There’s no rule that says you have to learn the most popular programming languages, but if you want to code for a living it might be beneficial to know what’s in demand and trending.




Over at ZDNet, David Gewirtz, a computer scientist, lecturer, journalist, and author, took a crack at determining the most popular programming language out there—and what that actually means. Using data from PYPL, which looks at the popularity of language tutorials on Google, Tiobe, which uses search engine aggregates to determine popularity, and IEEE Jobs, IEEE Open, and IEEE Trending—a great resource we’ve shared before—Gewirtz developed a pretty encompassing list:

Java

C

Python

C++

JavaScript

C#

PHP

Swift

Objective-C

R



The programming languages also seemed to group themselves into primary, secondary, and third-tier languages. Java, C, Python, and C++ were the most popular by far. Javascript, C#, PHP, and Swift were part of the second most popular group. And Objective-C and R were third-tier. Gewirtz recommends beginning coders start with either C++ or Java, then move into JavaScript. After that, you can work your way into PHP, Swift, or Python depending on the work you want to do. You can learn more about Gewirtz’s research and data aggregation at the link below.


Which programming languages are most popular (and what does that even mean)? | ZDNet