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

221–230 of 467 posts

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#221

Post by superlopuh »

hk__2 wrote: post #198
superlopuh wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python with Pyright in strict mode. I work on a ~200kLOC fully typed Python project [0] and am having fun. [0]: https://github.com/xdslproject/xdsl

Have you worked with TypeScript? I’m working with both every day and I’m always frustrated by the limits of the 'type' system in Python- sure it’s better than nothing but it’s so basic compared to what you can do in TypeScript. It’s very easy to use advanced generics in TypeScript but a hell to do (sometimes outright impossible) in Python.

Yep, although never in a project of a similar size. One advantage of the Python setup is that the types are ignored at runtime, so there's no overhead at startup/compilation time. Although it's also a disadvantage in terms of what you can do in the system, of course.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#222

Post by cyberpunk »

ffsm8 wrote: post #192
stevenjgarner wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes to your point, COBOL which ranks very low here is still fundamental to the infrastructure of several major industries, with some sources [1] reporting that it is used in: 43% of all banking systems. 95% of all US ATM transactions. 80% of all in-person credit card transactions. 96% of travel bookings. This may very well dramatically change in the next few years with such an emphasis on enterprise AI tools to rewri…

Cobol is used in pretty much all enterprise legacy systems. But "used in" doesn't mean that it's actively being developed by more then a tiny team for maintaining it. As this graph we're commenting on is mostly talking about popularity/most used it's never going to rate higher, because for every one Cobol dev there are more then 100 Java devs employed by the same company

That's a pretty wild claim. What's legacy for you? I'd consider legacy e.g J2EE crap running on web[sphere|logic] as holding most of the points in that league table vs COBOL.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#223

Post by gf000 »

osullivj wrote: post #173
8fingerlouie wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've said this myself as Java's reification of mid 90s OO and poor interop via JNI are not to my taste. But I've spent 25yrs in banking with JPMC, BoA, Barclays et al. Done lots of interop with Cobol on S/390, AS/400 and VME. Never heard of any of those systems being rewritten in Java. Have encountered key mainframe prod systems for which source is lost.

There are even whole companies specialized in semi-automatic migration of cobol to java.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#224

Post by torben-friis »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #157
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…

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.

>What's wrong with Java? It's used everywhere from FinTech startups to banks/insurers

As the OP, it’s not even the language for me but the implications of companies that use it.

It’s a non starter for startup/scaleups and strongly related with oldish companies and consulting firms, which in turn translates to far worse working conditions (not remote friendly, overtime, dress code, etc).

Mind that it might just be a local culture thing, your mileage may vary.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#225

Post by zerr »

pjmlp wrote: post #118
roywashere wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus TIOBE had Perl enter the top 10 suddenly this year but I do not see any new developers. And Ada too! Where are all those Ada programmers?

Keeping 7 Ada vendors in business, one of the few areas where developers actually pay for tooling. https://www.adacore.com/ https://www.ghs.com/products/ada_optimizing_compilers.html https://www.ptc.com/en/products/developer-tools/apexada https://www.ddci.com/solutions/products/ddci-developer-suite... http://www.irvine.com/tech.html http://www.ocsystems.com/w/index.php/OCS:PowerAda http://www.rrsoftware.com/html/prod…

It's more like people in golf suits agree on corruption schemes rather than actual devs making decisions.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#226

Post by indigodaddy »

noisy_boy wrote: post #199
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.

Anyone who is surprised is not from Finance sector. I wouldn't just say enterprise though because there could be non-finance enterprises where Microsoft and .NET/C# rule.

Also in telecom and largeISP, Java is everywhere.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#227

Post by torben-friis »

misja111 wrote: post #140
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…

Have you really been using Node or even Typescript as backend dev in fintech? After 15 years in fintech I have never heard anything like that. For the backend it's mostly Java with some sprinkles of C#, Cobol or Python.

Yup, the previous company I used to work for just had a successful exit last year too. I guess it was an iteration speed thing, though as you say python is becoming popular as well and IMO it is not anymore suited to finance than node is, other than the connection with data science.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#228

Post by gf000 »

ystvn wrote: post #88
ppeetteerr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java is maturing into a syntactically nice language, albeit slowly, and it's the backbone of many medium and large companies. You might have trouble finding small companies using anything but JS/Ruby/Python. These companies align more with velocity and cost of engineering, and not so much with performance. That's probably why the volume of interpreted languages is greater than that of "enterprisey" or "performance" l…

> Java is maturing into a syntactically nice language, albeit slowly, and it's the backbone of many medium and large companies. I've heard about Java initiatives to improve it, but can you point to examples of how how Java "is maturing into a syntactically nice language"? I'm tempted to learn it, but wonder whether it would really become nice enough to become a 'go-to' language (over TS in my case)

It has virtual threads, that under most circumstances let you get away from the async model. It has records, that are data-first immutable classes, that can be defined in a single line, with sane equals toString and hash. It has sealed classes as well, the latter two giving you product and sum types, with proper pattern matching.

Also, a very wide-reaching standard library, good enough type system, and possibly the most advanced runtime with very good tooling.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#230

Post by munksbeer »

bjackman wrote: post #185
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.

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 readabili…

What products do you work on and what language?
Post reply on HN