JavaScript remains the most popular programming language among developers, according to survey

According to analyst firm SlashData’s latest survey of developers, JavaScript is the most popular programming language in the world for 2020, with Python and Java taking up the silver and bronze medals respectively.

The firm’s State of the Developer Nation Q3 2020 survey queried more than 17,000 developers across 159 countries. It covered popular programming languages, developer attitudes to open-source software, adoption of DevOps, and the utilization of cloud technologies and tools like Kubernetes. You can check out the findings below.

The survey revealed a familiar name as its popular programming language at this point in time: JavaScript. With 12.4 million developers using it worldwide, JavaScript’s adoption across the board has been astronomical, to say the least.

The survey went on to estimate that around five million developers have joined the JavaScript community since 2017, which hints at the immense utility that developers have found within the language over the past few years.

“Even in software sectors where JavaScript is least popular, like data science or AR/VR, over a fifth of developers use it in their projects,” SlashData commented.

While the survey certainly revealed JavaScript’s dominance across various fields of development, it also indicated the rise of two languages that need no introduction at all. With Python having gained 2.2 million developers over the past year, and Java having added 1.7 million individuals to its army of developers, the two languages can’t be ignored in any conversation of programming languages.

Considered the ideal option for machine learning, data science, and IoT applications, Python has been heavily adopted by individuals ranging from economics students to data science researchers.

CEO Anaconda Peter Wang expressed that it was “kind of a miracle that Python is even on the radar, much less ranked in the top three languages”, considering how it is more or less neglected when it comes to mobile and application user interface development.

While Python now stands proud with nine million developers worldwide, Java doesn’t lag too far behind with an estimated 8.2 million developers across the globe. While Java is kind of getting used to settling for third place – it was overtaken by JavaScript and Python in Stack Overflow’s 2020 developer survey as well – it is still a hugely useful language which has gained more than one million developers since 2017, despite having not grown at all over the past six months. And with 51 billion Java Virtual Machines (JVMs) deployed globally, you best believe it remains relevant.