Programming Language Popularity

These are the top languages used on Source Forge in December 2004:

Projects Language -------- -------- 14200 CeePlusPlus 13862 CeeLanguage 13359 JavaLanguage 9866 PhpLanguage 5523 PerlLanguage 3563 PythonLanguage 2024 JavaScript 2008 CsharpLanguage 1981 VisualBasic 1627 DelphiLanguage/Kylix 1564 UnixShell 1458 AssemblyLanguage 1049 PL/SQL (StructuredQueryLanguage) 832 ToolCommandLanguage 607 ObjectiveCee 512 ActiveServerPages 320 RubyLanguage 305 LispLanguage 302 PascalLanguage 236 ObjectPascal 183 SchemeLanguage

Source Forge, February 2006

Java *

C++

C

PHP

Perl

Python

C# *

Visual Basic

Delphi/Kylix

Unix Shell

Assembly

PL/SQL

Tcl

Objective C

ASP

Ruby

Pascal

Lisp

Object Pascal

Scheme

(Generated from sourceforge.net )

Source Forge December 2007

TOTAL

Java

C++

C

PHP

Python *

Perl

C#

Unix Shell **

Delphi/Kylix *

Visual Basic

Assembly

PL/SQL

Ruby ***

Objective C *

Tcl

ASP.NET (Asp Dot Net)

Action Script ***NEW***

ASP -

Pascal

Lua Language ***NEW***

Object Pascal


These were the top languages used on Freshmeat in March 2003):

C

Perl

C++

Java

PHP

Python

Unix Shell

SQL

Ruby

C#

These were the top languages used on Freshmeat in December 2004 ( from freshmeat.net ):

Projects Language -------- -------- 6888 C 3610 Java ** 3421 C++ * 3251 Perl 2855 PHP 1714 Python 708 Unix Shell 409 Tcl 396 SQL 393 JavaScript 255 Objective C 218 Other 216 Assembly 210 Ruby 143 C# 118 Other Scripting Engines 105 Scheme 77 Lisp 77 PL/SQL 76 Delphi 62 Fortran

This kind of list was used as evidence that Cee Plus Plus Reigns.

One should take into account some noise factors in the Source Forge data:

As it uses Sourceforge data, it is biased towards Open Source projects and not necessarily indicative of popularity in proprietary systems.

It is up to the developers to report their languages. Many projects have none of this metadata.

Many projects report all languages used, of which one is primary and others are used for small amounts of glue. I don't think there were many projects that used primarily Assembly Language, for instance.

Many projects report for which language it is used, rather than which language it was written in. (Example: most of the Forth Language projects were actually Forth compilers, not applications written in Forth.)

Many of the projects are Vapor Ware, My Toy Program, or inactive for years (though this list has been culled since 2003).


Very interesting. I am astonished to see Java Script slightly ahead of Delphi Language/Kylix, and more popular than all flavors of Lisp and all other flavors of Pascal combined.

In the end, this is only one data point. There are many other Project Hosts, many language specific. Another measure (Yahoo directory links) is on Programming Languages.

And www.tiobe.com has popularity trends over time. It uses Google for its data and appears to be aligned to the software job market, rather than the Open Source community.

The "tpci" seems very unscientific as it uses keyword popularity as the indicator. There is no way to google for "C" without being completely overwhelmed by noise. It is also tainted by the fact that a language may have more "help pages" than a more popular language (but the language with more "help pages" would seem more popular).


None of the above have considered Spreadsheet Model as a Programming Language. When I started to explore the Microsoft Excel Programming Language, I found there is a huge secondary market related to education, consulting, third party tools. And the demand and pay scale for a good Excel consultant is much better than for the average website developer. I have made the wrong bet on traditional programming languages.


How to rate Programming Language Popularity? Here is one way.

(Note, do not update this page, but use it to benchmark the current results.)

Rating on Sept 14,2004:

ActiveX (41) AppleScript (12) Assembly (88) Basic (164) C# (201) COBOL (91) C and C++ (913) Delphi (352) Forth (14) Fortran (11) Java (1631) JavaScript (178) Lisp (21) Object Oriented (219) Pascal (69) Perl (92) Python (49) RPG (146) SQL (244) Tcl Tk (20) Visual Basic (774) QBasic@ (52)


Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML)@ (46)

VRML is not a programming language - at least not any more than HTML is.


Here is an attempt to gather data from several sources, while being transparent about the strengths and weaknesses of each one:


Top languages used in the Google Code Jam qualification round. So these are languages used in the small because people are familiar with them and they are suitable for quick problem solving (one day time limit to solve half a dozen problems).

Lang 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012


C++ 10094 16288 15691 28108 25705 Java 5537 6712 7684 11239 13778 Python 2302 3342 4359 7199 9413 C 1258 1325 1869 2484 3445 C# 2062 2048 1843 2958 3177 Ruby 393 595 623 1102 1217 PHP 348 472 377 600 1048 Perl 575 605 373 566 556 Haskell 156 240 406 564 520 Pascal 292 378 293 502 431 VB 154 77 112 116 154

The subsequent rounds after most entrants are eliminated are dominated by C++ (75%), followed by Java and Python.


See original on c2.com