What's the top programming language? It's not JavaScript but Python, says IEEE survey
- Reference: 1629907328
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/08/25/top_programming_language_python/
- Source link:
The [1]new survey places Python, Java, C, and C++ as the top four programming languages. JavaScript, which typically tops such surveys, is in fifth place.
By contrast, StackOverflow [2]reported earlier this month that JavaScript was the most used language by some margin, with 65 per cent followed by Python at 48.2 per cent and Java at 35.35 per cent. Redmonk analysts also [3]placed JavaScript top , as does developer tools company JetBrains in its [4]State of the Developer Ecosystem survey .
[5]
What's going on?
[6]
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The answer is that no survey has greater authority than its sources, which despite the best efforts of researchers have all sort of biases and limitations. The matter of what to measure is also up for discussion. Should researchers attempt to discover how much code is written in each language? Or which are best known (a win for JavaScript since it is hard to avoid)? Or which have most job opportunities? Even the question of who counts as a developer is up for grabs, with a spectrum from occasional hobbyists to full-time professionals.
In the IEEE's case, the methodology is [8]shown here . It uses "11 metrics from 8 sources," we are told, these sources being Google Search, Google Trends, Twitter, GitHub, StackOverflow, Reddit, Hacker News, CareerBuilder, the IEEE job site, and an IEEE digital library. This particular methodology does look weighted towards "most talked about" rather than most used, which is not the same thing, as well as likely over-representing North American and European developers. Still, a nice feature of the IEEE survey is that users can [9]apply their own weighting using simple controls. We found that Python still came top in most configurations.
[10]Elastic amends Elasticsearch Python client so it won't work with forks then blocks comments
[11]Credit-card-stealing, backdoored packages found in Python's PyPI library hub
[12]Wanna use your Nvidia GPU for acceleration but put off by CUDA? OpenAI has a Python-based alternative
[13]Google Play puts Android apps on notice: No naughty JavaScript, Python, Lua
Drilling down still yields some intriguing results. Setting the controls to look only at GitHub repositories, for example, we got results that made little sense. Dart leaps into second place – lots of Flutter projects? – while Julia, a statistical language, is third.
The Register is suspicious of these results: a project called [14]GitHut that tracks GitHub pull requests places JavaScript first, Python second, and Java third. GitHub itself [15]reports on language usage and shows JavaScript consistently top between 2014 and 2020, though Python has climbed from fourth to second place over that period.
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GitHub statistics point to JavaScript rather than Python as the most used language
The [17]PYPL (Popularity of Programming Language) index, which is based on "how often language tutorials are searched on Google", places Python in the top spot by some distance – 29.93 per cent, ahead of Java at 17.78 per cent.
It seems reasonable to conclude that while JavaScript might by most measures be the most popular language after all, it is for sure not the most searched for or talked about. Another fact to emerge from this survey of surveys is that whether first, second, or third, Python usage and growth is huge. For those who do not know the language, perhaps it is time to search for a tutorial? ®
Get our [18]Tech Resources
[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/top-programming-languages-2021
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/03/stackoverflow_developer_survey/
[3] https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2021/08/05/language-rankings-6-21/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/16/jetbrains_developer_survey_2021/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/devops&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YSa9p5CeJW0mXzoPBVH3qgAAAFE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/devops&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YSa9p5CeJW0mXzoPBVH3qgAAAFE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/devops&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YSa9p5CeJW0mXzoPBVH3qgAAAFE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://spectrum.ieee.org/ieee-top-programming-languages-design-methods-and-data-sources
[9] https://spectrum.ieee.org/top-programming-languages/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/09/elasticsearch_python_client_change/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/02/in_brief_security/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/02/nvidia_cuda_openai/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/29/google_play_python_javascript/
[14] https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2021/2
[15] https://octoverse.github.com/
[16] https://regmedia.co.uk/2021/08/25/github.jpg
[17] https://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html
[18] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
What do electrical engineers
... know about programming?
You may as well have asked the The Association of Plumbing and Heating Contractors....
Re: What do electrical engineers
Yeah! You may as well go and ask the guys who defined the standards for wired and wireless networking, floating point arithmetic, software requirements specifications and the software development lifecycle!
Oh, wait, that would be the IEEE.
I'll get my coat, and yours too whilst I'm there...
Re: What do electrical engineers
I was a member of IEEE and spent my career in IT.
If you're not familiar with it, it has some excellent publications and it's members are the ones setting and defining standards in the IT field.
JavaScript is the most asked-about and most-libraried language, because it is a nightmarish hellscape of unexpected sharp edges that only works when essentially completely replaced with a flash-in-the-pan framework like React/Vue/Angular/Ember/Svelte and supported by a myriad of blindingly obvious single purpose function libraries that really ought not to exist.
You could say the Taliban are probably a very popular government based on the amount they have been searched for in the last few months, but does that mean they are any good?
Personally I think JavaScript is slowly catching up*, and not quite as bad as it was a few years ago. And that's probably the best I can say about it, but I'd far sooner reach for Python for many projects (or Go or Rust) although I guess JS is still king for front end? (which I have very little to do with TBH).
* we've moved away from the Taliban analogy at this point.
JavaScript - creating future programming tasks spontaneously as you develop
To be or not to be
I think the top programming language is English. It is what the most propaganda is being written in and made us behave against our own interests.
Then we have Python that is powering the machinery of sophisticated pattern matching machines otherwise called the AI that analyse our behaviour and effectiveness of such propaganda.
Then we have Java Script that is used a carrier of actual programming that is going on (at least online).
Misunderstood purpose
Reading the boards gives me the impression that the motivation behind this is not what language is best suited to solving particular problems but rather what can get you the highest paying job with the least amount of learning. Python's good for a lot of things, its easy to write, flexible and reasonably efficient, but the one thing it can't do is write its own support libraries. JavaScript is popular because its not only the mainstay of website programming but its such a confused, torturous, mess (along with the entire DHTML cabal) that you need droves of young, energetic, programmers to burn out. Then there's the niche languages, all promising to eliminate logic and construct errors by design (ADA, anyone?).
As for "what do engineers know about programming?", that's simple. We invented it (and we certainly invented the platforms that run the software).
Re: Misunderstood purpose
> niche languages, all promising to eliminate logic and construct errors by design
I initially read this as:
niche languages, all promising to (eliminate logic) and (construct errors) by design
But I suspect that this should be read as:
niche languages, all promising to eliminate (logic and construct errors) by design
Beauty Contest
The various rankings are over glorified beauty contests. The methodology relies on searches, page hits, etc. not on an actual survey of programmers and what languages are used professionally.
Probably right
JavaScript has become fragmented by derivative languages that are transcoded into JavaScript. If you look into the corporate source repos, you find very little authentic JavaScript.
Python seems to be the new duct tape of the world. Despite it being an excellent scripting language, this is an unhealthy popularity that's going to give it a the same junk code reputation that PHP and Java have.
Survey basis
> Or which have most job opportunities?
That would seem to favour languages for which there are the most empty desks. The reason they are not filled may be that few want to use that language.
> how much code is written in each language?
That would favour verbose languages (COBOL, Java) where everything has to be re-invented for every project. Or, possibly, where developer productivity is measured by number of lines of code written per day.
> Google Search and/or tutorials
That would relate popularity of a language to the number of people who don't know it.
It seems to me that Javascript is high on every list because it it hard to avoid when doing web development even when any other language would be preferred.
"perhaps it is time to search for a tutorial?"
Hah, no need. Python tutorials are shoved down our throat at every turn. When searching for wxWidgets and OpenCV APIs, I know to explictly include "-python" into Google to explicitly strip out the annoying noise when searching for predominantly C++ APIs.
QB4.5
QuickBasic 4.5 for me - I still have the manual.
One of my very few claims to fame is that I wrote the interpreter in compiled QB4.5 for a high level interpreted language (which I also created) used for developing touch screen applications, Mind you, this was in the eighties when touch screens were indistinguishable from magic, and when there were actually a lot more diverse technologies than nowadays. We sold a few copies though.
Oh, sorry - it's new technologies we're looking at (goes back to shaking fist at clouds ...)