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The RedMonk Programming Language Rankings: January 2014

81 points by puredanger 13y ago

_random_ 13y ago
Seems more accurate than other ratings.
olenhad 13y ago
As a clojure fanboy, I'm quite pleased to see it do well.
- auvrw 13y ago
  ditto. lisp will never die, but to see that a lisp is the fastest growing language on the list is heartwarming.
ternaryoperator 13y ago
I've never liked Redmonk's choice of Github only. It's just one OSS host, albeit an important one. Why not use Ohloh's numbers (which they do reference), which cover a larger swath of the OSS community? By choosing to use GitHub only, projects that have been around a long time are not included--such as many of the active projects on SourceForge, Google Code, etc. Not to mention other currently popular hosts like BitBucket.
- _random_ 13y ago
  Omission of BitBucket is a big miss. Not sure if both publish stats of private repo languages.
  - dsberkholz 13y ago
    Not for public repos. Scroll on down to the "hosting provider" section of some research I did on forges to get a better idea (http://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2013/04/22/the-size-of-open-source-communities-and-its-impact-upon-activity-licensing-and-hosting/ http://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2013/04/22/the-size-of-open-sou...).
- Laremere 13y ago
  I think they just need more than two sources since there's more to program language popularity than they can two sources can show. Stack overflow naturally biases towards languages with worse documentation and those which cater to newer programmers. For example, it favors Visual Basic and disfavors Golang, resulting in VB having a rank of 19, with Golang ranking at 22 despite golang being far more popular on github. Factors which this survey doesn't account for include what languages new programmers are being taught in, how much code is actually running in production, what type of developers companies are wanting to hire, and what those companies are writing in behind closed doors.
thinkpad20 13y ago
Surprised how highly ranked Haskell is, given its position in TIOBE. I wonder what accounts for the discrepancy.
- Avshalom 13y ago
  tiobe is roughly a measure of how active the visible job market is this is roughly a measure of how active the visible community is
  - dons 13y ago
    tiobe is a measure of "search engine results" for the query "$language programming".. including on YouTube. So it is neither a measure of community nor job market.
joemaller1 13y ago
I wish we could see a breakdown of Python2 vs. Python3.
- frostmatthew 13y ago
  It wouldn't make sense to do that for Python unless also doing it for other languages. That would a) be difficult with the methodology used and b) make it harder to determine a language's popularity in relation to other languages.
soup10 13y ago
It's interesting to see the meteoric rise of objective-c due to apple forcing it down developer throats. As someone who had to learn it to do iPhone dev, I find it objectively terrible compared to all the old favorites(C,C++,Java,C#). Partially because the language syntax sucks, but also because apples standard library sucks. See with C you know what your getting, fast code, manage your own memory, standard conventions for method calls and returns. Same with Java and C#, except memory is managed for you, and code is slower, but importantly, standard conventions are still there. The standard libraries are also very solid(and often better than obj-c). C++ sucks and has similar hybridization problems that obj-C has, but at-least it's fast and it's standard libraries are fast, and it has lots of 3rd party library support. Then there is objective-C. With it's ugly hybrid memory management model, awfully slow standard libraries. Numerous competing conventions for library design(partially due to the hybrid memory management model), not to mention there is also the vanilla C standard libraries which are often easier or required to be used. Poor 3rd party library support(seriously, a handful of people write objective c libraries, and most of it sucks because it's based off the apple obj-c libraries which suck). Which means... that it's super common to use C++ libraries anyway. So now your program is gobbledy gook mess of C/Obj-C/C++/Objective-C++ instead of one unified C or C++ codebase. Basically I'm pretty sure nobody would use objective-C if apple didn't strongly push it on iOS and OSx developers. And i'm pretty sure they wouldn't have done that if they didn't want to lock developers onto iOS/OSx and make it more difficult for them to port. tl;dr Apple is evil, obj-c sucks. if you program for iOS or OSx, save yourself the trouble and use as much portable C++ as you can.
- WoodenChair 13y ago
  Cool story bro. Not really sure how critiquing Objective-C is relevant to this article. Objective-C has been a top 10 language for years on most programming language popularity lists. It's not news in this article that it's up there. I think you just wanted to take any chance to lambast Obj-C... It's not like I'm pimping Dart and how it slightly beat out TypeScript on this list... oh wait, there I go.
  - soup10 13y ago
    shrug not like anyone cares which programming languages are popular anyway, forgive me for adding semi-relevant content to this thread.
davyjones 13y ago
My interpretation of the graph is this: Overall, things that rank high on SO and low on GH are more "corporate-y". Things that rank high on GH but lower than the line are "startup-y". We have some ask HN questions like which tool I should pick-up, employable skillset, etc. Purely based on this graph, I would say pick the top-right points that lie close to the line. That should strike a decent balance.
- nl 13y ago
  I think the "corporate-y things rank high on SO" is actually "Microsoft-platform things rank high on SO" (note the high rankings for C#, VB.NET and Delphi). I suspect that has a lot to do with the MS-centric seed audience that grew up around Stackoverflow (because of the backgrounds of the founders).
beat 13y ago
Javascript, Java, and PHP right up there at the top. Yep, we're doomed.

81 points by puredanger 13y ago

_random_ 13y ago

Seems more accurate than other ratings.

olenhad 13y ago

As a clojure fanboy, I'm quite pleased to see it do well.

auvrw 13y ago
ditto. lisp will never die, but to see that a lisp is the fastest growing language on the list is heartwarming.

ternaryoperator 13y ago

I've never liked Redmonk's choice of Github only. It's just one OSS host, albeit an important one. Why not use Ohloh's numbers (which they do reference), which cover a larger swath of the OSS community? By choosing to use GitHub only, projects that have been around a long time are not included--such as many of the active projects on SourceForge, Google Code, etc. Not to mention other currently popular hosts like BitBucket.

_random_ 13y ago
Omission of BitBucket is a big miss. Not sure if both publish stats of private repo languages.
- dsberkholz 13y ago
  Not for public repos. Scroll on down to the "hosting provider" section of some research I did on forges to get a better idea (http://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2013/04/22/the-size-of-open-source-communities-and-its-impact-upon-activity-licensing-and-hosting/ http://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2013/04/22/the-size-of-open-sou...).
Laremere 13y ago
I think they just need more than two sources since there's more to program language popularity than they can two sources can show. Stack overflow naturally biases towards languages with worse documentation and those which cater to newer programmers. For example, it favors Visual Basic and disfavors Golang, resulting in VB having a rank of 19, with Golang ranking at 22 despite golang being far more popular on github. Factors which this survey doesn't account for include what languages new programmers are being taught in, how much code is actually running in production, what type of developers companies are wanting to hire, and what those companies are writing in behind closed doors.

thinkpad20 13y ago

Surprised how highly ranked Haskell is, given its position in TIOBE. I wonder what accounts for the discrepancy.

Avshalom 13y ago
tiobe is roughly a measure of how active the visible job market is this is roughly a measure of how active the visible community is
- dons 13y ago
  tiobe is a measure of "search engine results" for the query "$language programming".. including on YouTube. So it is neither a measure of community nor job market.

joemaller1 13y ago

I wish we could see a breakdown of Python2 vs. Python3.

frostmatthew 13y ago
It wouldn't make sense to do that for Python unless also doing it for other languages. That would a) be difficult with the methodology used and b) make it harder to determine a language's popularity in relation to other languages.

soup10 13y ago

It's interesting to see the meteoric rise of objective-c due to apple forcing it down developer throats. As someone who had to learn it to do iPhone dev, I find it objectively terrible compared to all the old favorites(C,C++,Java,C#). Partially because the language syntax sucks, but also because apples standard library sucks. See with C you know what your getting, fast code, manage your own memory, standard conventions for method calls and returns. Same with Java and C#, except memory is managed for you, and code is slower, but importantly, standard conventions are still there. The standard libraries are also very solid(and often better than obj-c). C++ sucks and has similar hybridization problems that obj-C has, but at-least it's fast and it's standard libraries are fast, and it has lots of 3rd party library support. Then there is objective-C. With it's ugly hybrid memory management model, awfully slow standard libraries. Numerous competing conventions for library design(partially due to the hybrid memory management model), not to mention there is also the vanilla C standard libraries which are often easier or required to be used. Poor 3rd party library support(seriously, a handful of people write objective c libraries, and most of it sucks because it's based off the apple obj-c libraries which suck). Which means... that it's super common to use C++ libraries anyway. So now your program is gobbledy gook mess of C/Obj-C/C++/Objective-C++ instead of one unified C or C++ codebase. Basically I'm pretty sure nobody would use objective-C if apple didn't strongly push it on iOS and OSx developers. And i'm pretty sure they wouldn't have done that if they didn't want to lock developers onto iOS/OSx and make it more difficult for them to port. tl;dr Apple is evil, obj-c sucks. if you program for iOS or OSx, save yourself the trouble and use as much portable C++ as you can.

WoodenChair 13y ago
Cool story bro. Not really sure how critiquing Objective-C is relevant to this article. Objective-C has been a top 10 language for years on most programming language popularity lists. It's not news in this article that it's up there. I think you just wanted to take any chance to lambast Obj-C... It's not like I'm pimping Dart and how it slightly beat out TypeScript on this list... oh wait, there I go.
- soup10 13y ago
  shrug not like anyone cares which programming languages are popular anyway, forgive me for adding semi-relevant content to this thread.

davyjones 13y ago

My interpretation of the graph is this: Overall, things that rank high on SO and low on GH are more "corporate-y". Things that rank high on GH but lower than the line are "startup-y". We have some ask HN questions like which tool I should pick-up, employable skillset, etc. Purely based on this graph, I would say pick the top-right points that lie close to the line. That should strike a decent balance.

nl 13y ago
I think the "corporate-y things rank high on SO" is actually "Microsoft-platform things rank high on SO" (note the high rankings for C#, VB.NET and Delphi). I suspect that has a lot to do with the MS-centric seed audience that grew up around Stackoverflow (because of the backgrounds of the founders).

beat 13y ago

Javascript, Java, and PHP right up there at the top. Yep, we're doomed.