Microsoft's Programming Language Approach Pays Off, Popularity Report Says -- Visual Studio Magazine

Microsoft's Programming Language Approach Pays Off, Popularity Report Says

By David Ramel
03/09/2018

RedMonk's latest programming language popularity report says Microsoft's multi-language approach is paying off, giving the company the "most to crow about" among all vendors.

The report, published this week but reflecting January 2018 data, shows several Microsoft-backed languages high up in the ranking.

Here's the list of the top 20 languages, judged by the number of StackOverflow tags and number of GitHub projects:

JavaScript
Java
Python
PHP
C#
C++
CSS
Ruby
C
Swift
Objective-C
Shell
R
TypeScript
Scala
Go
PowerShell
Perl
Haskell
Lua

Noting that PowerShell gained one position, R two and TypeScript three, RedMonk weighed in on the popularity of Microsoft's programming languages.

"Of all of the vendors represented on this list, Microsoft has by a fair margin the most to crow about," RedMonk said. "Its ops-oriented language PowerShell continues its steady rise, and R had a bounceback from earlier slight declines. TypeScript, meanwhile, pulled off a contextually impressive three spot jump from #17 to #14. Given that growth in the top 20 comes at a premium, hitting the ranking that a widespread language like R enjoyed in our last rankings is an impressive achievement.

"From a macro perspective, it's also worth noting that Microsoft is seeing growth across three distinct categories in operations, analytics/data science and application development.It's a strong indication that Microsoft's multi-language approach to the broader market is paying dividends."

One reader argued that putting R in the Microsoft camp is a mischaracterization, saying: "There might be a misunderstanding here. Its being implied that R is a Microsoft language -- that is not the case. R is brought to us by the 'R Foundation' (see https://www.r-project.org/foundation/)."

In reply, another reader said: "True, but it's been the largest institution outside of the Foundation pushing R, and a lot of R's growth could be attributed to Microsoft's considerable efforts across it's stack and tooling."

This plot graphic provides more details on the latest rankings from RedMonk:

**[Click on image for larger view.]** January 2018 RedMonk Ranking *(source: RedMonk)*

Coincidentally, another tracker of programming language popularity, the TIOBE Index, also published its latest report this week, covering data up to March. It shows C#, Visual Basic .NET, Visual Basic and R in the top 20:

**[Click on image for larger view.]** TIOBE Index for March 2018 *(source: TIOBE Index)*

You can read more about both reports at out sister publication's site, ADTmag.

About the Author

David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.

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