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Almost every week or so, I hear that the ***** programming language is dead, we must learn this and that, or that now ***** is trending, so we must and should be the early adopters.
However, the reality of software development is vastly different from what is being repeated on the Internet. When organizations develop applications, they want them to be scalable, secure, and, most importantly, simple to maintain.
Today, I see a lot of beginners getting confused when choosing their first programming language. Now, choosing a programming language while working in a company will not depend on you, but rather on your organization.
When I started, I was working on developing customizable eCommerce websites, and for that reason, I was using eCommerce platforms such as WooCommerce and Magento — which are PHP-based CMS.
When I moved to a different organization, I got the opportunity to work for various different organizations in healthcare and banking departments. I found Java to be the most preferred programming language in my projects, and hence, I learned Java and its frameworks. However, I have also used JavaScript and Python in various capacities.
The other day, a junior developer asked me about which programming language bigger organizations use. I was intrigued, and I did my research.
Hence, here are the top five most used programming languages as per the annual developer survey conducted by StackOverflow, along with which organizations use them.
Most Popular Technologies As Per StackOverflow
Let me tell you a secret: every year, I look forward to the results of the survey. In fact, I actively participated in the developer survey.
As per the survey, they have the most popular technologies that may consist of programming languages, scripting languages, frameworks, and even libraries.
For this list, I am excluding libraries, frameworks, and even SQL or HTML/CSS, even though, they qualify as a language and being used by organization by almost every company.
Hence, it doesn’t make sense to include in the below list. You have to know some of it anyway. No offence to the developers intended working with these, really.
JavaScript
JavaScript has topped the charts for the 9th time. I am sure it’s not going to change any time soon. I mean, ever since the release of Node.js, the open-source, cross-platform, back-end JavaScript runtime environment, this programming language has become the language of the web.
As per the survey, 64.96% of developers are using JavaScript in their software development.
Frameworks/Libraries based on this: jQuery, Angular, React, Next.js, Vue.js, Deno.js, Node.js, Ember.js, Backbone.js, and so many more.
Popular IDEs/Editors: Visual Studio Code, Sublime Text, Atom, Webstorm, Brackets, Komodo IDE by ActiveState, and even Notepad++.
Organizations: Facebook, Netflix, Google, Uber, PayPal, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Walmart, Groupon, and so many others.
Python
Python’s journey to the top is such an interesting one. When it started, it was a simple scripting language and was being considered as an alternative to Perl. Well, over the years, this programming language has gained immense popularity and traction among new programmers.
Python’s ease of learning, its huge number of libraries, and its widespread use in all kinds of domains have made it the most popular programming language of today. In fact, as per Tiobe’s rankings, Python surpassed Java, JavaScript, and C as the most popular language. However, Tiobe calculates the findings based on the web searches.
Python has gained immense popularity due to being the programming language of choice for machine learning. As per StackOverflow’s developer survey, 48.24% of the developers use Python as their programming language of choice.
Frameworks based on this: Django, Flask, Bottle, web2py, FastAPI, and many more.
Popular IDEs/Editors: PyCharm, Visual Studio Code, Sublime Text, Atom, Thonny, Vim, Spyder, Jupyter Notebook, etc.
Organizations: Spotify, NASA, Facebook, Google, Intel, Instagram, Reddit, Pixar, Pinterest, among so many others.
Java
One of the most popular programming languages in the world is Java. It has always been in the top 3 for the past 25 years, as without this language, developing highly scalable and secure software, especially in the finance sector, has always been difficult.
Java has been ranked the best programming language used by developers for the cloud, and as per Oracle, it runs on more than 5.5 billion devices. The survey stated that 35.35% of the developers use Java in their software development.
Frameworks based on this: Spring, Spring boot, Micronaut, Hibernate, Grails, Vaadin, Play, Dropwizard, etc.
Popular IDEs: IntelliJ Idea, Eclipse, Netbeans, BlueJ, DrJava, MyEclipse, Oracle JDeveloper, etc.
Organizations: Airbnb, Google, eBay, Netflix, Amazon, Spotify, Instagram, Uber, among so many others.
C#
C# was developed by Microsoft along with the.NET Framework for the development of their software products. At the time, it was closed source. Initially touted to be the language to compete with Java, the language, however, is much closer to C++ in its design.
In 2014, the C# compilers were made open-source, and over the years, it became one of the top programming languages on GitHub. It is popular among the 27.86% of the developers.
Frameworks based on this: .NET, .NET Core, Blazor Server, Xamarin Forms or Xamarin Native, Blazor Hybrid, ASP.NET Web Forms, Mono, etc.
Popular IDEs: VS Code, Visual Studio, Rider, Atom, DevExpress, etc.
Organizations: Microsoft, StackOverflow, General Motors, Delivery Hero, Western Union, Merck, etc.
C++
The OG programming language when it comes to scale. Being a statically written language, C++ is usually more performant than most of the modern dynamically written languages.
Although the language is useful for low-level programming and very efficient for general purposes, it is widely used in various industries like finance, app development, game development, and virtual reality.
C++ is the most preferred programming language for competitive programming, with the other only being Java from this list. Over 24.31% of the developers are using C++ in their development.
Frameworks/libraries/game engines based on this: Qt framework, boost, Unreal Engine, Esenthel Engine, Godot Engine, etc.
Popular IDEs: VS Code, Visual Studio, Rider, Atom, DevExpress, etc.
Organizations: Microsoft, StackOverflow, General Motors, Delivery Hero, Western Union, Merck, etc.
In Conclusion
Even though a language is designed to serve specific use cases when it is first released, every programming language has evolved over time. It is now up to the developer or organization to decide which programming language will be suitable for their app development.
A person who is starting to code can start with any of the programming languages. Hence, all the languages listed above have a mature community, and hence, there would not be any problems with getting help when a beginner is stuck with an issue.
One honorable mention I would like to add is PHP. Although it has lost its spot in the top 5, it is still one of the most widely used languages used by organizations such as Facebook, Slack, WordPress, Tumblr, etc.
It should not matter which programming language you are learning since the language might be used by a bigger organization. Also, companies don’t rely on one programming language or technology; they use whatever suits them for their app development.
Thank you for reading!
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