Three in five developers use JavaScript regularly. However, the notion that familiarity translates to popularity is untre. Python, on the contrary, is seen far more favorably.
That’s according to a British selection of Stack Overflow’s survey of developers. 63 percent of more than 3,000 respondents are using JavaScript regularly. Previous surveys have however already showed that it is continuously among the least liked programming languages. Proportionally, the situation isn’t as dire as it may seen, by the way: the unorthodox Perl was viewed negatively by just about all of its users (96 percent(!)) but barely registers due to its niche usage, according to a JetBrains survey from 2022.
Familiar faces
JavaScript’s pursuers are familiar faces. HTML/CSS (54 percent) is often not even seen as a proper programming language (instead, a markup language, as its name suggests), but regardless: it is used by many. Following behind them are SQL (52 percent) and Python (51 percent), which, with the continued growth of both the database market and AI, have broad applicability. In addition, the latter is a popular proramming language to start with due to its strong high-level nature.
Python remains the preferred programming language for the next 12 months for 43 percent of U.K. respondents. Only 40 percent plan to continue using JavaScript – those plans being upended given its gigantic adoption is rather likely.
Other languages within the British top ten are known entities as well, with Bash/Shell (39 percent), TypeScript (37 percent), C# (34 percent), Java (22 percent), C++ (21 percent) and PowerShell (18 percent) also featuring.
Other results
JavaScript’s dominance is anything but unchallenged. For example, this year’s TIOBE Index landed at Python as the most popular programming language. There, number two is C, the primordial ancestor of virtually all of the programming languages we see today.
Also read: Python more popular than Java in programming language ranking