Programming Language Popularity

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

Source Forge, February 2006

Java *

C++

C

PHP

Perl

Python

C# *

Java Script

Visual Basic

Delphi/Kylix

Unix Shell

Assembly

PL/SQL

Tcl

Objective C

ASP

Ruby

Visual Basic Dot Net *

Pascal

Lisp

Object Pascal

XSL (Xslt Language/Xpath Language/Xsl Formatting Objects) *

Java Server Pages *

Scheme

(Generated from sourceforge.net )

Source Forge December 2007

TOTAL

Java

C++

C

PHP

Python *

Perl

C#

Java Script

Unix Shell **

Delphi/Kylix *

Visual Basic

Assembly

PL/SQL

Visual Basic Dot Net ****

Java Server Pages ********

Ruby ***

Objective C *

Tcl

XSL (Xslt Language/Xpath Language/Xsl Formatting Objects) ****

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 ):

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.

-- David Cary

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.

Moved from 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.)

dir.groups.yahoo.com

Rating on Sept 14,2004:

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

Data And Code Are The Same Thing

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

www.langpop.com

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).

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

(From www.go-hero.net )

See Languages Of Choice, Paul Graham's Being Popular Essay, Programming Language Usage Statistics, The Most Widely Used Programming Language At Any Level

See original on c2.com