It would be an understatement to say it’s been a turbulent year since the last time IEEE Spectrum broke out the digital measuring tools to probe the relative popularity of programming languages. Yet one thing remains constant: the dominance of Python.
Since it’s impossible for even the most aggressive spy agency in the world to find out what language every single programmer uses when they sit down at their keyboards—especially the ones tapping away on retro computers or even programmable calculators—we rely on combining 11 metrics from online sources that we think are good proxies for the popularity of 55 languages.
Because different programmers have different interests and needs, our online rankings are interactive, allowing you to weight the metrics as you see fit. Think one measure is way more valuable than the others? Max it out. Disagree with us about the worth of another? Turn it off. We have a number of preset rankings that focus on things such as emerging languages or what jobs employers are looking to fill (big thanks to CareerBuilder for making it possible to query their database this year, now that it’s no longer accessible using a public application programming language).
