I agree, I think it makes most sense to add them up to be the true #2.

Then you should probably add kotlin and java together as well. They share the same purpose, use the same VM, usually live in the same project, have native compatibility, are used with the same frameworks, etc.

Especially considering Kotlin is used as a drop in replacement for Java in a lot of projects. Especially when using the type of frameworks often associated with Java (Spring, Quarkus, etc.).

Personally, I think statistics like this are biased towards the median of the past few decades and do not necessarily tell much about the future; other than that things apparently move very slowly and people are mostly conservative and stuck in their ways.

Cobol is still in that list. Right above Elixir, which apparently is a bit of a niche language. Kotlin has only been around for about 15 years, and the 1.0 release was actually only nine years ago. Java was released 30 years ago and it's been dominant in enterprise development for 25 years now. So, no surprise that Java is nearer to the top.

Python is surprising but it's been around for quite long and gained a lot of popularity outside the traditional computer science crowd. I know biochemists, physicists, etc. that all use python. And it's a great language for beginners obviously. It's not so much that people switched to python but that it is driving the growth of the overall programmer community. Most new programmers use python these days and that explains why it is the #1.

Javascript has had a virtual monopoly on basically anything that runs in a browser, which is of course the most popular way to distribute code these days. Especially since plugins were deprecated and things like applets, flash, etc. disappeared around fifteen years ago. Anything that ran on the web was either written in Javascript; or transpiled/compiled to it. WASM is starting to change that but it's early days.

What the past 25 years tell us is that things definitely change. But very slowly. C++ still outranks Javascript. That's because it's mostly browsers where it is used. It's a lot less popular for other things.

I like Kotlin, so I'm biased. But it's obviously not the most popular thing by a long shot. But popular doesn't mean good. I actually like python for small unimportant things. But I reach for Kotlin if I need to do it properly. I used to reach for Java. But Kotlin simply became the better tool for the job; at least for me. I even prefer it over typescript and I do occasionally use it for web frontend development. The transpiler is pretty good. And there's a WASM compiler too and Compose for WASM just entered beta. Kotlin seems future proof and it seems to be growing into wider adoption. There are a few million programmers around by Jetbrains counts. It's not nothing.

C++ is still very popular where you need raw perfomance but not so raw as C. Especially with the fact that python is used as a more user friendly interface.

True. Pretty much every Kotlin recruitment message I got was because of past Java experience, so the job market seems to agree with you.

JS is a valid TS, Kotlin is not a valid Java (only at a bytecode level, but then you might as well combine all JVM languages).

But TS is not valid JS and nobody uses TS because they can write JS in a file with a different extension. You also get 0 benefit from running `tsc` on a JS file. You could argue that C is valid C++ so there's no reason to discern them either.

> You could argue that C is valid C++ so there's no reason to discern them either.

Only up to C90, and even modern C++ doesn’t fully implement modern C.

JS is a valid TS.

> Kotlin is not a valid Java

But you can easily have both of them in the same project (e.g. when slowly moving to kotlin) and have them interop.

You can also easily have Objective-C, C, and C++ in the same Swift project and have them interop. That’s a feature of Swift. But adding their numbers together wouldn’t make sense.

It doesn’t make it valid Java. You can paste JS verbatim to TS file and it will work.

That applies to all JVM languages no?

Java devs at large are generally not excited about writing Scala.

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

I like where Scala 3 is headed (finally). Martin seems to realize that the simpler "direct" programming model is better and that will make the language more attractive to regular people who aren't FP purists. Though it does feel like it might be too little too late.

And Clojure and Scala. So really Clojure is number 2. :-)

Add Scala in there, while you're at it!

Don't forget Jruby and Groovy.

Touche!

You could make a separate graph with "platform" or "language family" so you do js/ts, jvm, .net/clr, C/C++ etc.

That one is perhaps more interesting from an industry/jobs trend perspective whereas the TS vs JS trend is also interesting on its own.

JS is a valid TS, so there’s no reason to discern them.

And #1 on the jobs chart

I agree. These should be combined. Also, what is Arduino doing on this list?

Agreed. There’s a few consolidations I’d prefer, including BEAM-based languages as one.

Then also app up Java&Kotlin and C&C++.

Ooh, then JS&TS are not number two!