JavaScript now has 12.4 million active developers, Python gains big

A new report from research firm Slashdata takes a look at the biggest programming communities. Besides estimates of how many active programmers each programming language has, the report also provides an overview of what applications programming languages are most popular and least popular in.

JavaScript is by far the most popular programming language. Once almost proclaimed dead, JavaScript is now used by a whopping 12.4 million developers, with web and cloud applications being very popular fields. Python has gained 2.2 million developers last year along and now ranks second, partly thanks to massive adoption in the data science and machine learning communities. Java takes the third spot with 8.2 million developers and is primarily used for mobile and cloud applications. Full details at The Register.

C# has fared less well. “The fact that C# lost three places during the last three years is mostly explained by its slower growth compared to C/C++ and PHP,” the report stated. “C# may be sustaining its dominance in the game and AR/VR developer ecosystems, but it seems to be losing its edge in desktop development – possibly due to the emergence of cross-platform tools based on web technologies.”