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

161–170 of 467 posts

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#161

Post by chillfox »

ksec wrote: post #158
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…

You may want to look into Crystal.

+1 for Crystal, it's a fantastic language and the community is great (on the official forum).

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#162

Post by js8 »

pjmlp wrote: post #84
js8 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And Python got popular cause of LLM AI thing. Not really, Python got popular in 2000s because it was the only sane of the three choices - Perl, Python, TCL. You must be young.

The magic word for Python's fame is Zope, the respective article on Dr. Dobbs, until then I never noticed it.

There has been several other events like that (Django, Pandas and data science..). I don't think Python's popularity can be ascribed to any single event, it just happens to be a language that is reasonably close to pseudocode with an excellently thought-out (I mean best in the industry) standard library. Python is practical, first and foremost. That's why it won, unlike other languages it doesn't really have an ideological agenda.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#163

Post by alkonaut »

channel_t wrote: post #6
mynegation wrote: post #4

I totally expected JavaScript to get the 2nd spot but looks like TypeScript pulled the votes away. I personally consider JavaScript and TypeScript to be close enough for their numbers to be added up.

I agree, I think it makes most sense to add them up to be the true #2.

You could make a separate graph with "platform" or "language family" so you do js/ts, jvm, .net/clr, C/C++ etc.

That one is perhaps more interesting from an industry/jobs trend perspective whereas the TS vs JS trend is also interesting on its own.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#164

Post by 8fingerlouie »

bberrry wrote: post #146

Those of you surprised to see Java so prominent, where have you been all your careers? 10 people startups with nodejs backends? You must have been entirely shielded from enterprise software companies.

Java is the new COBOL.

The financial sector, insurance sector, healthcare sector all jumped on Java a couple of decades ago, and they have massive repositories of Java code, and are actively migrating their COBOL code to Java.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#165

Post by pjmlp »

flanked-evergl wrote: post #150
pjmlp wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to stay in Fintech, I really don't see anything beyond Java, C#, C++, TypeScript (for the Web stuff). Some Fintech companies might go a bit outside the norm and allow for Haskell, F#, Scala, which they tend to use as DSLs for some workflows. Then if you into array languages, banking and fintech is one fo the few domains where that have managed to stay around, but those positions seem hard to get. Dyalog (…

I work in Fintech, and we use Python with type checking. It works like a charm. Safer than Java.

That was a fun one, being safer than Java.

Since we are at it, faster as well.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#166

Post by lordnacho »

sashank_1509 wrote: post #107

I’m shocked, Java is so high up in all categories. I have never met a single Java programmer, though to be fair I started my career fairly recently.

It's an iceberg. Loads of things run on Java. C# as well, which is similar. Large ecosystems that you barely have to leave when you're inside. Also, a tendency to be corporate systems, which reduces the visibility, since people generally are not allowed to show their code from work.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#167

Post by alkonaut »

BuildItBusk wrote: post #76
kstrauser wrote: post #59

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.

As mentioned, HTML is indeed a programming language. But it’s one that is rarely used on its own. So you could argue that having it as a thing of itself in these lists, makes little sense.

I think "A language often involved in the process of making computer programs" is way too weak to define a "Programming language". A programming language at least needs to have state/expressions/logic. I'm sure there is a good definition, but if we allow html then any markup is programming and that's obviously false so the line has to be drawn somewhere.

The reason this debate is so strange is because some people think it's gatekeeping to say someone who writes html for a living isn't "programming". It's nonsense.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#168

Post by zeeqeen »

ksec wrote: post #160

Comparing 2024 and 2025, Ruby is growing again but still on the lower end of spectrum. Both Java the language and JVM is great. A lot of the important work for JVM just landed. I am not even sure if there are anything that is really missing anymore. But the whole ecosystem is so vast I wonder if anyone would want to just craft out a subset of Java. No Zig, Crystal, Odin, but Julia and Elixir is there just without num…

I think it is because that the application framework of Google Android is JVM. And JNI is so annoying that binding Kotlin and other system-level programming language other than C++ like Rust, Zig for a Android app is so hard.

For game engine developers that works for their game targeting Android, especially for commercial mature game, you have no choice but Unity engine. And take a look at Google announce [a donation of $250,000 to the Rust Foundation](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7376353...) but there still constraint on using Rust library for Android app.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#169

Post by pjmlp »

js8 wrote: post #162
pjmlp wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The magic word for Python's fame is Zope, the respective article on Dr. Dobbs, until then I never noticed it.

There has been several other events like that (Django, Pandas and data science..). I don't think Python's popularity can be ascribed to any single event, it just happens to be a language that is reasonably close to pseudocode with an excellently thought-out (I mean best in the industry) standard library. Python is practical, first and foremost. That's why it won, unlike other languages it doesn't really have an ideol…

Zope predates all of those, and slowly as you say people got interested and started using it for other stuff, like being a better Perl.

Python has an agenda as well, Guido has said multiple times it was a language designed for teaching programming, and one of the reasons Zen of Python came early on.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#170

Post by alkonaut »

ngruhn wrote: post #130
ctenb wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your definition is overly broad and makes everything a programming language, at which point the term isn't useful anymore.

But Turing completeness is also too broad. Otherwise Power point animations and Conways game of life are programming languages.

Yes. So a criteria that is below Turing Completeness but which wouldn't make markdown a programming language. Shouldn't be _that_ hard to find such criteria. E.g. "Has some form of logic/flow control". Can perform computation/"execute". etc.
Post reply on HN