Table of Contents for Programming Languages: a survey

Favorite programming languages

my favorite languages

Python is my favorite language to use for writing normal programs.

Haskell is my favorite language for inspiration of how programming languages can and will be improved; but not for actually getting stuff done.

Perl is my favorite language for one-, two-, and three-liner text manipulation from the command line.

Octave is my favorite language for quickly plotting a mathematical function (but for a serious numerical project I prefer Python).

HyperCard? is my favorite language for simple programs with a UI.

BASIC was the first language I really learned.

Logo was the first language I learned, I didn't realize it was a programming language at the time.

My recommended languages

Here I recommend languages to learn, not necessarily to use (what's the difference? When learning languages, you really want the simplest, best expemlar of a language style. When using languages, you really want to use a popular language because it will have more libraries and more questions answered on the Web).

Python: extremely liked and extremely well-known language, beginner friendly, relatively simple. Exemplar of the imperative dynamically typed OOP language family.
Racket (or is Clojure a better choice?): Exemplar of the LISP language family. Intro to functional style, macros, continuations.
Haskell: Exemplar of the statically typed functional ML language family. Intro to functional style, static typing, ADTs, pattern matching, laziness, higher order types, parametric polymorphism, type classes and ad hoc polymorphism.
C: extremely liked and extremely well-known. Introduction to pointers and manual memory management, so you know what's going on under the covers.
Assembly (todo which one?): So you know what's going on under the covers.
Prolog: exemplar of the logic programming language family.
Nock: very simple. exemplar of the combinatory language family.
C#: very well-known and more liked than disliked. Exemplar of the imperative statically typed OOP language family.
Javascript: extremely well-known

note: and what for concurrency? clojure? erlang?

everyone else's favorite languages

summary (subjective)

Python and C are the only languages which combine a high level of use and which are also extremely liked
other most used languages include Javascript, Java, PHP
- Javascript is both liked and disliked; Java is disliked; PHP is extremely disliked
other languages with a high level of use are: C#, Ruby, C++, Objective-C
- Out of these, C# engenders positive feeling, the others engender mixed feelings or even dislike.
other languages which are moderately used and very liked include: various Lisps (especially Clojure, Common Lisp, Scheme/Racket), Lua, Haskell, Go

Up to this point, the list of languages which were either moderately used and very liked or most used and not disliked are: Python, C, Javascript, Clojure, Scheme/Racket, Lua, Haskell, Go, C#. Other languages which were most used but disliked include Java, PHP (note that PHP is extremely disliked). Other languages which were highly used but neutral or disliked were Ruby, C++, Objective-C.

other languages which are moderately used include: Scala, Perl
other languages which are often noted are: Erlang, Rust, Visual Basic
the above include only general purpose, Turing-complete languages only, and disregard languages which seem to be considered 'legacy'. The ones which would be above but were excluded by these criteria were Smalltalk (legacy), and non-general purpose languages R, SQL, CSS, Shell, MATLAB (note: R is sorta general purpose, though). An exception was made for Javascript and PHP, which although they are 'special purpose', are so widely used that they are included in the lists above.

This list doesn't include 'new' languages or languages which are not yet used a ton but which seem to be 'trending'.

Based on the above, i might suggest definitely learning both Python and C, and probably Javascript, and after that, prioritizing learning those languages which are either moderately used and very liked or most used but not extremely disliked, that is, the following 10 languages:

Python (most used and liked)
C (most used and liked)
Javascript (most used)

then:

C# (used a lot and liked)
Java (most used but disliked)
Haskell (liked)
Clojure (liked)
Lua (liked)
Scheme/Racket (liked)
Go (liked)

out of the last 7, the ones that are the most different from the Python, C, and Javascript are Haskell and the two Lisps (Clojure and Scheme/Racket), so i might suggest the following course of study:

Python (most used and liked)
C (most used and liked)
Javascript (most used)

then:

Haskell (liked)
Clojure (liked), or Scheme/Racket (liked)

then:

C# (used a lot and liked)
Java (most used but disliked)
Lua (liked)
Go (liked)
whichever of Clojure and Scheme/Racket hasn't been learned yet

To provide some more color on this curriculum:

(todo: clear up the question marks below)

Python (most used and liked): an OOP 'scripting' language that emphasizes readability. Easy to learn. Dynamically typed. Old but under active development.
C (most used and liked): a close-to-the-metal-language (good for efficiency and systems programming). Moderately hard to learn, but only because you must master the concepts of how computer memory and pointers work. Easy to read. Statically typed with a simple type system. Old and no longer under (very much) development.
Javascript (most used): the only language available in most every web browser. OOP scripting (similar to Python). Easy to learn and to read. Dynamically typed. Under active development.

then:

Haskell (liked): extremely expressive (but complex) type system. Difficult to learn, but only because it is so different from everything else. Can be difficult to read. Emphasis on purely functional programming. Statically typed.
Clojure (liked), or Scheme/Racket (liked): Lisps are programming languages with a very simple syntax and core, and powerful metaprogramming facilities. Easy to learn. Can be difficult to read. Lisps are almost all dynamically typed, although some have optional static typing. Lisps tend to support but not require the functional programming style. Clojure is new and is popular because it runs on the JVM platform, allowing you to make use of the huge JVM/Java library ecosystem, as well as the efficiency of the JVM. Scheme is much older; the Racket dialect of Scheme has powerful facilities for experimenting with new programming languages.

then:

C# (used a lot and liked): said to be like a better Java. OOP, statically typed. (how hard to learn and to read?) Currently tied to a Microsoft ecosystem, but Microsoft is trying to change that.
Java (most used but disliked): perhaps the most popular backend programming language. OOP, statically typed. Moderately easy to learn and to read. Huge library ecosystem. Efficient implementation. Well engineered but somewhat verbose. Old but under active development.
Lua (liked): an (OOP?) scripting language with a strong emphasis on staying simple and small. Easy to learn. (how hard to read?) Dynamically typed? Embeddable.
Go (liked): good for programming efficient backend systems, but at a higher level ('higher level' meaning quicker to program but less efficient) compared to C and C++. Statically typed. Easy to learn and to read. New. (is Go OOP?)
whichever of Clojure and Scheme/Racket hasn't been learned yet (see above)

other languages which i almost put on the above list are:

Scala (moderately popular): a multiparadigm (OOP/functional) statically typed language with an expressive (but complex) type system. Moderately hard to learn (and to read?). Runs on the JVM. Fairly widely used. New.
Erlang (liked): good for robust, highly concurrent programs. Old. (dynamically typed?) (how hard to learn? to read?)
Rust (liked): a language which has higher-level semantics than C but which, like C, is a close-to-the-metal language good for efficiency and systems programming. Moderately hard to learn (how hard to read?). Statically typed. Very new.
languages that are widely used but not liked enough to make the list: PHP (for server-side web programming), Ruby (its Rails web framework is popular), C++ (close-to-the-metal zero-overhead OOP backwards-compatible with C), Objective-C (used on the Apple platforms), Perl (good for text munging from the commandline), Visual BASIC (easy-to-learn scripting language on the Microsoft platforms)
widely used but non-general purpose languages (depending on how you define 'general purpose'): SQL (database queries), CSS (web page styling), Shell (commandline), R (statistics), MATLAB (numerical computation)
another oft-mentioned language: OCaml (functional/OOP multiparadigm language; said to be efficient and practical, if a little inelegant), F# (functional/OOP multi-paradigm language on Microsoft's .NET platform)

by source

TIOBE https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ first 17 languages Oct 13:

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

 1 	1 		C 	17.246% 	-2.58% 	  A
 2 	2 		Java 	16.107% 	-1.09% 	  A
 3 	3 		Objective-C 	8.992% 	-0.49% 	  A
 4 	4 		C++ 	8.664% 	-0.60% 	  A
 5 	6 		PHP 	6.094% 	+0.43% 	  A
 6 	5 		C# 	5.718% 	-0.81% 	  A
 7 	7 		(Visual) Basic 	4.819% 	-0.30% 	  A
 8 	8 		Python 	3.107% 	-0.79% 	  A
 9 	23 		Transact-SQL 	2.621% 	+2.13% 	  A
 10 	11 		JavaScript 	2.038% 	+0.78% 	  A
 11 	18 		Visual Basic .NET 	1.933% 	+1.33% 	  A
 12 	9 		Perl 	1.607% 	-0.52% 	  A
 13 	10 		Ruby 	1.246% 	-0.56% 	  A
 14 	14 		Pascal 	0.753% 	-0.09% 	  A
 15 	17 		PL/SQL 	0.730% 	+0.10% 	  A
 16 	13 		Lisp 	0.725% 	-0.22% 	  A
 17 	12 		Delphi/Object Pascal 	0.701% 	-0.40% 	  A

[1]:
- Python is both extremely liked and extremely well-known
- Javascript is extremely well-known and is both liked and disliked.
- Java is extremely well-known and very disliked, and PHP is extremely well-known and extremely disliked.
- C is very well-known and extremely liked.
- Ruby and C++ are very well-known and both liked and disliked. SQL and C# are very well-known and more liked than disliked. Haskell and Go are moderately well-known and very liked.
- Lisp, Scheme, and Lua are not well-known but are very liked, and, to a lesser extent, Clojure, Rust, and Erlang.

Programming Languages sorted by Wilson Score Interval, 2012:

	Here are the HN polled programming language favorite [1] and disliked [2] scores sorted by the Wilson Score Interval [3] at 85% confidence:

    Language       Ups  Downs  85% Confidence
    --------      ----  -----  --------------
    Python        2881    115    0.980
    Clojure        424     21    0.974
    C              912     54    0.971
    Haskell        488     31    0.968
    Lua            140     10    0.961
    Lisp           298     32    0.948
    Erlang         152     18    0.941
    Ruby          1607    220    0.937
    C#             758    104    0.937
    Scheme         177     25    0.932
    OCaml           76     10    0.932
    Smalltalk       62     10    0.918
    Scala          222     40    0.918
    Other          182     37    0.908
    D               50     13    0.880
    JavaScript    1310    415    0.871

JavaScript?
Java
Python
CSS
PHP
Ruby
C++
C
Shell
C#
Objective-C
R

(some comments on flaws in that dataset: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9032226 )

http://redmonk.com/sogrady/category/programming-languages/
- top 10:
- Java
- Javascript
- PHP
- Python
- C++
- CSS
- Objective-C
- C#
- C
- Ruby

http://lesswrong.com/lw/cnp/what_is_the_best_programming_language/6o8w

http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/comp.lang-statistics/
http://www.lextrait.com/vincent/implementations.html
general sense from forums
http://langpop.corger.nl/
http://langpop.com/

random commenter's opinion of what the 'major languages' are:

C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript?, Objective-C, PHP, Python, and Visual Basic [2]

Words used on language-specific forums (subreddits): https://github.com/Dobiasd/programming-language-subreddits-and-their-choice-of-words

http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016

a 2016 [3] for 'makers' (ppl who work on hardware) sent out by hackster.io led to a claim that the top three languages for electronics tinkering are 'C or C++ (including Arduino C', Python, and Javascript ('followed closely by' Java and C#).

jokes:

---

"There are many, many types of assembly languages. The current most popular are ARM, MIPS, and x86" [4]

(that was written in 2010)

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http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/the-2016-top-programming-languages

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http://www.zdnet.com/article/which-programming-languages-are-most-popular-and-what-does-that-even-mean/

---

Empirical Analysis of Programming Language Adoption by Leo A. Meyerovich, Ariel Rabkin

" ...intrinsic features have only secondary importance in adop- tion. Open source libraries, existing code, and experience strongly influence developers when selecting a language for a project. Language features such as performance, reliability, and simple semantics do not. ...when considering intrinsic aspects of languages, developers priori- tize expressivity over correctness. They perceive static types as more valuable for properties such as the former rather than for correctness checking. "

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http://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html

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http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016#technology-most-popular-technologies http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016#technology-most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016#technology-top-tech-on-stack-overflow http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016#technology-top-paying-tech

most loved:

Rust 79.1% Swift 72.1% F# 70.7% Scala 69.4% Go 68.7% Clojure 66.7% React 66.0% Haskell 64.7% Python 62.5% C# 62.0% Node.js 59.6%

---

http://www.connellybarnes.com/documents/language_productivity.pdf

---

https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/10/31/disliked-programming-languages/?cb=1

http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2018/03/07/language-rankings-1-18/

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018#technology-most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted-languages

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018#work-salary-and-experience-by-language

https://thenewstack.io/which-programming-languages-use-the-least-electricity

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-most-loved-and-most-disliked-programming-languages-revealed-in-stack-overflow-survey/

https://www-techrepublic-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.techrepublic.com/google-amp/article/forget-the-most-popular-programming-languages-heres-what-developers-actually-use/?amp_js_v=0.1#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.techrepublic.com%2Farticle%2Fforget-the-most-popular-programming-languages-heres-what-developers-actually-use%2F

https://programminglanguages.info/influence-network/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22231675

https://www.hpcwire.com/2020/07/22/python-again-tops-ieee-spectrums-programming-language-list/

(in response to an article titled "Is Zig the Long Awaited C Replacement")

" Not really, unless it manages to cater the interest of a platform vendor.

As much as I dislike it, fact is that C will stay around as long as UNIX clones, or POSIX implementations exit. So here efforts like Frama-C and Checked C are much more tailored for success.

Then if we look at the OS landscape, we already have a mix of languages replacing C to certain extent.

On mainframes, C was never relevant to start with, so the surviving ones from IBM and Unisys make a mixed use of their original systems programming languages, PL/S and NEWP, mixed mostly with C++. Whatever C like code is used, it is in the context of "compiles as valid C++" still.

On embedded, besides C + language extensions (stuck at C89 in some domains), there are C++ based platforms like Arduino and ARM mbed, microEJ (Java + C), Pascal and Basic (a couple of surviving OEMs are still around), Oberon (Astrobe), Ada, Java and .NET bare metal, TinyGo? and Rust are now doing their baby steps.

The relevancy of C on embedded can be shown by Microsoft adopting it as the only language for Azure Sphere applications, despite the whole sales pitch about IoT? security. Apparently despite all that talk, the market they are targeting is only interesting in buying, if the platform only speaks C. Currently developer requests for C++, C# and Rust support keep being nicely rejected.

On research OSes we have GenodeOS? now going with a mix of Ada/SPARK and C++.

Windows is a mix of C, C++ and .NET, and the market pressure for C has won, as Microsoft gave in to their "you will only need C++ and .NET", and the more recent version of MSVC introduced support for C11 and C17. Most likely also caused by the need to support Azure Sphere and WSL development workflows.

On ChromeOS?, only the Linux kernel is C based, everything else is a mix of JavaScript?, C++ and Rust.

On Android, similarly, we have C for the Linux kernel and "legacy drivers", everything else is a mix of Java and C++. Project Treble also supports writing drivers in Java if one wishes to do so, and the reason why Google is having meetings about using Rust in Linux kernel is related to possible adoption of Rust in the Android world.

Fuschia uses a mix of C++, Rust and Dart. I think none of the original C code still survives as pure C.

Apple platforms use a mix of C, Objective-C, C++ and Swift.

Then we had experimental OSes like Redox (Rust), Powernext (D), in production hypervisors like gVisor (Go), secure firmware like TamaGo? from F-Secure, low level file system drivers like Weka.io (D),...

C++ has gained a new wind on its sails as the main language for GPGPU programming, regardless of used directly or via language bindings. The only thing that might cut it, are better support for GPGPU programming from other languages, or some kind of GPGPU DSLs, then again NVidia is pretty much focused on first class support for C++ on CUDA, so.

Game console SDK are all about C, C++ and now C# (thanks Unity).

So, C replacements already exist, one just needs to step away from C cargo culture that there is no other systems language.

On the other hand, there are domains where no matter what, C will remain the sole king. So we need to fix its warts without throwing away everything.

However, Zig is a welcomed arrival to the party of compiled languages, maybe it will find its niche and make a couple of happier users anyway, even if it never makes a dent replacing C.

That I what I consider a success for programming languages, having their own customer base that keeps the language alive. " pjmlp

---

" The natural fate of almost any language is to die. Only a few get the miracle it takes to survive, as did (only) COBOL, Fortran, C, C++, Python, Java, and Javascript. There was a time when Pascal and Ada looked like they would survive, but the needed miracles did not arrive. ... It is just barely possible Rust and/or Go will survive. If they do, over the years they will get radically more complex. " [5]

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https://research.hackerrank.com/developer-skills/2019

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https://benhoyt.com/writings/count-words/

---

notes on https://earthly.dev/blog/brown-green-language/ :

languages which (a) were in the top 20 in 2016 July 2016 TIOBE, and (b) are in Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2020 The TOP 15 Loved Programming Languages, and (c) are NOT in Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2020 The TOP 15 Dreaded Programming Languages:

Python, C#, Swift, JavaScript?

data: (all data to follow removes VBA, Shell, HTML/CSS):

2016 July 2016 TIOBE: Java, C, C++, C#, Python, PHP, JavaScript?, Swift, Perl, Ruby, Assembly, R, Objective-C, SQL

The TOP 15 Dreaded Programming Languages:

VBA, Objective-C, Perl, Assembly, C, PHP, Ruby, C++, Java, R, Haskell, Scala, HTML, Shell, and SQL.

The TOP 15 Loved Programming Languages:

Rust, TypeScript?, Python, Kotlin, Go, Julia, Dart, C#, Swift, JavaScript?, SQL, Shell, HTML, Scala, and Haskell.

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https://wiki.alopex.li/LanguageCompilationSpeed

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https://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html

--- portability

https://cancel.fm/blog/2019-11/language-fragility/ discussion: https://lobste.rs/s/63vqsu/programming_language_fragility

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https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021

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https://github.com/eatonphil/lisp-rosetta-stone/

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energy benchmarks: https://www.scala-lang.org/blog/2021/12/14/sustainable-scala.html

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https://www.infoworld.com/article/3661248/developer-survey-javascript-and-python-reign-but-rust-is-rising.amp.html summarizing https://www.slashdata.co/free-resources/state-of-the-developer-nation-22nd-edition

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" The Popular And Loved Programming Languages (2022)

Rust, Typescript, Python, Go, C#, Kotlin, JavaScript?

The Popular And Dreaded Programming Languages (2022)

Ruby, C++, Java, PHP, C " according to 2022 Stack Overflow developer survey, via https://earthly.dev/blog/programming-language-improvements/; see footnote https://earthly.dev/blog/programming-language-improvements/#fn1

note that "loved and dreaded" in the Stack Overflow developer is just what percentage of a language's users express interest in continuing to use it

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32488480 (Australian recruiter)

JavaScript?/TypeScript?

Python

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2 points by bshanks on Oct 10, 2013

parent

context

favorite

on: Poll: What are your liked and disliked programming...

Added:

  like+dislike
  like/dislike
  (like/dislike)*log(like)
  (like/(like+dislike))*log(like)
  (likeDirichlet/(likeDirichlet+dislikeDirichlet))
  (likeDirichlet/(likeDirichlet+dislikeDirichlet))*log(likeDirichlet)
  lower bound of confidence interval at 95% level

http://arcane-waters-4617.herokuapp.com/

source: https://github.com/bshanks/lang-rank

3 points by bshanks on Oct 10, 2013 [–]

The resulting lists are quite similar but not identical, so i've analyzed them to find sets of languages that always or almost always appear at the top. I also made the corresponding 'most disliked' lists to find the most disliked languages.

On every 'most liked' list out of the above with some sort of control for wellknown-ness[1], the two most liked languages are C and Python. On every corresponding 'most disliked' list, the most disliked five languages are coldfusion, cobol, visual basic, actionscript, php.

Looking at various lists, the next most after C and Python liked usually tend to be lisp, scheme, lua, haskell. Then clojure, rust, erlang, go. Then sql. Then assembly, C#. Then ocaml, F#.

And after {coldfusion, cobol, visual basic, actionscript, php}, the next most disliked usually tend to be groovy or java.

In other words, the partial ordering seems to be approximately[2]:

  {c, python} >
  {lisp, scheme, lua, haskell} >~ {clojure} >~ {rust, erlang, go} >~ {sql} >~ {assembly, C#} >~ {ocaml, F#}
    > ... >~
  {groovy, java} > 
  {coldfusion, cobol, visual basic, actionscript, php}

It's interesting to contrast this 'most liked (controlling for wellknown)' ordering with the most (like+dislike)d counts, whose top 9 items are javascript, python, java, php, c, ruby, c++, sql, c#:

Python is both extremely liked and extremely well-known
Javascript is extremely well-known and is both liked and disliked.
Java is extremely well-known and very disliked, and PHP is extremely well-known and extremely disliked.
C is very well-known and extremely liked.
Ruby and C++ are very well-known and both liked and disliked. SQL and C# are very well-known and more liked than disliked. Haskell and Go are moderately well-known and very liked.
Lisp, Scheme, and Lua are not well-known but are very liked, and, to a lesser extent, Clojure, Rust, and Erlang.

[1] by which i mean, the six lists (like/dislike), ( (likeDirichlet/(likeDirichlet+dislikeDirichlet)), lower bound of confidence interval at 95% level ), (like/dislike)log(like) ), ( (like/(like+dislike))log(like) ), and ( (likeDirichlet/(likeDirichlet+dislikeDirichlet))*log(likeDirichlet).

[2] where >~ means a relation that holds for many of the lists under consideration, and > means a relation that holds for all of them. "

-- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6530043

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https://engineering.fb.com/2022/07/27/developer-tools/programming-languages-endorsed-for-server-side-use-at-meta/ Hack, C++, Rust, Python

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https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-top-programming-languages-2023

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proj-plbook-plChFavLangs

Favorite programming languages

my favorite languages

My recommended languages

Links

everyone else's favorite languages

summary (subjective)

by source