Java, JavaScript, Kotlin and More: 2018 Stats for Development Languages
In 2018 it’s safe to say that any company is a technology company. We’ve entered the time when every industry is fundamentally changed by technology. At the heart of these technologies are programming languages. So, given that development languages are the superpower for change, it’s interesting to find out which ones are currently on a rise.
Development languages: 2017 December
Every year Tiobe identifies trends and stats for development languages. Here are the stats as of December 20
Source: Tiobe
This is what the most popular 20 development languages look like. The stats for all the languages in the list yield 100%, so we can treat the numbers as the “market share” of a given language.
Knowing the most important development languages is essential to defining which ones to learn to fit the market. According to The Github Year in Review most pull requests have been generated in the following development languages:
What’s the present like for the stack we use at SFL?
We use Java for most of SFL’s projects. It has been the number 1 or 2 most popular development language since its creation in 1995. Many of the world’s biggest companies use Java to build desktop apps and backend web systems. If you know Java, chances are you won’t join the unemployed of the world for quite a while.
But why is Java so popular? Well, there’s a number of reasons:
- Portability — Thanks to the platform-agnostic Java Virtual Machine (JVM), Java can run on nearly every system. Being the most popular Android language, it also comprises the majority of Android applications.
- Scalability –Java is built for scalability in mind, so a huge number of enterprises and scaling startups stick to it for developing their solutions. For instance, Twitter moved from Ruby to Java for scaling purposes. Being a statically-typed language, Java is faster and easier to maintain with less bugs. Older versions of Java are supported even when new versions are released which is another benefit.
- Large community — Java boasts huge Stack Overflow and GitHub communities where developers can find help on practically any problem with their Java code.
JavaScript continues to dominate
JavaScript is another development language we use at SFL which continues to rise in popularity. Currently one of the most popular dev languages and number 1 on GitHub in terms of pull requests, this language rose to exceptional dominance in recent years. JavaScript allows developers to add interactive effects to web pages. Often working alongside HTML, it’s becoming more common for web apps to be built entirely in JavaScript.
2018 Programming Language Predictions
Now that we’ve looked at the most popular programming languages as of now, let’s make some 2018 predictions!
Fastest-growing languages
Every year Tiobe identifies the fastest growing language of the year. Recent winners have been C (2017) Go (2016), Java (2015), and JavaScript (2014). Kotlin and C are the candidates to be crowned this year.
Kotlin
Another technology that has moved our interest at SFL is Kotlin, and we have used it in a number of projects here at SFL. 2017 was a big year for Kotlin, the statically-typed programming language from JetBrains. Named an official development language for Android, Kotlin is on a huge rise this year. Kotlin’s 100% interoperability with Java and the fact that is runs on Java Virtual Machine just adds up to its popularity. Kotlin also compiles down into JavaScript, which makes it very versatile for both front and backend development.
This is what the dev language landscape looks like today! Let’s wait and see what 2018 will have in hold!
About this author:
Armine Hakobyan is a content writer with a heart for technology and innovation.
