Using pageview statistics from the most developed language versions of Wikipedia we created ranking of the most popular programming languages in April 2020. The international top 10 programming languages includes: Python, JavaScript, Java, COBOL, C++, C, Structured Query Language, PHP, R and Node.js.
Briefly about the methodology
Wikipedia currently has over 53 million articles in over 300 languages. Despite the impressive number of articles, not all topics can be written in this free encyclopedia. At the same time, the community of each language version has the ability to decide which topic can be described in the encyclopedia, and which is not (for example, article must be notable). In addition, each language version can describe the same topic in its own way — it all depends on the quantity and quality of the authors (Wikipedia users who edit articles).
Almost every Wikipedia article has an aligment to certain categories. Additionally, based on the content, you can specify the subject of the article — for this you can, for example, use semantic relations in Wikidata or DBpedia. More details on the automatic article classification process can be found in various scientific works (e.g. for articles or sources).
This article selected the most-developed language versions of Wikipedia with over 1 million articles, including English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Polish and other. After the classification of articles, only those that are dedicated to individual programming languages. As a result for English Wikipedia 1167 articles about programming languages were found, French — 498 programming languages, German — 468 programming languages, Russian — 443 programming languages, Spanish — 405 programming languages, Japanese — 375 programming languages, Portuguese — 359 programming languages, Italian — 338 programming languages, Chinese — 319 programming languages, Polish — 295 programming languages and Arabic — 211 programming languages.
As mentioned earlier, every Wikipedia article can have different language versions, so we can find out different names of the same object (programming language). Using open data on Wikipedia article views we can find out how many times a given article has been viewed on specific days. After collecting data for viewing all Wikipedia articles on programming languages in the appropriate language versions April 2020 ranking of the most popular was made. First, the positions of programming languages in the ranking are shown, which were obtained by adding up the page views from different language versions for a given programming language. Later, the most popular programming languages are shown for only one language version of Wikipedia.
Recently we observed that visitors number for some articles was “overclocked” in some periods of time. Therefore, we decide to provide additional modification of the pageview statistics for such cases and change this number (usually by reduction). Fairness of statistics for each article in selected language version in selected months can be assessed using such indicators as: number of the edits and authors, page protection, the rate of citation increasing of the article, popularity statistics of related keywords (phrases) in Google Trends and others.
1st place — Python
Python — An interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language. Created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991, Python’s design philosophy emphasizes code readability with its notable use of significant whitespace., in April 2020 the programming language was on the 1st place in German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, on the 2nd place in Polish and on the 3rd place in Arabic Wikipedia.
2nd place — JavaScript
JavaScript — programming language, in April 2020 the programming language was on the 2nd place in Arabic, French, Portuguese, on the 3rd place in German, English, Italian, on the 4th place in Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Chinese and on the 6th place in Polish Wikipedia.
3rd place — Java
Java — object-oriented programming language, in April 2020 the programming language was on the 1st place in Arabic, on the 2nd place in Japanese, on the 3rd place in Spanish, Russian, Chinese, on the 4th place in French, Portuguese, on the 5th place in English, Italian, Polish and on the 10th place in German Wikipedia.
4th place — COBOL
COBOL — object-oriented programming language, in April 2020 the programming language was on the 2nd place in German, English, on the 7th place in Japanese, Polish, on the 9th place in Chinese, on the 12th place in French, on the 13th place in Italian, Portuguese, on the 14th place in Russian, on the 15th place in Spanish and on the 25th place in Arabic Wikipedia.
5th place — C++
C++ — general purpose high-level programming language, in April 2020 the programming language was on the 2nd place in Spanish, Russian, Chinese, on the 3rd place in Polish, on the 4th place in Arabic, on the 6th place in German, English, on the 7th place in Italian, Portuguese, on the 8th place in French and Japanese Wikipedia.
6th place — C
C — general-purpose programming language, in April 2020 the programming language was on the 3rd place in Japanese, Portuguese, on the 4th place in English, on the 5th place in French, on the 6th place in Arabic, Spanish, Italian, on the 8th place in Chinese, on the 9th place in Russian, on the 10th place in Polish and on the 11th place in German Wikipedia.
7th place — Structured Query Language
Structured Query Language — programming language for management and use of relational databases, in April 2020 the programming language was on the 4th place in German, Polish, on the 5th place in Spanish, Chinese, on the 6th place in Japanese, Russian, on the 8th place in Arabic, Portuguese, on the 9th place in English, Italian and on the 13th place in French Wikipedia.
8th place — PHP
PHP — web page scripting language, in April 2020 the programming language was on the 3rd place in French, on the 5th place in German, on the 7th place in Arabic, English, Spanish, on the 8th place in Polish, Russian, on the 9th place in Portuguese, on the 10th place in Italian, Japanese and Chinese Wikipedia.
9th place — R
R — language and environment for statistical computing and graphics, in April 2020 the programming language was on the 6th place in Portuguese, on the 8th place in German, English, on the 9th place in French, on the 11th place in Spanish, on the 14th place in Chinese, on the 15th place in Italian, Japanese, Polish, on the 19th place in Russian and on the 23rd place in Arabic Wikipedia.
10th place — Node.js
Node.js — Server-side JavaScript framework, in April 2020 the programming language was on the 5th place in Portuguese, on the 6th place in Chinese, on the 7th place in German, French, on the 10th place in Russian, on the 11th place in Polish, on the 12th place in English, on the 13th place in Spanish, on the 14th place in Italian, on the 16th place in Japanese and on the 17th place in Arabic Wikipedia.
The most popular programming languages in Arabic Wikipedia
- Java — object-oriented programming language
- JavaScript — programming language
- Python — An interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language. Created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991, Python’s design philosophy emphasizes code readability with its notable use of significant whitespace.
- C++ — general purpose high-level programming language
- Visual Basic — event-driven programming language
- C — general-purpose programming language
- PHP — web page scripting language
- Structured Query Language — programming language for management and use of relational databases
- C# — multi-paradigm (object-oriented) programming language
- Scratch — programming language learning environment
The most popular programming languages in Chinese Wikipedia
- Python — An interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language. Created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991, Python’s design philosophy emphasizes code readability with its notable use of significant whitespace.
- C++ — general purpose high-level programming language
- Java — object-oriented programming language
- JavaScript — programming language
- Structured Query Language — programming language for management and use of relational databases
- Node.js — Server-side JavaScript framework
- Go — programming language
- C — general-purpose programming language
- COBOL — object-oriented programming language
- PHP — web page scripting language
The most popular programming languages in English Wikipedia
- Python — An interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language. Created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991, Python’s design philosophy emphasizes code readability with its notable use of significant whitespace.
- COBOL — object-oriented programming language
- JavaScript — programming language
- C — general-purpose programming language
- Java — object-oriented programming language
- C++ — general purpose high-level programming language
- PHP — web page scripting language
- R — language and environment for statistical computing and graphics
- Structured Query Language — programming language for management and use of relational databases
- Go — programming language
The most popular programming languages in French Wikipedia
- Python — An interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language. Created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991, Python’s design philosophy emphasizes code readability with its notable use of significant whitespace.
- JavaScript — programming language
- PHP — web page scripting language
- Java — object-oriented programming language
- C — general-purpose programming language
- Unified Modeling Language — Developed by Grady Booch, Ivar Jacobson and James Rumbaugh.
- Node.js — Server-side JavaScript framework
- C++ — general purpose high-level programming language
- R — language and environment for statistical computing and graphics
- PowerShell — cross-platform command-line interface and scripting language for system and network administration
The most popular programming languages in German Wikipedia
- Python — An interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language. Created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991, Python’s design philosophy emphasizes code readability with its notable use of significant whitespace.
- COBOL — object-oriented programming language
- JavaScript — programming language
- Structured Query Language — programming language for management and use of relational databases
- PHP — web page scripting language
- C++ — general purpose high-level programming language
- Node.js — Server-side JavaScript framework
- R — language and environment for statistical computing and graphics
- Unified Modeling Language — Developed by Grady Booch, Ivar Jacobson and James Rumbaugh.
- Java — object-oriented programming language
The most popular programming languages in Italian Wikipedia
- Python — An interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language. Created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991, Python’s design philosophy emphasizes code readability with its notable use of significant whitespace.
- assembly language — any low-level programming language in which there is a very strong correspondence between the instructions in the language and the architecture’s machine code instructions
- JavaScript — programming language
- GNU Bash — GNU replacement for the Bourne shell
- Java — object-oriented programming language
- C — general-purpose programming language
- C++ — general purpose high-level programming language
- C# — multi-paradigm (object-oriented) programming language
- Structured Query Language — programming language for management and use of relational databases
- PHP — web page scripting language
The most popular programming languages in Japanese Wikipedia
- Python — An interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language. Created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991, Python’s design philosophy emphasizes code readability with its notable use of significant whitespace.
- Java — object-oriented programming language
- C — general-purpose programming language
- JavaScript — programming language
- PowerShell — cross-platform command-line interface and scripting language for system and network administration
- Structured Query Language — programming language for management and use of relational databases
- COBOL — object-oriented programming language
- C++ — general purpose high-level programming language
- C# — multi-paradigm (object-oriented) programming language
- PHP — web page scripting language
The most popular programming languages in Polish Wikipedia
- Scratch — programming language learning environment
- Python — An interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language. Created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991, Python’s design philosophy emphasizes code readability with its notable use of significant whitespace.
- C++ — general purpose high-level programming language
- Structured Query Language — programming language for management and use of relational databases
- Java — object-oriented programming language
- JavaScript — programming language
- COBOL — object-oriented programming language
- PHP — web page scripting language
- C# — multi-paradigm (object-oriented) programming language
- C — general-purpose programming language
The most popular programming languages in Portuguese Wikipedia
- Python — An interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language. Created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991, Python’s design philosophy emphasizes code readability with its notable use of significant whitespace.
- JavaScript — programming language
- C — general-purpose programming language
- Java — object-oriented programming language
- Node.js — Server-side JavaScript framework
- R — language and environment for statistical computing and graphics
- C++ — general purpose high-level programming language
- Structured Query Language — programming language for management and use of relational databases
- PHP — web page scripting language
- Unified Modeling Language — Developed by Grady Booch, Ivar Jacobson and James Rumbaugh.
The most popular programming languages in Russian Wikipedia
- Python — An interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language. Created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991, Python’s design philosophy emphasizes code readability with its notable use of significant whitespace.
- C++ — general purpose high-level programming language
- Java — object-oriented programming language
- JavaScript — programming language
- Pascal — programming language
- Structured Query Language — programming language for management and use of relational databases
- C# — multi-paradigm (object-oriented) programming language
- PHP — web page scripting language
- C — general-purpose programming language
- Node.js — Server-side JavaScript framework
The most popular programming languages in Spanish Wikipedia
- Python — An interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language. Created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991, Python’s design philosophy emphasizes code readability with its notable use of significant whitespace.
- C++ — general purpose high-level programming language
- Java — object-oriented programming language
- JavaScript — programming language
- Structured Query Language — programming language for management and use of relational databases
- C — general-purpose programming language
- PHP — web page scripting language
- Visual Basic — event-driven programming language
- Scratch — programming language learning environment
- assembly language — any low-level programming language in which there is a very strong correspondence between the instructions in the language and the architecture’s machine code instructions
The most popular programming languages in other months are available on https://wikirank.net/top/programming
