Do
a simple web search and you’ll find there are hundreds of programming languages
in existence. Do another search for the most popular ones and again, you’ll
come up with a head-spinning list.
To be as objective as possible, we’re examining the top programming languages from a career perspective.
To be as objective as possible, we’re examining the top programming languages from a career perspective.
There
are many ways to rank programming languages, like the number of websites built
with them, Google search results, GitHub projects or StackOverflow questions.
The
demanded programming languages of 2017 are as follows;
SQL
The
number of Indeed job descriptions including SQL (Structured Query Language)
increased by nearly 50,000 this year over last year, giving SQL a dramatic lead
over the other languages. It’s unclear if this is entirely due to more SQL jobs
in the market or a change in how Indeed works. Either way, SQL is still the
clear leader in our analysis. SQL is used to communicate with and manipulate
databases. It is extremely common, with many variations like MySQL and
Microsoft SQL. Microsoft released SQL Server 2016 in the past year, which
proved to be surprisingly popular and introduced several new features
to make the language more open-source like integration with R, the popular data analysis programming language, and a
Linux version.
Java
The
number of Java positions available on Indeed went up by almost 30,000 in 2017
compared to 2016. This is possibly due to the rise in Android users in the
market, the steady growth of its developer community, and some of the
inherit characteristics
of Java that make
it worthwhile to learn. After all, Java is a simple, readable programming
language used by millions of developers and billions of devices worldwide. All
native Android apps are built in Java and 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies
use Java as a server-side language for backend development.
Python
Python
continued to grow in popularity in 2016 and moved up two places in our rankings
to be the third-most common language by job posting. Furthermore, as
highlighted in our most recent guide to learning Python, it’s also a general purpose
programming language that emphasizes code readability and increasing developer
productivity, used for desktop apps, web apps and data mining. In October 2016, Microsoft launched the beta version 2.0 of its
Cognitive Toolkit open source deep-learning framework, which includes support
for Python.
JavaScript
JavaScript
(different from Java and mean stack development) moved down one place in our
ranking compared to 2016, but otherwise the number of job postings stayed
roughly the same. It’s a mainly client-side, dynamic scripting language used
for front-end development. JavaScript is compatible across all browsers, used
in over 90 percent of all web
pages and is
the most popular language on StackOverflow. Compatibility and adoption of
JavaScript 6 continued to grow in 2016 and Progressive Web Apps became more usable, allowing
offline-first functionality for web apps.
C++
C++
grew by about 20,000 job postings over 2016 and passed pori to take fifth
place. Built on C, the grandfather of all programming languages, C++ is a
powerful, high-performance language used to build system software, games
engines and desktop and web apps. Many beginners find C++ harder to learn than
dynamically typed languages like Python or JavaScript.
C#
“C
Sharp” saw a small increase in popularity in 2017, but not enough to keep it
from falling behind C++. The language was developed for Microsoft’s .NET
software framework and can now be used on non-Windows machines since the
release of the new .NET Core open-source development platform in June
2016. Its main use is building Microsoft enterprise software. Most of the features in C# 7.0 were released last year,
including language support for Tuples, local functions, pattern matching and
many more.
Perl
Perl
made a big jump in popularity this year to move ahead of iOS and PHP and knock
Ruby off of our list. Perl, or “the duct tape that holds the Internet
together,” as it’s been named, is actually two languages now;
Perl 5 and Perl 6, which launched in Dec. 2015. Both of them are
general-purpose dynamic programming languages that see a lot of use in CGI,
graphics, network, and finance programming. Some think the growth of DevOps
triggered this popularity surge because Perl is versatile and works well with
other languages, making it a good DevOps tool.
iOS Family
Most
developers writing for the iOS operating system use Objective-C, C, or Apple’s
new Swift
programming language.
We counted any job postings that included “iOS” in our ranking and saw little
change from 2016. Swift launched in 2014 and it rose quickly in popularity due
to its scalability, speed, ease of use and strong demand from the mobile app
marketplace. Apple released Swift 3.0 in Sept 2016 with new features including better translation
of Objective-C APIs, modernizations of debugging identifiers and a new model
for collections and indices. Apple plans to release Swift 3.1 and Swift 4 in
2017.
PHP
PHP
stayed in the same place in our rankings from 2016 to 2017 with little change
in popularity. It’s a server-side programming language used on more than 80
percent of websites today including Facebook, Wikipedia, Tumblr and WordPress.
It wasn’t the buzziest language in 2016, but the sheer number of websites still
built with it ensure it’s still a useful skill for developers, especially when
paired with Javascript and SQL.
No comments:
Post a Comment