Most popular programming languages

[TempodiBasic]

about programming languages and the ride: what is the best? What is more used? What is more requested?

here a fine hystorical point of view about sprider language fpr each year till 2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qogEJSNZTPA

[mnrvovrfc]

Apparently, starting with Windows 7, Visual Basic .Net comes pre-installed with Windows.
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Not sure why VB.Net doesn't get much love - I really like it!  For simple Console quick and dirty programs, it is great!

Your last sentence nails it.  An openly available c/l compiler could be VERY useful for q'n'd tasks, but all I had ever heard about until recently were MS's multi-gigabyte development systems & IDE's, which I will not allow on my machines.
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For simple quick-and-dirty programs, for me Lua has been my savior. I was compelled to learn it while I couldn't get into Windows7 due to a bad hard-disk crash and force-booted into 32-bit Ubuntu Studio out of an external USB disk for about three years.

M$VB-dot-NET might come with Windows but where's the documentation? What if you cannot have online access and want to use it? No hope neither to use Powershell without documentation, unless Visual Studio was downloaded. Might be able to acquire a chunk of M$DN but it's a mess I'd rather avoid if not discussing Win32 API. @JRace I'm just like you, I've tried it only to get Terra to run and failed. Very disgusting for a compiler-like "super" Lua, which EXE file is 86MB to require over 13GB of dependencies?

[Kernelpanic]

here a fine hystorical point of view about sprider language fpr each year till 2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qogEJSNZTPA

Very interesting, but something is wrong here! It's missing Modula 2, the language that was seen as the successor to Fortran from the mid-1980s. But apparently nobody was found who converted the entire library from Fortran to Modula - the easier way was chosen: Fortran was adapted to the new requirements.

And HTML is not a programming language, but a page description language.

Modula 2 example:

Code: (Select All)

(*Modula 2 *)

MODULE Fakultaet;
FROM InOut IMPORT ReadCard, WriteLn, WriteString, WriteCard;

VAR Zaehler, Eingabe, Fakultaet: CARDINAL;

BEGIN  (*Beginn des Hauptprogramms*)
    WriteString("Brechnung der Fakultät. - Geben Sie eine Zahl ein: ");
    ReadCard(Eingabe);
    WriteLn;
    Fakultaet:=1;   (*Initialisieren*)
    FOR Zaehler:=1 TO Eingabe DO
    Fakultaet:=Fakultaet * Zaehler;
END;   (*Ende Hauptprogramm*)

    WriteCard(Fakultaet, 5);
End Fakultaet.

[Kernelpanic]

There is still one language missing that used to be quite popular: Forth
It was so popular that there was even a well-known book about the language at the time: Thinking Forth.

I played around with it a bit too. In Forth, calculations are made after the UPS, like the HP calculators; I still have one of the first ones, the HP 28C.

In case anyone is interested: Programing in Forth

[dcromley]

Gosh, is FORTH still around!?

I got into FORTH on the Radio Shack COCO computer.  The 6809 was a good CPU for FORTH.
I am even on the internet! (pg 25)  http://www.forth.org/fd/FD-V04N6.pdf

As always, somebody does a good job in Wikipedia:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_(pro..._language)

Here is a code sample from page 180:

Exercize 2.15: Suppose the variables TEMP and HEATER-SWITCH have been declared
as part of an industrial simulation. TEMP holds a simulated temperature and
HEATERSWITCH holds a value that indicates whether a simulated heater is on or off.
Code a word STC (``simulate temperature change'') which has the following spec.

If the value held in HEATER-SWITCH is non zero, add 2 to the value held in TEMP,
otherwise subtract 1 from the value held in TEMP.

Solution 2.15:

Code: (Select All)

: STC \ -
  HEATER-SWITCH @
  IF  2  ELSE  -1  THEN
  TEMP +!
;

[Kernelpanic]

Gosh, is FORTH still around!?

Yes, it still exists and is also used:

The earliest known applications were controls for radio telescopes and astronomical and space observatories. Other applications in the technical and scientific field came later. Used on the Galileo spacecraft in 1989, Forth was one of the first high-level languages in space; until then, assembly languages were mostly used for such systems.[5][6] The Philae space probe, known for landing on a comet in 2014, was also programmed in Forth.

[TDarcos]

Good morning everyone, my name is Paul, TDarcos is the username I've been using in one place or another going all the way back to the BBS era of the 1990s. This is my first posting here. Basic was the first language I ever learned to write programs using. Since then, I've probably learned a dozen different languages, each having strengths and weaknesses.

Now, as for the topic here, what is meant by "most popular programming language"? Does that mean
* Most favorite to write programs in?
* Largest number of people who know the language?
* Most number of applications written using? or
* Most often used language to write programs by number of lines of executable code?"
Each of those will produce a different answer, depending on when you ask the question.

Up to probably 1980, if you asked these questions then, you'd probably get something like this:
* Most favorite to write programs in? Some form of Basic was probably the case.
* Largest number of people who know the language? or
* Most number of applications written using? and
* Most often used language to write programs by number of lines of executable code? The answer for all three was almost certainly COBOL, most applications were in-house done by employees of a business. It didn't hurt, back then, that any company that wanted to sell computers to the US Federal government, had to have a COBOL compiler. that met ANSI Cobol standards

With the development of the PC this might have changed. Going up the 1990s it was probably something like
* Most favorite to write programs in? If I have to guess either Basic or Pascal
* Largest number of people who know the language? Cobol still might have been popular - we still had a lot of apps on mainframes and minicomputers, but some of the others like Basic or Pascal, possibly C. Or if we include people who didn't consider themselves programmers, but did write some form of code to automate a task, then it's probably Lotus 1-2-3 macro language.
* Most number of applications written using? Probably same as previous question, This was "the last hurrah" of Cobol, but other languages like Basic, C, and Pascal were gaining. This would also be the high-water mark for Pascal.
* Most often used language to write programs by number of lines of executable code? Probably still Cobol, but C was becoming a choice for portable programming languages, plus less programming was done on "big iron" (minicomputers and mainframes) or "dinosaur mainframes."


Going up to 2000

* Most favorite to write programs in? and*
* Most number of applications written using? C or C++
* Largest number of people who know the language? C
* Most often used language to write programs by number of lines of executable code? C
I'm not talking about by huge numbers. C might be #1 with 10% or 20% of all applications (as a wild guess) but the other 80% is split among probably 50+ different languages.

Now? There are surveys and if I remember it would be something like

* Most favorite to write programs in? Python, Javascript or C#
* Most number of applications written using? Java, Javascripot, C# or C++
* Largest number of people who know the language? Java or C++
* Most often used language to write programs by number of lines of executable code? C++, with Java close behind

How many programs which are published (used by people other than the author) nobody knows, but the Android App store has 2 million+, almost all written in Java. Virtually every web page is using some Javascript. Desktop apps most often use C++.

The real question isn't what's popular, the real question is "what language are you most productive for writing and maintaining application"? Because, in the end, what language are you capable of getting the most done to solve whatever problem you need to write code to solve, is the moist important language to use.

[mnrvovrfc]

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I'm not talking about by huge numbers. C might be #1 with 10% or 20% of all applications (as a wild guess) but the other 80% is split among probably 50+ different languages.
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Big evidence of this is the main page of any project on Github. It seems nothing anymore is done entirely in C or C++. So much for either being so popular someone must learn it whether or not his/her chances of getting a well-paid job increase unsubstantially from it. IMO whoever feels "forced" to go along with C or C++ much prefers getting it done in Python.

[SMcNeill]

I'd say COBOL is still one of the most used languages -- it's just used now for old code maintenance rather than writing a ton of new programs. If you want to learn a language that can substantially help you get a job, learn COBOL. All the old pro's who knew it, wrote it, and used it for year after year after year, are retiring, and the new crowd considers it outdated and beneath them. Outdated or not, COBOL still needs to run to keep the financial and business factor going the same way it has been for the past 50 years!!

[mnrvovrfc]

^
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Well said, but I don't want:

https://www.techopedia.com/definition/18...ol-fingers