One obvious constant in the technology industry is its rapid pace of change, and the practice of programming offers no exception to this rule. What was once a popular language at the turn of the century might hardly get used for applications today. On the other hard, new programming languages seem to appear on a monthly basis.
Data from the source code repository, GitHub, offers a window on this changing face of software development. Let’s look more closely at their analysis to check the latest trends in programming language usage. Perhaps these insights might be of use in your own team’s development efforts?
GitHub boasts 4.5 million users who maintain around 10 TB of source code at the repository. Incredibly, those development projects are written in 393 different programming languages. Even more impressive is that data only represents one year of GitHub usage statistics!
Those numbers have only increased since the original July publication of an article by Waren Long at the source{d} blog used as a reference for this post. Another interesting point is their analysis doesn’t even include JavaScript, one of the most widely used languages, because of GitHub users’ propensity to refer to popular libraries, like Node.js or React.js, as a project’s language instead of JavaScript.
Long’s methodology for determining programming language is quite detailed, so refer to the link in the previous paragraph for additional insights, if interested.
There are few surprises listed among the most popular languages currently in use at GitHub. Python and Java rank at the top of the list, with a popularity percentage of 16 and 15.3 respectively. That doesn’t necessarily mean both languages have more lines of source code stored in the repository. That honor lies with PHP, even though it only ranks at #5 on the popularity scale.
Other languages in the top 10 include the venerable, like C, C++, and C#, along with relative upstarts like Ruby, Objective-C, and Go. Apple’s newer programming language for iOS applications, Swift, rounds out the top 10. A related analysis adding in Google search queries to the GitHub data notes that Go is currently the “hottest” programming language.
The original source{d} blog article also looked what languages programmers are transitioning into over time. This is useful information for both individual developers as well as software development shops. For example, many Visual Basic developers eventually transition into C#, which isn’t surprising for programmers working primarily on the Microsoft technology stack.
PHP developers, on the other hand, tend to move into Java, Python, or even C#. Python’s current popularity is confirmed by the fact that 24 percent of programmers working in the five other most popular languages — Java, C, C++, PHP, and Ruby – eventually work with Python. The “walled garden” nature of Apple platforms is revealed by the high percentage of programmers switching between Swift and Objective-C for project work.
Ultimately, anyone working as a programmer or a manager of software development needs to dive into the source{d} analysis of GitHub’s data. It’s truly fascinating.
Keep coming back to the Betica Blog for additional insights from the software development world. Thanks for reading!
Posted on September 15, 2017 Categories Software Development Tags c++, Github, java, Javascripts, language, node.js, nodejs, php, programming, programming language, python, React.js, ruby, Software Development, software engineering, Swift, trending, visual basic