So what do all these data points add up to? Java remains incredibly popular in the enterprise, and job seekers cant go wrong learning it. JavaScript skills may not land you a job as quickly, but youll be in good company with legions of other programmers. Theres still interest in the various flavors of C as well, and PHP plays a big role in the mid-market. Forward-looking programmers may want to jump on the bandwagon for newer languages like Go, Rust, and Swift, which seem to be making the developers who use them happy.
(For the latest iteration in this annual series, check outThe Most Popular Programming Languages of 2017.)
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But perhaps the real takeaway is that we seem to be moving into a polyglot world where organizations increasingly employ multiple languages. The idea is to take advantage of each languages special strengths as well as the varied expertise of the programming team.
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According to New Relic Product Marketing ManagerNeha Duggal, Java is the most widely implemented New Relic agent as well. However, Duggal sees evidence that Java is maturing and may not be growing as fast as easier-to-use languages such as JavaScript frameworks like Node.JSwhich has shown a sharp year-over-year increaseand Go (now supported in New Relic APM). That change is especially prevalent, she says, in newer, smaller organizations likely to prize ease of use and faster time to market. PHP usage is slipping in the enterprise, but remains very popular in small organizations.
According to Terence Chiu, vice president ofIndeed Prime, It is not surprising that Java is such a popular programming language. Its been around for a long time, runs in many computing environments, and has advantages of readability, scalability, and robustness.
Lets first look at the skills that tech employers are asking for. We asked job-finding siteIndeedto comb through its 16 million job listings to see how often each of the various programming languages were mentioned in the first five months of 2016. As shown in the chart below, Java showed up in job titles far more often than any other language, with 2,992.19 mentions per million listings.
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Our annual look at the relative popularity of programming languages reveals that while Java still rules, other options are catching up for significant groups of developers. Just as important, more and more developers are taking a polyglot approach, leveraging multiple languages according to which one best solves a particular problem.
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Analyst firm RedMonks rankings of programming language popularity seem to support this view, slotting JavaScript, Java, and PHP in the first through third positions.
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Unsurprisingly, RedMonks list resembles the results of a recentStack Overflow surveyof more than 50,000 developers. JavaScript tops that list, too! Employers may not be asking for JavaScript programmers as much as for folks skilled in other languages, but the people who use it certainly like to talk about it.
Jake Widman is a San Francisco-based freelance technology and science writer, covering everything from big data to quantum physics. Hes a regular contributor to Computerworld, , and Photoshop User. View posts byJake Widman.
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What employers want is one thing. What developers are actually doing is another. According toRedMonks analysis of the number of repositories devoted to a language onGitHuband the amount of discussion onStack Overflow, JavaScript remains the most popular choice. In fact, the list has changed little since the last rankings in January:
Of course, just because a lot of developersare usinga language, that doesnt mean they like it. Stack Overflow tried to get at developers preferences by asking what languages they most loved. This list was dominated by newer languages like Mozillas Rust, Apples Swift, F, Scala, and Go:
Interested in Go?New Relic APM support for the Go languageis now generally available!
Dice also notes a healthy increase in demand for Python, whose 13% growth lands it in third place, up from eighth last year. C, C++, and C fall to eighth place from first last year, even though the number of listings fell by only 7%. If Indeed combined the trio into a single listing, it would grab a strong second place, so it seems premature to dismiss them. This list is confusing, however, in thatScala, which compiles to Java bytecode, earns the top slot. Puppet, Hadoop, and SOAP, meanwhile, are not actually programming languages.
By many measures, Java retains its position atop the language rankings. Its by far the most sought after programming skill in job adsespecially for enterprise positions.
And thats only the beginning. To help developers address these questions and make informed decisions, in2014and2015New Relic looked carefully at various measures of programming-language popularity to suss out the most relevant trends. Notably, for this years version, weve also incorporated learnings from our own usage data.
The views expressed on this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of New Relic. This blog may contain links to content on third-party sites. By providing such links, New Relic does not adopt, guarantee, approve or endorse the information, views or products available on such sites.
Perhaps more important, though, New Relics usage data shows an increase in number ofcustomers deploying multiple languages. Midmarket customers (those with between 101 and 1,000 employees), in particular, use the largest variety of language combinations, and Ruby is now used in combination with other languages more than it is alone. This trend may suggest a slow change in businesses adapting more diverse technology stacks into their businesses, Duggal says.
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Java is also popular on another major job board,Dice. The top 10 languages in its listings, along with their year-over-year change in frequency, are:
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Software developers know that choosing the best programming language to usefor your project or for your careercan be critically important but often challenging. The criteria can be confusing and the options difficult to determine. Even the questions you need to ask arent always clear:
RELATED:For the latest iteration in this annual series, check outThe Most Popular Programming Languages of 2017.
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