Programing Language Popularity 2017
some light remark of heavy breathing!
• JavaScript rules! It's interesting a lang every hacker despise has become truly the most popular lang. Kinda same story with PHP, which was the most used lang for most of 2000s.
by the way, ES2015, the js standard, is so big that it's twice as large than previous. It adds to js features basically anything you'd find in Python or Ruby. Though, the true nasty JS warts, complexity, isn't fixed, since js is backward compatible.
• TypeScript, a superset of JavaScript, turns out to beat all other js replacements. In particular, Google Dart, who tried to turn js into java, syntax and semantics.
• look at the top 10, those are the bread winners. You can draw a circle of that radius centered on top right corner. JS Java, PHP, python, Ruby, C#, C++, C, Objective-C. Interesting is that CSS is also there, yet not HTML. Wonder how that'd be.
Objective-C's rise almost a decade ago is mostly due to it being the only game if you want to play in Apple's iPhone money tree garden.
Java's original rise has a lot to do being how Google chose it around 2000, and around 2007. It was the language Larry Page knew back in 1997. (in those years, java's marketing is probably more than all language's marketing in history combined. It was, “write once run anywhere”. True of JavaScript today.)
Python's original rise has a lot to do with Google picking it as its scripting lang, back around 2000. Google pushed it into mainstream.
Ruby's mainstreaming came from Ruby on Rails, around 2007. It was the darling of the web, the final solution to all web problems. And Mac OS bundles Ruby few years before that. ('was scripting lang of choice at Apple)
• PHP still strong, despite 2 decades of hate speech from elite hackers.
• perl still refuse to die, even one don't hear about it for a decade in geek circles.
• R, a math language, is there too! I don't known R or its story. Nice to see a math lang attain this popularity. Must be due to all the “data science” craze in past few years. (by the way, does R have the concept of reference/pointer? (i.e. which results concepts of deep/shallow copy, etc.) that's pretty much how i define a math lang. Vast majority of programers have never seen a line of math line. Math lang includes: Wolfram Language, Julia, Matlab, APL.)
[see A Class of Programing Languages: Math Languages]
• also surprising is powershell , looks like it's finally taking over scripting on Microsoft Windows, as it should. (from what i see, it's more powerful than perl, and can use as a shell a la bash.) Replacing the multi-rehashed cmd.exe since DOS.
• Surprise that golang is below swift and scala.
Golang is superb. I deem it the best general purpose lang today. Faster than any functional languages, and in my opinion, in the hands of expert, is as robust or correct than any haskell ocaml fsharpe. Also, it's extremely simple, and easy to learn, and with superb documentation.
• Not sure why Scala is popular. I suppose it's the only 1 of 2 escape route of Java coders. The other is clojure.
• Clojure, i've coded intensively for about 6 months, read all its docs. Of all languages i learned in my life, clojure is the biggest disappointment.
Extremely complex, hard to understand, incomprehensible doc, intimately intertwined with the entire Java one thousand megabyte baggage. (like, to write hello world in clojure, first you spend a week on leiningen, another week on CIDER, jar, uber jar, maven, ant, “project”, etc)
I think the only real reason clojure use is due to it being the escape route of java coders.
Also, Clojure is enterprise language. That is, the kinda things Java do. Business stuff, full of bloat for the money in every corner.
Swift is Apple's replacement of the ill Objective-C (which was the umpteenth effort of trying to add OOP to C, of which, C++ won.). Swift's popularly is backed by iPhone. Basically the only choice if you want to play there.
- JavaScript rules!
- TypeScript not bad.
- look at the top 10, those are the bread winners.
- php still strong! and perl still refuse to die, even one don't hear about it for years.
- R is there too!
- also surprising is powershell , looks like it's finally taking over scripting on Microsoft Windows, as it should. Replacing the cmd.exe.
- Surprise that golang is below swift and scala.
learn them today!