Programming languages roundup

Top Programming Languages 2021. © IEEE Spectrum.

Spectrum, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ monthly magazine published since 1964 in the US, has created an application that tracks the popularity of programming languages. It uses eleven data sources (including Google Search, Google Trends, Twitter, GitHub, Stack Overflow, Reddit, Hacker News and CareerBuilder) to determine the popularity of a language through conversations on social media, open-source code production and job postings. The online research tool lets you filter results by domain (web, mobile, desktop and embedded) and it tracks 55 languages, including old ones like Cobol and Fortran and niche ones like Haskell. You can also experiment with weighting the different sources to exclude social chats, for example.

Each year, this tool places Python first. Unsurprisingly, C, C ++, Java, and JavaScript also continue to dominate the rankings. Languages better suited to solving particular problems, such as R, SQL, and Matlab, are also popular. However, you have to take these results with a grain of salt. The news can temporarily skew ratings. For example, last year Cobol jumped closer to the top because of discussions on Twitter relating to the US administration’s desperate attempt to find Cobol specialists for its sprawling, dilapidated systems. But with filters, you can still reduce this type of noise.

⇨ IEEE Spectrum, “Top Programming Languages 2021.”

⇨ IEEE Spectrum, Stephen Cass, “Top Programming Languages 2021 > Python dominates as the de facto platform for new technologies.”

2021-08-24