4 ms·

It's hard to find good data sources for this, especially that StackOverflow is in decline[1]. IEEE's methodology[2] is sensible given what's possible, but the

by pornel 1y ago

It's hard to find good data sources for this, especially that StackOverflow is in decline[1]. IEEE's methodology[2] is sensible given what's possible, but the data sources are all flawed in some ways (that don't necessarily cancel each other out). The number of search results reported by Google is the most volatile indirect proxy signal. Search results include everything mentioning the query, without promising it being a fair representation of 2025. People using a language rarely refer to it literally as the "X programming language", and it's a stretch to count all publicity as a "top language" publicity. TIOBE uses this method too, and has the audacity to display it as a popularity with two decimal places, but their historical data shows that the "popularity" of C has dropped by half over two years, and then doubled next year. Meanwhile, C didn't budge at all. This method has a +/- 50% error margin. [1]: https://redmonk.com/rstephens/2023/12/14/language-rankings-update/ https://redmonk.com/rstephens/2023/12/14/language-rankings-u... [2]: https://spectrum.ieee.org/top-programming-languages-methodology-2025 https://spectrum.ieee.org/top-programming-languages-methodol...

abm53 1y ago
Perhaps the best source would now be the statistics of LLM queries, if they were available. Edit: I see they raise this point at length themselves in TFA.
roywashere 1y ago
Plus TIOBE had Perl enter the top 10 suddenly this year but I do not see any new developers. And Ada too! Where are all those Ada programmers?
- WhereIsTheTruth 1y ago
  https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/packages?compare=ada,gcc,go,java-runtime-common,perl,php,python,ruby,rust,typescript https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/packages?compare=ada,gcc,go,ja... Ada seems pretty popular on Arch This data is kinda worthless for popularity contests, since they may get picked up by aur packages, but this gives a solid insight into wich languages are foundational I wish the same was available for other distros You can do the same with docker images curl -s https://hub.docker.com/v2/repositories/library/python/ | jq -r ".pull_count" 8244552364 curl -s https://hub.docker.com/v2/repositories/library/golang/ | jq -r ".pull_count" 2396145586 curl -s https://hub.docker.com/v2/repositories/library/perl/ | jq -r ".pull_count" 248786850 curl -s https://hub.docker.com/v2/repositories/library/rust/ | jq -r ".pull_count" 102699482 "Top Languages" doesn't mean "better" nor does it mean "best"
  - epcoa 1y ago
    That’s a C++ URL parser library, has nothing to do with the programming language.
  - maleldil 1y ago
    You want gcc-ada for the programming language.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Keeping 7 Ada vendors in business, one of the few areas where developers actually pay for tooling. https://www.adacore.com/ https://www.adacore.com/ https://www.ghs.com/products/ada_optimizing_compilers.html https://www.ghs.com/products/ada_optimizing_compilers.html https://www.ptc.com/en/products/developer-tools/apexada https://www.ptc.com/en/products/developer-tools/apexada https://www.ddci.com/solutions/products/ddci-developer-suite/ https://www.ddci.com/solutions/products/ddci-developer-suite... http://www.irvine.com/tech.html http://www.irvine.com/tech.html http://www.ocsystems.com/w/index.php/OCS:PowerAda http://www.ocsystems.com/w/index.php/OCS:PowerAda http://www.rrsoftware.com/html/prodinf/janus95/j-ada95.htm http://www.rrsoftware.com/html/prodinf/janus95/j-ada95.htm
  - zerr 1y ago
    It's more like people in golf suits agree on corruption schemes rather than actual devs making decisions.
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      Which nonetheless reveals it is more relevant than others.
- kamaal 1y ago
  >>Perl enter the top 10 suddenly this year but I do not see any new developers. Perl is almost as active as Javascript. And more useful than Python. https://metacpan.org/recent https://metacpan.org/recent I write Perl to do all sorts of thing every week. Its strange its not in the top 5 list.
  - cies 1y ago
    You're joking right?
    - lief79 1y ago
      That was an active debate ... 15 years ago
    - kamaal 1y ago
      If you look at programming language list- Apart from Python, Java. Most are targeted to specific platforms(databases, browsers, embedded systems) or tech(SQL for database). The general purpose programming languages today are still- Python, Java, and Perl. Make whatever of this you will. Larry Wall at one point said, if you make something very specific to a use case(like awk, sed, php etc), it sort of naturally starts to come out of general purpose use. Its just that Kotlin, Rust, Go, SQL, Julia, SQL, Javascript etc. These are not general purpose programming languages.
PaulRobinson 1y ago
By far the most useful and helpful is job ads: it literally defines the demand side of the programming language market. Yes, that does not show us how much code is running out there, and some companies might have huge armies with very low churn and so the COBOL stacks in banks don’t show up, but I can’t think of a more useful and directly measurable way of understanding a languages real utility.
- stevenjgarner 1y ago
  Yes to your point, COBOL which ranks very low here is still fundamental to the infrastructure of several major industries, with some sources [1] reporting that it is used in: 43% of all banking systems. 95% of all US ATM transactions. 80% of all in-person credit card transactions. 96% of travel bookings. This may very well dramatically change in the next few years with such an emphasis on enterprise AI tools to rewrite large COBOL repositories. [2] [1] https://www.pcmag.com/articles/ibms-plan-to-update-cobol-with-watson#table-of-contents https://www.pcmag.com/articles/ibms-plan-to-update-cobol-wit... [2] e.g. Blitzy https://paper.blitzy.com/blitzy_system_2_ai_platform_topping_swe_bench_verified.pdf https://paper.blitzy.com/blitzy_system_2_ai_platform_topping...
  - zabzonk 1y ago
    In retail banking I'm sure that this could be true. Working in investment banking, I never saw a single COBOL application, or had to have my C++/Java/$MODERNLANGUAGE code interact with one.
    - davedx 1y ago
      Yeah when I worked in investment banking it was VBA and Java everywhere, never saw or heard of COBOL.
    - cyberpunk 1y ago
      Corp bank here, everyone has rumours about COBOL systems but no one I've ever spoke to has seen, interacted or has any other evidence these really exist anymore either.
thrw_10292024 1y ago
> It's hard to find good data sources for this I like this: https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2024/1 https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2024/1 It gives you a count of public repos on GitHub by language used, going back to 2012.
- brainzap 1y ago
  this is much better and aligns with the stackoverflow survey "what are you working on in your free time"
burnt-resistor 1y ago
Yep. And the sources are too often self-reinforcing and self-referential. Use the "right"/better tool from the toolbox, the tool you know best, and/or the tool that the customer wants and/or makes the most money. This might include Ada[0] or COBOL[1]. Or FORTH[2] or Lua[3]. Popularity isn't a measure of much of anything apart from SEO. 0. https://www2.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/ada-project-summary.html https://www2.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/ada-project-summary.html 1. https://theirstack.com/en/technology/cobol https://theirstack.com/en/technology/cobol 2. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/360271.360272 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/360271.360272 3. https://www.freebsd.org/releases/12.0R/relnotes/#boot-loader https://www.freebsd.org/releases/12.0R/relnotes/#boot-loader

by pornel 1y ago

abm53 1y ago

Perhaps the best source would now be the statistics of LLM queries, if they were available. Edit: I see they raise this point at length themselves in TFA.

roywashere 1y ago

Plus TIOBE had Perl enter the top 10 suddenly this year but I do not see any new developers. And Ada too! Where are all those Ada programmers?

WhereIsTheTruth 1y ago
https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/packages?compare=ada,gcc,go,java-runtime-common,perl,php,python,ruby,rust,typescript https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/packages?compare=ada,gcc,go,ja... Ada seems pretty popular on Arch This data is kinda worthless for popularity contests, since they may get picked up by aur packages, but this gives a solid insight into wich languages are foundational I wish the same was available for other distros You can do the same with docker images curl -s https://hub.docker.com/v2/repositories/library/python/ | jq -r ".pull_count" 8244552364 curl -s https://hub.docker.com/v2/repositories/library/golang/ | jq -r ".pull_count" 2396145586 curl -s https://hub.docker.com/v2/repositories/library/perl/ | jq -r ".pull_count" 248786850 curl -s https://hub.docker.com/v2/repositories/library/rust/ | jq -r ".pull_count" 102699482 "Top Languages" doesn't mean "better" nor does it mean "best"
- epcoa 1y ago
  That’s a C++ URL parser library, has nothing to do with the programming language.
- maleldil 1y ago
  You want gcc-ada for the programming language.
pjmlp 1y ago
Keeping 7 Ada vendors in business, one of the few areas where developers actually pay for tooling. https://www.adacore.com/ https://www.adacore.com/ https://www.ghs.com/products/ada_optimizing_compilers.html https://www.ghs.com/products/ada_optimizing_compilers.html https://www.ptc.com/en/products/developer-tools/apexada https://www.ptc.com/en/products/developer-tools/apexada https://www.ddci.com/solutions/products/ddci-developer-suite/ https://www.ddci.com/solutions/products/ddci-developer-suite... http://www.irvine.com/tech.html http://www.irvine.com/tech.html http://www.ocsystems.com/w/index.php/OCS:PowerAda http://www.ocsystems.com/w/index.php/OCS:PowerAda http://www.rrsoftware.com/html/prodinf/janus95/j-ada95.htm http://www.rrsoftware.com/html/prodinf/janus95/j-ada95.htm
- zerr 1y ago
  It's more like people in golf suits agree on corruption schemes rather than actual devs making decisions.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Which nonetheless reveals it is more relevant than others.
kamaal 1y ago
>>Perl enter the top 10 suddenly this year but I do not see any new developers. Perl is almost as active as Javascript. And more useful than Python. https://metacpan.org/recent https://metacpan.org/recent I write Perl to do all sorts of thing every week. Its strange its not in the top 5 list.
- cies 1y ago
  You're joking right?
  - lief79 1y ago
    That was an active debate ... 15 years ago
  - kamaal 1y ago
    If you look at programming language list- Apart from Python, Java. Most are targeted to specific platforms(databases, browsers, embedded systems) or tech(SQL for database). The general purpose programming languages today are still- Python, Java, and Perl. Make whatever of this you will. Larry Wall at one point said, if you make something very specific to a use case(like awk, sed, php etc), it sort of naturally starts to come out of general purpose use. Its just that Kotlin, Rust, Go, SQL, Julia, SQL, Javascript etc. These are not general purpose programming languages.

PaulRobinson 1y ago

By far the most useful and helpful is job ads: it literally defines the demand side of the programming language market. Yes, that does not show us how much code is running out there, and some companies might have huge armies with very low churn and so the COBOL stacks in banks don’t show up, but I can’t think of a more useful and directly measurable way of understanding a languages real utility.

stevenjgarner 1y ago
Yes to your point, COBOL which ranks very low here is still fundamental to the infrastructure of several major industries, with some sources [1] reporting that it is used in: 43% of all banking systems. 95% of all US ATM transactions. 80% of all in-person credit card transactions. 96% of travel bookings. This may very well dramatically change in the next few years with such an emphasis on enterprise AI tools to rewrite large COBOL repositories. [2] [1] https://www.pcmag.com/articles/ibms-plan-to-update-cobol-with-watson#table-of-contents https://www.pcmag.com/articles/ibms-plan-to-update-cobol-wit... [2] e.g. Blitzy https://paper.blitzy.com/blitzy_system_2_ai_platform_topping_swe_bench_verified.pdf https://paper.blitzy.com/blitzy_system_2_ai_platform_topping...
- zabzonk 1y ago
  In retail banking I'm sure that this could be true. Working in investment banking, I never saw a single COBOL application, or had to have my C++/Java/$MODERNLANGUAGE code interact with one.
  - davedx 1y ago
    Yeah when I worked in investment banking it was VBA and Java everywhere, never saw or heard of COBOL.
  - cyberpunk 1y ago
    Corp bank here, everyone has rumours about COBOL systems but no one I've ever spoke to has seen, interacted or has any other evidence these really exist anymore either.

thrw_10292024 1y ago

> It's hard to find good data sources for this I like this: https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2024/1 https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2024/1 It gives you a count of public repos on GitHub by language used, going back to 2012.

brainzap 1y ago
this is much better and aligns with the stackoverflow survey "what are you working on in your free time"

burnt-resistor 1y ago

Yep. And the sources are too often self-reinforcing and self-referential. Use the "right"/better tool from the toolbox, the tool you know best, and/or the tool that the customer wants and/or makes the most money. This might include Ada[0] or COBOL[1]. Or FORTH[2] or Lua[3]. Popularity isn't a measure of much of anything apart from SEO. 0. https://www2.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/ada-project-summary.html https://www2.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/ada-project-summary.html 1. https://theirstack.com/en/technology/cobol https://theirstack.com/en/technology/cobol 2. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/360271.360272 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/360271.360272 3. https://www.freebsd.org/releases/12.0R/relnotes/#boot-loader https://www.freebsd.org/releases/12.0R/relnotes/#boot-loader