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I am interested in reading more about their methodology. They seek to rank by “popularity” but thats a very fuzzy term. I expected to see Javascript #1 based on how common it is. Which owes itself to being the only option (outside of the WASM niche) for front end web development, in addition to being fairly general purpose (node, electron, mobile). So im surprised to see it at #5 and less than half the score of python.

For example, search Indeed for software engineer jobs and filter by programming languages. Last I checked JavaScript had far and away the most results. And it becomes clear why - basically any web development position requires it. Python + JS, C# + JS, Ruby + JS, JS (node, ts, etc) + JS, etc.

Again, it depends on how you define “popular.”



It's linked here: https://spectrum.ieee.org/top-programming-languages-methodol...

Essentially, it's a weighted metric of:

* Number of google search results for "X programming language" (w/ quotes)

* Number of questions asked about the language last month in StackOverflow

* Number of academic publications that mentioned "X programming" last year

* Number of job postings (on two different sites)

* Github repository counts (based on stars or recent PRs)

* Number of books published last year about said programming language

* Number of discords tagged with said programming language


Likewise how does Visual Basic have more jobs than Swift.

I suspect they are looking for keywords in job titles and missing the fact that iOS development = Swift just as Web development = Javascript.


There are more Excel databases in the wild than any of us could reasonably fathom.


“Excel databases” - this pains me


How about "Excel Developer"?


oof >.<

assuming not a Microsoft employee on the Excel team


Wow that’s a good point. I see no way that could be true.


I dunno, never underestimate the amount of legacy that exists in the vast majority of corporations. I've come across far more VB developers in non-tech companies then swift developers.


TIL that Prolog is only slightly less popular than ABAP. I mean I'm a big big Prolog fan, but as a niche language for constraint solving and similar stuff; there's no way that Prolog is used as much as ABAP (SAP's language), so usage can't be the criterion for popularity here indeed.


ABAP is mostly maintenance nowadays, since SAP has added Java support.

Additionally, SAP cloud supports extensibility via containers and Web APIs.


Job postings is even an inaccurate way to measure. Often companies like Amazon will have one posting and hire K people- everyone who passed the bar- and all of them will be programming in Java, typically.


If you add the JS and TS values together, it would immediately overtake Java for the #2 spot.




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