I’ve been exploring Google Trends for programming languages using the search term “<language> tutorial” (à la PYPL). I gauged level of interest relative to Java and averaged it for each year. I measured 2015 against 2014. I chose the following 28 languages for my “basket” of comparison:

Language Share Share increase over 2014 1. Java 24.019 -0.333

2. Python 11.249 1.233

3. PHP 10.928 -1.001

4. C# 8.925 -0.148

5. C++ 7.598 -0.426

6. C 7.323 -0.201

7. JavaScript 7.136 -0.069

8. Go 2.994 0.076

9. Matlab 2.783 -0.148

10. R 2.777 0.379

11. Swift 2.684 1.188

12. Ruby 2.37 -0.122

13. Visual Basic 1.949 -0.51

14. D 1.516 0.138

15. Perl 1.167 -0.209

16. Objective-C 0.858 -0.111

17. Scala 0.841 0.222

18. Lua 0.487 -0.047

19. Delphi 0.46 -0.085

20. Groovy 0.444 0.037

21. Haskell 0.29 0.012

22. Rust 0.275 0.036

23. Clojure 0.274 0.009

24. Julia 0.261 0.02

25. TypeScript 0.24 0.24

26. Erlang 0.154 -0.037

27. F# 0 0

28. Dart 0 -0.141

(Languages like Elixir, Kotlin, Vala, Nemerle, and Nim just don’t register because their search volumes are too low. Having looked at the raw data for the last 8 languages–Haskell to Dart–I would suggest that they’re mostly statistical noise and therefore their ranking should be taken with a grain of salt.)

As you can see, the top languages that garnered the most searches were Java, Python, PHP, C#, C++, C, and JavaScript. Well behind were the stragglers, such as D, Scala, Haskell, and Rust.

F# was the big surprise — its search volume was too low to register!

Note: Dart fell off the grid in 2015 when its search volume dropped too low.

Language Share Share increase over 2014 Python 11.249 1.233

Swift 2.684 1.188

R 2.777 0.379

TypeScript 0.24 0.24

Scala 0.841 0.222

D 1.516 0.138

Go 2.994 0.076

Groovy 0.444 0.037

Rust 0.275 0.036

Julia 0.261 0.02

Haskell 0.29 0.012

Clojure 0.274 0.009

F# 0 0

Erlang 0.154 -0.037

Lua 0.487 -0.047

JavaScript 7.136 -0.069

Delphi 0.46 -0.085

Objective-C 0.858 -0.111

Ruby 2.37 -0.122

Dart 0 -0.141

C# 8.925 -0.148

Matlab 2.783 -0.148

C 7.323 -0.201

Perl 1.167 -0.209

Java 24.019 -0.333

C++ 7.598 -0.426

Visual Basic 1.949 -0.51

PHP 10.928 -1.001

Interestingly, the languages that grew the most in the ranking over 2014 were Python, Swift, R, TypeScript, and Scala. Go grew respectably, at least more so than Rust or Haskell.

The last half dozen shrank significantly and PHP, in particular, fell off a cliff!

Consider this the State of the Union for programming languages over the past two years.