Individuals and companies across the globe are seeking to make work easier and faster. Programming language is thus critical in developing software and applications to meet the demand.
There are thousands of programming languages developed to tackle specific needs in the market. They include those that deal with programming websites, developing business software, and those used by statisticians, among others.
Several ways are used to rank programming languages, such as the number of job ads that contain the name of a programming language, number of websites built with them, or by gauging how popular a programming language is over the others.
We have compiled a list of the most popular programming languages as suggested by the Redmonk Programming Language Rankings, TIOBE Index, and the annual Stack Overflow developer survey.
Java
This programming language has been in existence for over 20 years. Java was developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems. It has since been acquired by Oracle Corporation. It was released in 1995. Used for Android app development as well as business software, Oracle’s Java has become a household name in this sector.
C: Developed by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Laboratories in 1972, C is one of the oldest programming languages still being used today. In 1978, Ritchie and Brian Kernighan published the first edition “The C Programming Language” also known as K&R C. The C programming language has been used to develop Windows, UNIX, and Linux.
Python
Python is one of the new languages released by Guido Van Rossum in the early 90s. It has capabilities which emphasize code readability making it one of the easiest to try out first. It is said that Rossum created Python as an interpretation of a language called ABC. He sought to resolve some of ABC’s problems and keep some of its resourceful features.
PHP
Commonly used for programming websites even today, PHP was created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994. It was never intended to be a new programming language but a set of tools to help Rasmus maintain his Personal Home Page. Today, PHP (Hypertext Pre-Processor) is a scripting language used by many sites like Facebook, WordPress, and Yahoo.
Visual Basic
It is one of the latest programming languages developed by Microsoft. It makes programming easier as it is a Rapid Application Development (RAD) system that enables programmers to quickly build applications. Visual Basic is no longer ‘Basic’. The programming language has evolved to incorporate functionality, and performance of other well-built programming languages such as C Sharp (C#).
JavaScript
It should not be confused with Java. In fact it doesn’t have much to do with Java besides sharing the name. JavaScript is a mega-popular programming language majorly used in web applications. One way JavaScript is used in modern day programming is to add effects to web pages, such as display pop-up messages. Every website including the World Wide Web incorporates some element of JavaScript to boost the user experience. With such demands by developers, the JavaScript has gained massive popularity. It was created by Brendan Eich in 1995 when working at Netscape.
R
This is a free software targeted for statisticians, and those interested in data analysis, and graphics. It was developed by John Chambers and colleagues at what was called Bell Laboratories.
There are many more programming languages used by developers across the world including Google’s Go, Groovy, Ruby, Perl, Pascal, and Swift among others. The table below captures some of the most popular programming languages in 2017.