What stats & surveys are saying about top programming languages in 2020

Comparing Programming Languages is a very complex thing and so there are many graphical illustration/jokes trying to symbolize Programming language. I found few and I am starting this article with those.In simple words, Programming Language empowers human to instruct and control machine. So, it is natural that there will be so many languages which try to make this process more powerful and simple. For this very reason there are hundreds of programming languages, many of those programming languages are now out of active use, few are going to be obsolete in coming years and then there are languages which is going to continue and prove its usage in coming years and then there are new programming language fighting for it acceptance.

This article going to present the trends of top Programming Languages which will continue in the coming year 2020. To predict the trend of the programming language in 2020 this article uses data from authentic surveys, various collected statistics, search results and salary trends according to programming languages. This article will help the new learner to pick a programming language to learn and for expert, it will help to decide either to switch to another language or to continue with his expertise language.

In the next section, I have prepared two tables which summarize the popularity trend of Programming Languages in the last five years (2015-19). The data is taken from Stackoverflo wpopularity survey 2015-19. For a clear and accurate understanding, the programming languages are divided into two groups, first, languages which have origin before 2000 and the second group has languages which came after 2000. The selection of 2000 as the boundary is just random but very helpful to understand the programming trend under these two groups. The table also lists origin year and main or documented purpose of these programming/scripting languages.

There is a decrease in the popularity of all languages from 2018 to 2019 except Python.

PYTHON

Python is the only language continuously on rising since last five years. It is a general purpose language, so someone wants to learn just one programming in 2020 and want to cover more area of software development then Python could be chosen.

JAVA

Java was on rising but fall in 2019, the reason could Kotlin gaining popularity on the Androidplatform. Java is a good choice for a programming language but now it is under Oracle and Google is promoting Kotlin so it is in the conflicted zone. As a matter of fact still, the large number of the company is using Java and going to continue with Java due to its developers base, framework, and legacy application.

C/C++

C and C++ are still holding with approx 20% and it will be there due to its inherent features and legacy system.

JAVASCRIPT

JavaScript popularity can be attributed to the growth of popular JavaScript library and framework like node.js, etc. JS is the language for the dynamic website and this going to be top for coming years because of its active development, support from Mozilla and penalty of libraries and frameworks. So, if someone wants to be web development, javascript is a must.

R

R is gaining popularity in recent years and reason would be growth and popularity of data analysis. It is used by data scientist but again much behind in comparison to Python which has established as general-purpose languages and enjoy active developers with lots of data science libraries and modules. So, one can prefer Python over R if they have to choose only one otherwise if wanted carrier in Data Sciences then learning both will a good option.

RUBY

Like PHP, Ruby is also facing tough competition from JavaScript and even Python to establish as back-end web development programming language. So, again for web development javascript and Python (server-side (Flask, Django etc.) would be a good choice and will offer more domain flexibility than Ruby.

PHP

There is a sharp decline in PHP popularity in 2019 and it can be traced back to server-side acceptance of javascript and Python. So, if someone wants to go to server-side web development then still PHP is a good choice with a large number of popular framework like CakePHP, Codeigniter etc., otherwise choosing a general-purpose programming language would be better.

OBJECTIVE-C

Objective-C was the main language for Apple’s software such as MacOS, iOS etc. before Apple moved to Swift language. So this transition is reflected in the popularity of both languages, i.e. there is a fall in popularity for Objective-C and the popularity of Swift is rising. So, again if someone wants to be a developer for Apple’s products then Swift should be the language of choice.

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