It seems that the survey methodology here maps more to some mix of familiarity and popularity, rather than liking or disliking. They're basing the results on th

It seems that the survey methodology here maps more to some mix of familiarity and popularity, rather than liking or disliking. They're basing the results on the technologies people indicate as being interested in working with (that's a like) and those they're not interested in working with (that's a dislike). People are going to "like" the technologies they know and are familiar with. They're going to dislike popular languages that they may otherwise receive numerous offers about. Relatively uncommon languages are going to receive only popular votes since there's no incentive to dislike them. E.g. nobody's getting spammed with recruiters seeking R expertise. This explains why unpopular language also seem very well liked. When considered as a ratio, there's almost nobody disliking them and a handful of people liking them. I think javascript's position here is the most clear example of the problems with methodology. I think it's safe to say that most consider javascript a flawed and undesirable language (compare to a hypothetical alternative), but at the same time there are a zillion javascript developers who are willing to work with javascript. So the raw number of people willing to work with it for a paycheck outweighs the dislike of the language itself. Compare this to something like C#. My first thought (before considering the above) is that its lack of popularity was a cultural issue. It's maintained by Microsoft and is probably seen by many as a more corporate and established (in a somehow negative way) language. But then scroll down to their "tag rivalries" section and the real issue becomes clear. The people who most "dislike" C# are visual basic developers!