UPDATED 16:33 EDT / JULY 08 2014

IEEE Spectrum’s 2014 ranking crowns Java king with interactive web app

ieee-spectrum-rankingInterested in learning what tops the charts for programming languages devs are using? Check out IEEE Spectrum’s 2014 ranked listing web app—best part: it’s interactive and you can vote.

Recently IEEE Spectrum released a list of the top ranked programming languages developers are using in the field to do their jobs. The list grabs from a set of over 150 languages and boils it down across a multitude of metrics (including Google searches, trends, and Twitter, GitHub, Stack Overflow, Reddit, etc.) to form the geekiest popularity contest on the web. The result: 49 ranked languages.

Looking through the list, 2014 isn’t deviating much from expectations. Java made the top of the list because of its broad use across the enterprise, mobile, and web; and C/C++/C# hit the top five because they’re the bread and butter of developer world.

The top five are the workhorses of every programming portfolio: Java, C, C++, Python, and C#. With web and scripting languages following right behind: PHP, Javascript, and Ruby. Perl landed at 12 for handy scripting. SQL got 11, with big use in the enterprise sector. HTML found itself at 14, being the basis of every web page.

Mobile

For mobile, Java, C, and C++ rule the roost, with C# and Javascript up in the top 10. Further down the main list, Objective-C (16), Scala (17), Delphi (28), Scheme (37), and ActionScript (39.) Much of the mobile industry is dominated by Android—where Java is king, followed by C++—and iOS—with C and Objective-C as primary languages.

Mobile native libraries heavily leverage the middle languages; but as web-display is dominant with ever changing displays there’s always a strong niche for Javascript.

Enterprise

For the enterprise, it’s a solid—although not unexpected—lineup of languages that follow the top five and have been field tested for a long time. Java rolls in as number one, followed by C, C++, Python, and C#. Further down the listing the statistical languages appear with R right above MATLAB.

In recent years, R has become better known because of its significant capabilities with data analysis and its position in the Big Data industry. With IBM developing Big R, which parallelizes R in Hadoop environments; Revolution Analytics is working to scale R to make it enterprise grade; Teradata Aster delivers in-database R; and Pivotal provides PivotalR.

Embedded

Embedded languages have been making inroads for a long time, especially with the rise of the Internet of Things. Developers writing configuration that will live on board programmable objects, to work directly with sensors, or provide extra functionality to other electronics.

In this domain C and C++ lead the pack for embedded. Down at 13 overall is the inescapable Assembly language. Arduino makes it in at 18, which Is an open source platform for prototyping embedded systems and making awesome things—as a result, it’s extremely big in developer and Maker communities.

Further down the list is D—a relatively new language intended to succeed C++, Haskell, and VHDL—a hardware description language for electronic circuits, and Verilog—also a hardware schematic language. Erlang makes it at 34, which found a boost among programmers in the late 90s due to becoming open sourced. TCL appears as well, which is a scripting language originally intended for a UI on UNIX systems.

The IEEE Spectrum rankings do not list Java as an embedded language although it has some applications in that industry.


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