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Top Programming Languages 2025

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Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#441

Post by vips7L »

xhevahir wrote: post #271
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…

Aren't a lot of those Java employers stuck on an old version of the language, one that's lacking most of those nice features?

A lot are, but there is an equal amount that are of modern versions. It’s a big landscape of employers. I’ve already begun moving my team to Java 25 from 21.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#442

Post by mrsmrtss »

brainzap wrote: post #438
mrsmrtss wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's partially attributed to the fact that .NET is a truly batteries included solution and quality of it is generally good enough that there is no need for second or third alternatives for every basic thing.

The stackoverflow survey showed that most people don't write c# in their free time. (compared to python/js)

Maybe Python and JS are just more hobbyist-friendly languages (more forgiving).

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#443

Post by mrsmrtss »

mrsmrtss wrote: post #442
brainzap wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stackoverflow survey showed that most people don't write c# in their free time. (compared to python/js)

Maybe Python and JS are just more hobbyist-friendly languages (more forgiving).

Dynamic languages are great for quick hacking and prototyping.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#444

Post by matltc »

epolanski wrote: post #321
forinti wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh dear. Using AI for something you don't understand well is surely a recipe for disaster and should not be encouraged.

Your comment lacks so much context and nuance to ultimately be nonsense. You absolutely can, and probably _should_, leverage AI to learn many things you don't understand at all. Simple example: try picking up or learning a programming language like C with or without LLMs. With is going to be much more efficient. C is one of the languages that LLMs have seen the most, they are very, very good at it for learning purpos…

Would you mind sharing some of the ways that you leverage LLMs in your learning?

Some of mine:

* Converse with the LLM on deeper concepts

* use the `/explain` hook in VSCode for code snippets I'm struggling with

* Have it write blog-style series on a topic, replete with hyperlinks

I have gotten in some doom loops though when having it try to directly fix my code, often because I'm asking it to do something that is not feasible, and its sycophantic tendencies tend to amplify this. I basically stopped using agentic tools to implement solutions that use tech I'm not already comfortable with.

I've used it for summarization as well, but I often find that a summary of a man page or RFC is insufficient for deeper learning. It's great for getting my feet wet and showing me gaps in my understanding, but always end up having to read the spec at the end

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#445

Post by mock-possum »

AstroBen wrote: post #52
mock-possum wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it’s always been easier to find talent when working in more popular languages. That’s the big risk you take when you choose the road less traveled.

easier to find people, not talent. Some tiny niche languages have a very high proportion of talented developers

Sorry I meant ‘talent’ as slang for a worker qualified to fill a roll with minimal training, I.e. a hire via a ‘talent agency’ or head hunter

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#446

Post by matltc »

lunias wrote: post #391

Python at number 1 makes me cringe... In my experience, Python is not a language that I would use for anything other than a script or some solo PoC. I would absolutely never use it on code expected to exceed 1000 lines, code that's maintained by more than one person, or code that takes more than a few seconds to run. Python has a lot of great libraries as a result of it being the language of choice to teach non softw…

Same. I strictly use it for scripting. Was messing around with ML stuff last year and hated it so much I gave up after a month.

Don't understand why Ruby is so much less popular. Seems like Python is de facto "first language" (it was for me), but I would advocate for Ruby.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#447

Post by vips7L »

boobsbr wrote: post #297
Traubenfuchs wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java devs at large are generally not excited about writing Scala.

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

I like where Scala 3 is headed (finally). Martin seems to realize that the simpler "direct" programming model is better and that will make the language more attractive to regular people who aren't FP purists. Though it does feel like it might be too little too late.

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#448

Post by bjackman »

yeasku wrote: post #439
bjackman wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most people work for companies that use tech, not that create tech. There the world is not like at Google. Sap, Java and .net are what people work with.

I am saying Google is an extremely heavy user of Java.

In terms of programming languages, Google is very much a microcosm of the industry.

(.net is the exception though. Not much of that at Google).

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#449

Post by flanked-evergl »

vips7L wrote: post #440
flanked-evergl wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name any tool that adds static null safety to Java?

JSpecify does. And the work for adding null restricted types to Java has already started: https://openjdk.org/jeps/8303099

Thank you for sharing this, I was unaware of this and it does seem very promising. I hope that the JEP gets done soon.

As this is, in fact, tacked on, I guess you don't really get much benefit unless you rewrite all your code with these still non-standard annotations.

It does not seem like pointing JSpecify at a standard spring boot codebase will do anything for you. Whereas pointing Mypy to a standard Python codebase will type hints that conform to the language spec will do something for you, as null safety is not tacked on but baked in for python type hints.

Also, the syntax seems awkward and clunky as heck, but I guess for something as essential as null safety it's worth it.

---

From JSpecify, I found the Checker Framework, which also seems really interesting and seems like it supports checking for more types of annotations than just JSpecify annotations. https://checkerframework.org/

Re: Top Programming Languages 2025

#450

Post by 8fingerlouie »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #333
ramblerman wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be saying that SAP sucks because of how enterprise java is. That would make OPs counter re netflix relevant. I don't understand your point

Wasn't this whole thread about joking that Java is the new COBOL? And a lot of enterprises use Java and that is becoming the new entrenched/old/stodgy language that the hot new kids don't want to use? In its day, a lot of 'cool' companies used COBOL, back then. Because it was an ok solution, back then. So to say, today, Netflix is cool and uses Java, thus Java is different and still cool, is not valid. Does not inval…

Everything has a "day and age".

I'm not saying COBOL is a bad language, far from it, which the billions of lines of code running production proably also attests to. The first COBOL program i ever edited, in 2008, was last edited in 1987. It had run flawlessly every day for 20 years. COBOL when invented was invented to allow business people to express business logic programatically, which is also why it has such a large footprint in finance, insurance, etc.

I'm not saying Java is a bad language either. Java is great, much like COBOL was, and like COBOL, Java still evolves today. It has flaws, but so does every other language, and most of the flaws in Java are understood. There is literally also nothing you can't do in Java that you can do in .

We probably shouldn't write web frontends in Java, and most people figured that out a decade or more ago, including the financial institutions.

The typical flow in a financial institution is something like "Angular (in some form) => Java Backend => COBOL on mainframe => DB2", where "=>" can be anything from REST to message queues (i was tempted to write MQ, as most will likely be IBM MQ, but others exist and are used).

Most companies migrating away from mainframe (and thereby often COBOL), have also started implementing microservices instead of giant monoliths, which is what has kept the mainframes of the world running for so long. Most companies i've worked with, have had 45,000 - 90,000 COBOL programs running every night, with almost as many running on demand, and each and every one depends heavily on the output of the previous part of the chain.

Thost giant chunks are now being migrated to microservices with well defined couplings, meaning that when it eventually becomes time to migrate away from Java, it will be somewhat easier as you can eat the elephant one mouthful at a time, and not have to reimplement 50+ years of legacy code and conventions in one go.

I've said it before, and will gladly say it again, if you choose a COBOL career today, you will most likely never be unemployed for long until you retire.

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