters. What are you planning to build?

Okay, Rust is general purpose enough...

But is it general audience? (can every Py/PHP/JS/TS/Java/C# dev become productive in it quickly?)

Also: if you want quick (re)compiles on a larger codebase, Rust is not for you.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#243
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way and I think that Gleam is best language that fits this criteria. It has the simplicity of Go but the ergonomics of Kotlin.

I really like Gleam. But if you want a job, that’s probably the worst choice ever. The language is just a few years old and lack libraries for mostly everything. Why are people recommending that here, do you guys work using Gleam?? Let’s be honest , your realistic options for work are Java, C#, C++, and depending on the industry, Swift, Go, Kotlin, Dart and Rust.

Being able to talk passionately and with experience about "exotic" languages during an interview will help you land the job.

I will hire the one that talks about the joy of FP and/or static typing ANYDAY over the programmer with only JS experience an no visible interest to look beyond.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#244

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…

Kotlin!

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only speak to the two bigger German banks (i.e., Sparkasse and VR banks), but if you look at their outsourced development providers (Atruvia and Sparkasse Informatik), they're still offering incentives for their apprentices to learn COBOL, especially in the german dual apprenticeship programs which they can steer more easily than university courses. My wife has been doing COBOL for one of them since 2012, and t…

Sparkasse and VR aren't the two largest German banks. DB is at least double the size of Commerzbank which is again 100mn in assets ahead of DZ. I don't find it all that surprising that these small banks are still trying to keep their legacy systems alive, but it's not the case for the bigger boys. (Source: work for several of them)

You are right if we only talk about assets. Should've clarified I meant more in regards of retail customers and branches.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#246

I’m skeptical. There are more people writing PHP and Ruby than HTML? And HTML is a programming language? Those two very surprising results make me doubt the others. Elixir behind OCaml? Possible, I guess, but I know of several large Elixir shops and I haven’t heard much of OCaml in a while.

A couple of Java programmers from my first job were stopped by police while drinking in a park. When asked what they do for a living, they said they were programmers. Then the police officer went: – Oh, I see. HTML.

[deleted]

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#247
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Before AI, Python was still extremely popular for any sort of data science (possibly because of numpy first, then pandas, but I don't claim any historical knowledge here). And independent to that it was, before the raise of server side JS, one of the most popular server side web languages (probably still is).

Also around the mid '00 it started replacing perl as the unix scripting language of choice.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sparkasse and VR aren't the two largest German banks. DB is at least double the size of Commerzbank which is again 100mn in assets ahead of DZ. I don't find it all that surprising that these small banks are still trying to keep their legacy systems alive, but it's not the case for the bigger boys. (Source: work for several of them)

You are right if we only talk about assets. Should've clarified I meant more in regards of retail customers and branches.

Oh, right, consumer banks. Yes I can imagine they're all extremely legacy bound. They're a very small percentage of banking, though.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#250

Anything short of a big AI winter is not going to move Python from its top spot. As Python has become the first choice of output code for LLMs its dominance is only going to grow.

Is Python really the first choice of output code? I'm not saying you're wrong, I just don't know the answer and I don't know where to look to find out. I would have assumed it might be JS and more specifically React -- isn't that what you often get if you ask an LLM to "make an app that does such-and-such"? (Experimental anecdata: I just asked Gemini to write an app and it gave me a single HTML file with embedded JS,…

Ime, unless you steer it otherwise, they will default toward TS/JS almost exclusively. Probably Python though if for some reason they decided not to use TS/JS.
Post reply on HN