In our objective of attempting to estimate a programming language’s recognition, we realized that nobody can look over the shoulder of each individual writing code, whether or not that be a toddler writing a Java script for a private Minecraft server, a cellular app developer hoping to hit it huge, or an aerospace engineer writing mission-critical code for a voyage to Mars. Our Top Programming Languages interactive tries to sort out the issue of estimating a language’s recognition by in search of proxy indicators.
We do that by setting up measures of recognition from quite a lot of knowledge sources that we consider are good proxies for energetic curiosity for every programming language. In complete we establish 63 programming languages. We then weight every knowledge supply to create an overall index of popularity, excluding among the lowest scorers. Under, we describe the sources of knowledge we use to get the measures, and the weighting scheme we use to provide the general indices.
By recognition, we imply we are attempting to rank languages which might be in energetic use. We have a look at three completely different facets of recognition: languages in energetic use amongst typical IEEE members and dealing software program engineers (the “Spectrum” rating), languages which might be in demand by employers (the “Jobs” rating), and languages which might be within the zeitgeist (the “Trending” rating).
We gauged the recognition of languages utilizing the next sources for a complete of eight metrics (see under). We gathered the data for all metrics in July—August 2024. The info had been gathered manually to keep away from outcomes being biased as a consequence of API adjustments or terminations and since most of the programming language’s names (C++, Scheme) collided with widespread phrases present in analysis papers and job advertisements or had been tough for a search engine to parse. When a lot of search outcomes made it impractical to resolve ambiguities by inspecting the entire outcomes individually, we used a pattern of every knowledge supply, and decided the related pattern measurement based mostly on estimating the true imply with 95 % confidence. Not all knowledge sources include data for every programming language and we interpret this data because the programming language having “no hits” (i.e., not being well-liked).
The outcomes from every metric are normalized to provide a relative recognition rating between 0 and 1. Then the person metrics are multiplied by a weight issue, mixed, and the consequence renormalized to provide an mixture recognition rating.
In aggregating metrics, we hope to compensate for statistical quirks that may distort a language’s recognition rating in any specific supply of knowledge. Various the burden components permits us to create the completely different outcomes for the Spectrum, Jobs, and Trending rankings. We totally acknowledge that, whereas these weights are subjective, they’re based mostly on our understanding of the sources and our prior protection of software program subjects. Various the burden components permits us to emphasise various kinds of recognition and produce the completely different rankings. We then mixed every weighted knowledge supply for every program after which renormalized the ensuing frequency to provide an mixture recognition rating.
The Prime Programming Languages was initially created by knowledge journalist Nick Diakopoulos. Our statistical methodology advisor is Hilary Wething. Analysis help was supplied by Elizabeth Wood. Rankings are computed utilizing R.
Google is the main search engine on the planet, making it an excellent match for estimating language recognition. We measured the variety of hits for every language by looking out on the template, “X programming language” (with citation marks) and manually recorded the variety of outcomes that had been returned by the search. We took the measurement in July 2024. We like this measure as a result of it signifies the amount of on-line data sources about every programming language.
Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow is a well-liked website the place programmers can ask questions on coding. We recorded the variety of questions tagged to every program inside the final week previous to our search (August 2024). For the Mathematica/Wolfram language, we relied on the sister “Stack” for the Mathematica platform and tallied the variety of programming-related questions requested prior to now week. These knowledge had been gathered manually. This measure signifies what programming languages are at present trending.
IEEE Xplore Digital Library
IEEE maintains a digital library with hundreds of thousands of convention and journal articles masking a wide selection of scientific and engineering disciplines. We looked for articles that point out every of the languages within the template “X programming” for the years 2023 and 2024, as a result of that is the smallest timeframe for which we might entry articles. For search outcomes that returned hundreds of articles, we recognized the right pattern measurement for a 95 % confidence interval (often just a little over 300) and pulled that variety of articles. For every language we sampled, we recognized the share of articles that make the most of the programming language after which multiplied the whole variety of articles by this share to tally the probably complete variety of articles that reference a given programming language. We performed this search in July 2024. This metric captures the prevalence of the completely different programming languages as used and referenced in engineering scholarship.
IEEE Job Web site
We measured the demand for various programming languages in job postings on the IEEE Job Site. For search outcomes that returned hundreds of listings, we recognized the right pattern measurement for a 95 % confidence interval (often round 300 outcomes) and pulled that variety of job listings to manually look at. For every language we sampled, we recognized the share of listings that make the most of the programming language after which multiplied the whole variety of job listings by this share to tally the probably complete variety of job listings that reference a given programming language. Moreover, as a result of among the languages we observe could possibly be ambiguous in plain textual content—reminiscent of lD, Go, J, Ada, and R—we looked for job postings with these phrases within the job description after which manually examined the outcomes, once more sampling entries if the variety of outcomes was massive. The search was performed in July 2024. We just like the IEEE Job Web site for its massive variety of non-U.S. listings, making it an excellent to measure international recognition.
CareerBuilder
We measured the demand for various programming languages on the CareerBuilder job website. We looked for “Developer” jobs provided inside america, as that is the preferred job title for programmers. We sampled 400 job advertisements and manually examined them to establish which languages employers talked about within the postings. The search was performed in July 2024. We just like the profession builder website to establish the recognition of programmer jobs in america.
GitHub
GitHub is a public repository for a lot of volunteer-driven open-source software program tasks. We used knowledge gathered by GitHut 2.0, which measures the highest 50 languages utilized by the variety of repositories tagged with that language and attracts from GitHub’s public API. We use two metrics from GitHub: repositories which were “starred” by customers to replicate long-term pursuits, and the variety of pull requests to point present exercise. The info cowl the second quarter of 2024. These measures point out what languages coders select to work in after they have a private selection.
Trinity Faculty Dublin Library
The library of Trinity College Dublin is one in every of six authorized deposit libraries in Eire and the UK. A replica should be deposited with the library of any e-book printed or distributed in Eire, and on request any U.Okay. writer or distributor should additionally deposit a e-book. We looked for all books printed within the yr up to now that had their subject material categorized as laptop programming and totaled the variety of returns. The search was performed in June 2024. We like this library assortment as a result of it represents a big and categorized pattern of works, primarily within the English language.
Discord
Discord is popular chat-room platform where many programmers exchange information. We counted the number of tags that correspond to each language. In the case of languages that could also be names of nonprogramming topics, (many nonprogramming-related topics also have dedicated Discord servers; for example, “Julia” could refer to the programming language or the Sesame Street puppet), outcomes had been manually examined. Disboard was searched in August 2024. Disboard lists many public discord servers and plenty of younger coders use the location, contributing a unique demographic of coders.
