According to developer analyst RedMonk’s QI 2021 language popularity rankings, JavaScript is the most popular language today, followed by Python and Java.
The top 20 rankings aren’t that different from its July 2020 rankings. However, RedMonk analyst Stephen O’Grady noted that half of the top 20 ‘experienced a degree of movement, which is very unusual.’
Python has ascended rapidly over the years and it has remained number two in the rankings— a position it took from Oracle’s Java in July last year after tying with Java in Q1 2020.
‘Java was extremely hot on Python’s heels— and was in fact closer to the number one ranking than to PHP behind it— but Python’s ability to defend its new high ranking is notable’, says O’Grady.
But he reckons that JavaScript based on rising pull requests on GitHub, makes it a ‘force of nature like no other within the industry’, despite the language’s detractors.
RedMonk’s language rankings is based on GitHub data like the number of pull requests in various languages and discussions on developer info-sharing site Stack Overflow. RedMonk then blended them for a ranking ‘that attempts to reflect both code (GitHub) and discussion (Stack Overflow) traction.’
TypeScript, Microsoft’s superset of JavaScript with a type system that compiles into JavaScript, rose from ninth position to eighth.
O’Grady believes that TypeScript has consolidated its place as a top 10 language and is now wondering if it will get to the top 5.
Rust, created by Mozilla, rose from 20th position to 19th position. Just last month, Mozilla handed off Rust to the new Rust Foundation, an independent organization backed by AWS, Huawei, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla. AWS is referring to Rust for infrastructure programming. Mozilla created it as a memory safe alternative to C and C++.
Meanwhile, Google’s Go programming language dropped from 15th position to the 16th, while Kotlin, a language endorsed by Google for Android app development rose to 18th position.
By Marvellous Iwendi.
Source: ZDNet