Boy those Erlang people are sure loud, I was expecting it in top 15.
Loud and well paid, according to SO.
Top Programming Languages 2025
181–190 of 467 posts
Re: Top Programming Languages 2025
#182It'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 bei…
By far the most useful and helpful is job ads: it literally defines the demand side of the programming language market. Yes, that does not show us how much code is running out there, and some companies might have huge armies with very low churn and so the COBOL stacks in banks don’t show up, but I can’t think of a more useful and directly measurable way of understanding a languages real utility.
Thinking about how to measure this properly, why not just the moving average of daily downloads over 30 days from each repository?
… yes CI would be a lot of these downloads, but it’s at least a useful proxy
Re: Top Programming Languages 2025
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
JS is a valid TS, so there’s no reason to discern them.
Re: Top Programming Languages 2025
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, I think it makes most sense to add them up to be the true #2.
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).
Re: Top Programming Languages 2025
#185Those 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.
It's a weird one - I've been at Google for more than 5 years. I know from the stats that we have a zillion lines of actively developed Java, there must be huge swathes of the company that you could even call a "Java shop". I dig into random bits of code all the time. And yet I've looked at Java maybe three times in my tenure. And if I needed to submit Java code, I would not have a single contact to ping for readability review.
Java was the first language I learned in my CS degree, I still think this was a sensible choice by the CS department, but I don't think I've written a single piece of Java since I left 10 years ago!
It seems like a lot of Java usecases may be big and important but kinda isolated! Something about where they sit in the economic value chain perhaps?
Re: Top Programming Languages 2025
#186Earlier 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.
I work in Gleam on my software and it's a treat. I use the FFI for JS libraries all the time.
Re: Top Programming Languages 2025
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's wrong with Java? It's used everywhere from FinTech startups to banks/insurers, with features like decimal arithmetic introduced specially for finance a long time ago, multiple runtimes (Oracle/JVM, IBM T9, GraalVM), a very healthy ecosystem of libs/packages, etc.
The question asked usually by people who haven't used anything else professionally or at all.
Answer the question.
Re: Top Programming Languages 2025
#188Shell is the most popular programming language I don't care what your list says, it has some 6-12 Billion users which is very impressive
It's not really a general purpose programming language though. (I know some people treat it as if it is, but they are idiots.)
Re: Top Programming Languages 2025
#189I’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.
I've never been to China but I can't imagine drawing an inference about the existence of China or its inhabitants from my personal experience.
Re: Top Programming Languages 2025
#190It'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 bei…
By far the most useful and helpful is job ads: it literally defines the demand side of the programming language market. Yes, that does not show us how much code is running out there, and some companies might have huge armies with very low churn and so the COBOL stacks in banks don’t show up, but I can’t think of a more useful and directly measurable way of understanding a languages real utility.
Yeah except job adverts have enormous lag behind what's actually popular. For example we used Rust quite a lot at my previous company but we didn't advertise for Rust developers at all.
Also then you're looking at which languages were popular in the past whereas the interesting stat is which languages are being used to start new projects.