It's unfortunate that Elixir didn't even make it on the list, but then again it's only a few years old and just starting to make a splash, especially with the popularity of the Phoenix framework.
Go has replaced all my 'scripting' needs. Way easier to deploy static binaries and I get static typing for my scripts. Maintaining a python install on multiple servers and OSes is a nightmare
"Swift’s rise is impressive, as it’s jumped five positions to 11th place since last year, when it first entered the rankings"
Swift will enter the top 10 next year after more iOS developers finally see it as stable. The big source changes in the upcoming 3.0 have caused a lot of people to wait.
Apple has developed a bad habit of abandoning compatibility with their developer tools. While this is somewhat more excusable with Swift, given that it's fairly new, it's pretty annoying to have to (e.g.) basically relearn Xcode from scratch with every major release.
First, the article says "The 2016 Top Programming Languages" (emphasis mine), and yet HTML is on the list -- which is not a programming language, but a markup language.
Second, if you decide to ignore this, and see how HTML ranks, and turn off everything but the "Web" types, HTML ranks #8 (behind Java, Python, C#, PHP, JavaScript, Ruby, and Go).
I wonder if JavaScript just doesn't show up as much in their sources because it's implied?
At least when I've been job hunting for web-related work, your typical job posting lists the back-end language and the front-end is just assumed. (Things might have changed with all the heavy-duty front-end JS frameworks out there now.)
I don't buy it. Choose any one of the weights and select only web; it'll put either Python or Java at #1 and PHP and JavaScript way below. That just doesn't seem realistic...
I think Java as #1 is realistic. Maybe within the Bay Area it is not #1, but for the past twenty years companies have been putting business logic and code into Java application servers, a lot of which is connected to intranets or the web.
I hope to see ruby enter the top ten next year.
It is still circling around the top ten, being listed in top 20. After using Python, java, bash, lisp, javascripts. I have begun to like ruby. I am sure ruby lovers will grow in future as well, because ruby is so addictive.
Java Developers when they learn ruby, I am sure the will switch to JRuby, coding every thing in ruby and compiling them with JRuby to run them in JVM.
So, I am hopeful that ruby though not listed in top 10 this year, it will be listed next year.
I refactored the Ruby code write by other experienced Ruby developers before. And guess why they ask me to do the refactor job for them? Because I know how to write clean and deciplined code learn in Java and C lands. :-)
i think a small addition to this chart (but not requiring any data not already gathered) would significantly increase its value and interest.
in particular, adding one small column (about the same width as the "Types" column) with a sparkline having five points, connected by a single line and which represents the Spectrum Ranking for the years 2012 - 2016
with this, the reader could see for each language the five-year trend in their Spectrum Index.
two languages might be next to each other on this chart, yet one might be trending monotonically downward, while the other might be trending sharply and consistently upward.
so for instance, look at places 26 - 29: Rust, Delphi, Fortran, and D. Those are contiguous, hence have similar Spectrum index values, but the shapes of their last-five-year time series are probably quite different (eg, Rust, sharply upward trend, only perhaps slightly flatter for D, essentially flat for fortran, and perhaps downward for delphi).
It is impossible for me to believe that C is the top programming language for mobile development. Are they double counting obj-c or something?
Same thing for web although I guess it could be the case that people are using C on a lot of old apps that add up to a significant marketshare? I would still be pretty shocked if that were the case.
I have fondness on the time when HP was American... and Motorola... and calculators were meant to last... mechanical keyboards... when things were simple...
I tell people that the keyboard... the original mechanical one, just God knows how much money took to be designed... how many thousand hours of trial and error it took to be designed... just to get to hp and their new layouts... (don't make me talk about new thinkpads).
Dennis Ritchie was the IBM of programming languages... when fad after fad of JS framework pass, C stands...
It is about as expressive as a "portable assembly language" can be expected to be, it has pretty weird syntax [1], it has neither hygienic macros nor a module system, using "include files" instead. And a bunch of undefined behaviors on top of that.
Well, it was the unifying language despite all these shortcomings, because Unix. This is very much like JS is an ugly unifying language of sorts today, because the browser.
I very much hope that maybe something like Rust will take the place of the close-to-metal portable language. C made some sense when you had a 16-bit CPU @ 10 MHz and 128 KB of RAM for a development machine, and ed on a teletype as the IDE. Now we can do better.
It's worth clicking through to the interactive page that lets you pick different criteria.
R is at #6 measured by "trending", but only #12 measured by "jobs" (below assembly).
Some of their methodology seems a little handwavy (which to be fair is no different than I've seen with other similar rankings).
For instance, the number of questions asked on StackOverflow confounds the popularity of the language with the difficulty/ambiguity/poor documentation of the language (e.g. a poorly-documented language might well result in a disproportionate number of SO questions).
Straight Google search results (as opposed to Google Trends, which they also use) would only seem to prove that a language was popular in the past. There are lots of Google search results for the Roman Empire, but that doesn't mean it's still a going concern. :-)
CareerBuilder and Dice were headhunter cesspools, the last time I looked at them. I would be very wary of drawing any conclusions about popularity from those (or similar) sites.
It could be that most R programmers have the kind of jobs where the language used is flexible and so might not be mentioned in a job listing. The jobs could be asking for statistical analysts or data scientists, and leave it up to the employee to decide if they want R or SciPy or some C++ toolkit or whatever.
Compare to someone looking to hire a web developer. There you are much more likely to need the developer to use specific languages, and so those should be mentioned in the job listing.
Not necessarily; looking at it another way, having lots of programmers who are interested in R might mean that the job market for them is fairly saturated, meaning recruiters don't have to advertise as much or as long
[+] [-] snake117|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OneOneOneOne|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] javier2|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sukotto|9 years ago|reply
I wouldn't mind if I never had to use awk again...
[+] [-] melling|9 years ago|reply
Swift will enter the top 10 next year after more iOS developers finally see it as stable. The big source changes in the upcoming 3.0 have caused a lot of people to wait.
[+] [-] siquick|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Turing_Machine|9 years ago|reply
Apple has developed a bad habit of abandoning compatibility with their developer tools. While this is somewhat more excusable with Swift, given that it's fairly new, it's pretty annoying to have to (e.g.) basically relearn Xcode from scratch with every major release.
[+] [-] nocman|9 years ago|reply
First, the article says "The 2016 Top Programming Languages" (emphasis mine), and yet HTML is on the list -- which is not a programming language, but a markup language.
Second, if you decide to ignore this, and see how HTML ranks, and turn off everything but the "Web" types, HTML ranks #8 (behind Java, Python, C#, PHP, JavaScript, Ruby, and Go).
OK, I know, I'm easily amused :-D
[+] [-] xellisx|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kragniz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guelo|9 years ago|reply
The top ten languages on HN are C, C++, Assembly, Python, Go, Java, Rust, Swift, D and Lisp.
[+] [-] imaginenore|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jomamaxx|9 years ago|reply
The only reason R is there is because of mentions in research papers which is weighted at 100%.
Java is #1 for jobs and StackOverflow.
Python and Swift is trending + hackernews mentions.
C/C++ are always up there.
Javascript is 5 or 6 always.
Shouldn't surprise anyone.
[+] [-] y0ssar1an|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zik|9 years ago|reply
http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index
RedMonk with its more web-centric focus places it at #1:
http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2015/01/14/language-rankings-1-15...
[+] [-] irrational|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bowlich|9 years ago|reply
At least when I've been job hunting for web-related work, your typical job posting lists the back-end language and the front-end is just assumed. (Things might have changed with all the heavy-duty front-end JS frameworks out there now.)
[+] [-] bfung|9 years ago|reply
Let the karma bleed =P
[+] [-] stevesun21|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DAddYE|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dalailambda|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vram22|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kmiroslav|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ravenstine|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ologn|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krazedkrish|9 years ago|reply
Java Developers when they learn ruby, I am sure the will switch to JRuby, coding every thing in ruby and compiling them with JRuby to run them in JVM.
So, I am hopeful that ruby though not listed in top 10 this year, it will be listed next year.
[+] [-] stevesun21|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dghant1024|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iand675|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frugalmail|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] doug1001|9 years ago|reply
in particular, adding one small column (about the same width as the "Types" column) with a sparkline having five points, connected by a single line and which represents the Spectrum Ranking for the years 2012 - 2016
with this, the reader could see for each language the five-year trend in their Spectrum Index.
two languages might be next to each other on this chart, yet one might be trending monotonically downward, while the other might be trending sharply and consistently upward.
so for instance, look at places 26 - 29: Rust, Delphi, Fortran, and D. Those are contiguous, hence have similar Spectrum index values, but the shapes of their last-five-year time series are probably quite different (eg, Rust, sharply upward trend, only perhaps slightly flatter for D, essentially flat for fortran, and perhaps downward for delphi).
[+] [-] eagsalazar2|9 years ago|reply
Same thing for web although I guess it could be the case that people are using C on a lot of old apps that add up to a significant marketshare? I would still be pretty shocked if that were the case.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] alien3d|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevin_thibedeau|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clircle|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xlayn|9 years ago|reply
I have fondness on the time when HP was American... and Motorola... and calculators were meant to last... mechanical keyboards... when things were simple...
I tell people that the keyboard... the original mechanical one, just God knows how much money took to be designed... how many thousand hours of trial and error it took to be designed... just to get to hp and their new layouts... (don't make me talk about new thinkpads).
Dennis Ritchie was the IBM of programming languages... when fad after fad of JS framework pass, C stands...
[+] [-] nine_k|9 years ago|reply
It is about as expressive as a "portable assembly language" can be expected to be, it has pretty weird syntax [1], it has neither hygienic macros nor a module system, using "include files" instead. And a bunch of undefined behaviors on top of that.
Well, it was the unifying language despite all these shortcomings, because Unix. This is very much like JS is an ugly unifying language of sorts today, because the browser.
I very much hope that maybe something like Rust will take the place of the close-to-metal portable language. C made some sense when you had a 16-bit CPU @ 10 MHz and 128 KB of RAM for a development machine, and ed on a teletype as the IDE. Now we can do better.
[1]: http://c-faq.com/decl/spiral.anderson.html
[+] [-] hugozap|9 years ago|reply
Oranges vs apples
[+] [-] kasbah|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guelo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbosinger|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Turing_Machine|9 years ago|reply
R is at #6 measured by "trending", but only #12 measured by "jobs" (below assembly).
Some of their methodology seems a little handwavy (which to be fair is no different than I've seen with other similar rankings).
For instance, the number of questions asked on StackOverflow confounds the popularity of the language with the difficulty/ambiguity/poor documentation of the language (e.g. a poorly-documented language might well result in a disproportionate number of SO questions).
Straight Google search results (as opposed to Google Trends, which they also use) would only seem to prove that a language was popular in the past. There are lots of Google search results for the Roman Empire, but that doesn't mean it's still a going concern. :-)
CareerBuilder and Dice were headhunter cesspools, the last time I looked at them. I would be very wary of drawing any conclusions about popularity from those (or similar) sites.
And so on.
[+] [-] tzs|9 years ago|reply
Compare to someone looking to hire a web developer. There you are much more likely to need the developer to use specific languages, and so those should be mentioned in the job listing.
[+] [-] saghm|9 years ago|reply