Top 5 Programming Languages That Could Power Your Future Career

These up-and-coming languages are enjoying a bigger audience.

Which programming languages are on the rise? If you have an idea of that, you can decide which languages to learn — and which to potentially deprioritize.

A language’s long-term growth (or decline) is usually a pretty good indicator of how it’ll fare over the next few years. Analyst firm RedMonk regularly updates its long-term rankings of the world’s top programming languages. Here’s its latest:

In order to monitor languages’ uptake, RedMonk analyzes GitHub pull requests and Stack Overflow discussion (there’s a lengthy description of their methodology on their website). The firm also acknowledges an inherent advantage for well-established languages in a breakdown like this: “While rates of growth will be fastest for new projects with a smaller base, from a cumulative perspective new language entrants are behind from the day they are released. Displacing the most popular languages is a significant and uphill battle.”