Top 10 Programming Languages in 2021

GitHub just released their "State of the Octoverse" report, that among other things includes the top 10 programming languages. This data was taken from a combination of developer surveys and GitHub data mining.

GitHub State of the Octoverse Report:

[MiiDev]

The best programming language is the one that pays your bills. The same can be said about game engines and other technologies.

I am a hardcore C++ fanatic, but C# and Python paid my bills far longer than C++ has.

[Theraot]

Honestly, C++ is king in AI. But most people "in AI" are not doing AI, but creating application around existing AI tools and models, and for that Python is a great glue.

[CapnSlipp]

Shell languages are totally Turing-complete. They can parse arbitrary inputs, produce arbitrary output (though usually through a limited interface of integers, strings, and maps of strings), make logical flow control decisions, and loop and other flow control stuff. They may not be best for anything other than basic string parsing and decision trees, but you could totally rewrite any OS or other app in Bash or other shells… with a bunch of work arounds and funky syntax, and a lot of patience.

[masonwheeler]

6:18: "Java and C# kind of set out to solve the same problem, basically cross-platform C++ level without the C++ headaches."

Sort of. C# was created when Microsoft wanted to make some improvements on Java and Sun didn't want to let them, and were insistent enough about not wanting to let them that they got lawyers involved. So Microsoft basically built their own Java-like system, with some very significant improvements in its design, having learned from Java's mistakes. So Java set out to solve the problems of C++, and C# set out to solve the problems of Java.

[SteelSkin]

Java's enduring popularity comes from the enterprise world, where it is still dominant. It is robust, scalable, and more importantly a known quantity. It definitely isn't used as much outside of that context, although I use Java for web development myself, because I come from that background, so that's what I know.
A bit surprised that Typescript appears on that list, when it essentially just compiles down to Javascript. It's a fantastic tool, but I really see it as a preprocessor for Javascript.

[nolram]

PHP is a recursive acronym for "PHP hates programmers"

[Samsam-kllk]

I think java is still being used a lot by universities to teach OOP, and it's also pretty common in android apps I think

[maynk]

Thigh Rolling >>> Drum Rolling

[tofo]

Enterpise software runs on Java as well as anrdoid. Prob the reason why its still on 3rd.

[jakecb]

Java is a slow mover because of its use by government contractors in the late 90s and 00s... Java will have a slow decline over the next 40 years as government contracts around the world expire. If Oracle actually upgrades it to make it "badass", it may never go away.

[horndude]

In a lot of big companies Java is still popular for back-end services. It's pretty performant (given enough memory :) ). It's easy to hire engineers that are proficient in Java. It's improved a ton over time. I'd take it over C# any day. I think it has a bright future. Also there are other languages that run on the JVM which interface well with Java code (Kotlin, Scala, Clojure). Honestly the way you're talking about it, it sounds like you haven't spent time in Java in the past decade.

That said, I'm excited about the non-garbage collection memory safety that Rust offers. Rust also fixes the 'null' issues in other programming languages. Those two points alone are big selling points in addition to all the other niceties it has.

[xeroxparc]

Several people mentioned how Java is big on the enterprise but it's dominant universities too, that's the language I was taught OOP and also colleagues from other universities, so there's lot of bias towards it from people who will take leathership/decision making roles, which means a lot od new projects using this language, I think Java will be on the top ten for a few decades at least.

[mcKrawll]

Colleges use Java (at least most of them do)! Especially junior colleges. But it looks like more colleges are going back to C++.

[TheHronar]

As a PHP developer, it WAS a horrible language.
Instead of continuing to bash it as a language, you really should take another look at it. It has come a long way and is continuing to improve exponentially with every major release.

[clumsyjester]

Just started out as a web developer at a company that predominantly uses Ruby and I have to say it is a really nice language. For me it was always in the same boat as Python, so I never bothered to learn it. On day one it was really weird, especially its block-syntax, but you get accustomed to that very quickly and it's actually great. I don't know why it's falling in popularity. Maybe Python was a tiny bit faster and got all the AI researchers using it, but apart from that the drop in popularity seems kinda unjustified to me.

[genkidama]

not a sane person would choose javascript

[j_atkinson]

Python is #2 because it's a great utility language, great for test and build automation, used as embedded engine in game systems, just used all over the place not just data science and data mining and machine learning. I'm a C/C++ and Python programmer coming from embedded systems world. I agree with your assessment on Java, C# is the better Java, but Java is so entrenched that it will be a long time before it falls out of the top 10.

[HE]

I want to see BASIC come back. It is literally my favorite programming language.

[JermaineMorgan]

I have been wanting to learn C lately. Just seems like a decent personal project.

[willkessner]

I think I lot of the Java usage comes from students. AP programming is Java, and I think a lot of colleges use it to teach too, either that, Python, or C most of the time. I personally thought Java deserved to die, and then I started actually using it because I started taking AP Java, and now I’m pretty comfortable with it and would default to it despite previously thinking it worthless.
There’s also people learning coding purely for Minecraft. And one of the other reasons I gravitate to it is because the tooling is very well developed, and using something like VSCode it is a really smooth dev experience whereas something like Nim or even Go is a bit tougher to set up.