The Top Programming Languages, Ranked By Popularity

The Top Programming Languages, Ranked By Popularity

If you’re interested in learning to code, for fun or financial gain, this interactive chart from IEEE Spectrum can help you pick the first (or next) language to learn.

It ranks dozens of programming languages against 12 weighted data sources: Google search, Google trends, Github, Stack Overflow, Hacker News, Reddit, Career Builder, Dice, Topsy and IEEE Xplore. In addition to the overall rank, you can view which languages are rapidly growing, are in high demand in the workplace, popular in social sites and open source hubs (such as GitHub and Stack Overflow), or your own custom weighting. You can also filter by language type: web, mobile, enterprise or embedded.

Interestingly enough, Java tops the list for all of the rankings. To account for the weighting to be skewed by people needing help with the languages rather than actual popularity, IEEE Spectrum separated some sources to differentiate between queries that were asking questions versus resources for current coders. See more of the methodology here.

There’s much more to consider when choosing a language than just popularity, but this is an interesting look at the current state of programming languages.

Interactive: The Top Programming Languages [IEEE Spectrum]


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