Most Popular Programming Language

Debate over the most popular programming language can become an emotional, almost religious battle.  And sometimes there's no debate at all, such as when a developer is assigned to repair legacy software.  "It was written in COBOL?" is a popular refrain.

A programming language is just one tool in a developer's expansive collection of specialty software and hardware.  So does it really matter which programming language a developer uses, as long as he or she is meeting customer requirements on time and within budget?

Yes, yes it does.  Ford or Chevy.  Stihl or Husky.  Coke or Pepsi.  Let's face it, we all get passionate about our tools.

Most Popular?

There are a number of ways to measure the popularity of a programming language, for example, based on the number of:

• New applications written in the language
• Existing applications written in the language
• Developers that use the language primarily
• Developers that use the language ever
• Web searches
• Available jobs that require skills in the language
• Developers' favorites

The following surveys attempt to rank which programming languages are most popular, each using a different measure:

 

Tiobe.com

Tiobe is a popular site for ranking programming languages.  Tiobe bases its rankings on world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors.  Rankings are not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.  Tiobe uses Google, MSN and Yahoo! search engines to measure the Web "chatter" and hence the popularity of each programming language.  The Tiobe top 11 for May 2007 are:

1. Java – 19.1%
2. C – 15.2%
3. C++ – 10.1%
4. PHP – 8.7%
5. Visual Basic – 8.4%
6. Perl – 6.2%
7. Python – 3.8%
8. C# – 3.7%
9. JavaScript – 3.1%
10. Ruby – 2.6%
11. Delphi – 2.1%

Dice.com

A September 2006 eWeek article ranks programming languages based on nationwide queries on Dice.com, a job site for technology professionals.  Following are percentage of jobs listed on Dice.com that require skills in each programming language:

1. Java – 35.7%
2. C, C++ – 15.3%
3. C# – 12.7%
4. Perl – 11.9%
5. JavaScript – 10.9%
6. Visual Basic .NET – 5.2%
7. PHP – 2.9%
8. Ajax – 2.7%
9. Python – 2.0%
10. Ruby – 0.7%

Evans Data

Evans Data Corporation conducted a Winter 2006 developer survey that ranks programming languages based on how many developers use that language at least some of the time:

1. Java – 45%
2. C, C++ – 40%
3. C# – 32%
4. Ajax – 28%
5. Visual Basic & VB.NET – 21%

Computerworld

In early 2005, Computerworld conducted a developer survey that measured which programming languages are in use by the developer's company:

1. C# – 72%
2. Java – 66%
3. Visual Basic – 62%
4. C++ – 54%
5. JavaScript – 50%
6. Unix Shell Scripts – 42%
7. Perl – 34%
8. C – 32%
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