Microsoft Coding Languages Continue to be Popular -- Visual Studio Magazine

Onward and UpwardKeith Ward, Editor in Chief, Visual Studio Magazine

Microsoft Coding Languages Continue to be Popular

Working in Microsoft programming languages puts you in good company, according to an organization that tracks such things.

In the last year, C# overtook C++ as the third-most popular language in use right now, says the TIOBE Programming Community Index, and other Microsoft-created languages are either holding steady or gaining in popularity. The index, which is generated monthly, shows Java and C holding steady in the top two spots, as they have for years. Tiobe calls itself a company that specializes in assessing and tracking software.

Visual Basic has held steady in seventh place over the past year, while VB.NET has seen a jump from 22nd place overall to 16th place in the same timeframe. The Top 10:

1	Java
2	C
3	C#
4	C++
5	Objective-C
6	PHP
7	Visual Basic
8	JavaScript
9	Python
10	Perl

The biggest riser, not surprisingly, was Objective-C, as Apple's iPhone and iPad threaten to take over the world. JavaScript was the other top-10 language to see a large bump; this shouldn't be surprising either, given the explosion of mobile computing. In the top-20, Python, Ruby and Ada suffered the biggest drops. All these numbers are relative, however; given the fragmentation of this space, a small increase or decrease in popularity can have a substantial impact on rankings.

What does it all mean to the .NET developer? Not much, probably; this information, to me, is more interesting than significant. It is good news for Microsoft that its army of developers continue to soldier on, and don't appear to be jumping ship. With Windows 8 driving the increasing importance of C++ and JavaScript inside Visual Studio 11, I'll be curious to see the trends in those languages a year from now.

Posted by Keith Ward on 03/16/2012

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