What is the most popular programming language in the world? If you search in Google you will find so many articles on this topic.
Actually, it is very difficult to find the exact number of users of a programming language, and most of the data collected is very vague. In this article, I will try to shed some light on the topic and list the world’s most popular computer programming languages based on data collected from various online resources.
TIOBE Index is one of the measurements. If you look at the
TIOBE Index published for 2016 and compare it with 2015, you will see the rankings for 2016 and also previous rankings in 2015.
| Language | 2016 | 2015 |
| Java | 1 | 1 |
| C | 2 | 2 |
| C++ | 3 | 3 |
| C# | 4 | 5 |
| Python | 5 | 8 |
| PHP | 6 | 7 |
| JavaScript | 7 | 6 |
| Perl | 8 | 12 |
| Ruby | 9 | 18 |
| Visual Basic.NET | 10 | 10 |
| Delphi | 11 | 11 |
| Assembly Language | 12 | 29 |
| Objective-C | 13 | 4 |
| Visual Basic | 14 | 9 |
| Swift | 15 | 24 |
| MATLAB | 16 | 14 |
| PL/SQL | 17 | 17 |
| R | 18 | 19 |
| Groovy | 19 | 43 |
| D | 20 | 38 |
From the above table, you can clearly see that C# has jumped to #4 from #5. Clearly, Objective-C has dropped to #4 from #13 and you can easily blame Swift for that, which has jumped to #15 from #24. Both Objective-C and Swift are used to build Apple iOS apps.
You may have also noticed that Visual Basic is clearly on the way out now while Visual Basic.NET still holds its spot. However, I don’t see Visual Basic .NET staying there for long. C# is clearly the primary language to build .NET applications.
Assembly language has also shown a major jump and you could blame hardware, IoT, and other device innovations for that. There is also a move in Groovy and D languages that have made the top 20 list.
Besides the above ranking, here are three other rankings I found that looked promising.
| GitHut | RedMonk | Jobs Tractor |
| JavaScript | JavaScript | Java |
| Java | Java | Objective-C |
| Python | PHP | PHP |
| CSS | Python | SQL |
| PHP | C# | Java(Android) |
| Ruby | C++ | C# |
| C++ | Ruby | JavaScript |
| Ct | CSS | Python |
| Shell | C | Ruby |
| C# | Objective-C | C++ |
Now, from the above list, I can clearly say that JavaScript is not “the most popular” programming language. It may be the most talked-about language on these websites and forums.
Anyway, no matter how you slice a pie, you will find Java, C, and C++ the top 3 programming languages. The next three in the list are C#, Python, and PHP.
Should you start learning Java, C, or C++?
OK, let me be very clear. Being the most popular programming language does not mean it is commercially being used by more companies or it has more jobs, or it pays more, or it is growing. It your goal is to get hired faster, you probably don't need Java, C, or C++ at all. A company is probably hiring application developers (Web and mobile). Besides Android programmer, Java, C, or C++ are not popular for Web development or mobile. I run a software development company. I work with many recruiters and clients who are hiring. I hardly being asked for C or C++ jobs. There are some Java jobs. But most of the jobs I am being asked to fill are .NET (C#), PHP, Ruby (Rails), iOS, and Android.
Will you make more money learning Java?
Not really. Salaries has nothing to do with popularity of a language. Check out some recommended links at the bottom of this article. I am working on most paid programming language and most wanted programming language. Stay tuned for those articles.
Conclusion
I’ve been a programmer for 18 years. I do understand all of the above data is collected from various public online resources and makes some sense, but one thing we need to keep in mind is that developers who are involved in startups and hobby work are more likely to talk about a language publicly than the developers who work for a corporation. More startups and hobbyist developers do use open source (well, now C# and .NET is open source as well) and hence like to talk about them socially. So that may have been a factor in capturing some of the popularity of a language.
As a conclusion, languages C, C++, Java, C#, and Python/PHP are the most popular programming languages.
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