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What’s YOUR Programming Language?

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By Admin

New programming languages have been introduced regularly over the past 50 years. In 1954, it was Fortran, and in 1958 it was ALGOL and LISP, in 1959 COBOL and in 1964, PL/I was introduced. BASIC began in 1965, BCPL and Simula in 1967 and LOGO in 1968. B was introduced in 1969, Pascal and Prolog in 1970, C in 1971, Smalltalk in 1972 and Scheme in 1975.

The 80s saw Common LISP (1980), ADA (1983), C++ (1985), Objective-C, Objective Pascal and Eiffel (1986), Haskel (1987) and CLOS (1988). Java was introduced in 1994 and C# in 2002.

What Does a Programming Language Do?

A programming language is used to write computer programs such as applications, utilities, servers and systems programs. A program is a written as a series of human-understandable computer instructions that can be read by a compiler and linker and translated into machine code so that a computer can understand and run it.

Most Popular?

Debate over the most popular programming language can become an emotional, almost religious, battle.

Ford or Chevy, Stihl or Husky, Coke or Pepsi- let’s face it. We all get passionate about our tools. There are a number of ways to measure the popularity of a programming language. They may be based on the number of new applications written in the language, the existing applications written in the language, the developers that primarily use the language, developers that ever use the language, the number of Web searches, the available jobs that require skills in the language or the developers’ favorites.

Top 10 Shares

Java is used 17.96 percent of the time, C 18.19 percent, C++ 10.38 percent, PHP 9.07 percent, Visual BASIC 5.66 percent, C# 4.78 percent, Python 4.10 percent, Objective-C 2.36 percent, Delphi 2.57 percent, Perl 3.29 percent and all others 21.66 percent.

Tiobe.com

Tiobe is a popular site for ranking programming languages based on world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third-party vendors. Tiobe uses Google, MSN and Yahoo! Search engines to measure the Web “Chatter” in order to decide the popularity of each programming language.

Tiobe.com Top 10

According to Tiobe.com, In May 2010, C was the number one programming language, followed by Java (2), C++ (3), PHP (4), Visual BASIC (5), C# (6), Python (7), Perl (8), Delphi (9) and Objective-C (10).

In May 2009, the most popular programming languages were somewhat different. C ranked number 2, Java (1), C++ (3), PHP (4), Visual BASIC (5), C# (7), Python (6), Perl (9), Delphi (11) and Objective-C (39).

In 2006, the most popular languages were similar. C ranked number 2, Java (1), C++ (3), PHP (4), Visual BASIC (5), C# (7), Python (8), Perl (6), Delphi (10) and Objective-C (45).

In 2000, the programming language landscape was far different. C ranked number 1, Java (5), C++ (2), PHP (31), Visual BASIC (3), C# (21), Python (20), Perl (6), Delphi (11) and Objective-C didn’t rank.

In 1985, only three of the top 10 programming languages of 2010 showed up on the list. C was number 1, C++ was number 10 and Visual BASIC was number 4.

The Hall of Fame

The Hall of Fame awards one language with the title of Programming Language of the Year. Go was the winner in 2009, C in 2008, Python in 2007, Ruby in 2006, Java in 2005, PHP in 2004 and C++ in 2003.

Objective-C

A relatively new programming language, Objective-C entered the TIOBE top 10 for the first time in May 2010 with a rating of 2.3 percent. This is quite an achievement, especially if one bears in mind that only 13 different programming languages had a top 10 score since the start of the TIOBE index. The main (and probably only) reason for Objective-C’s popularity is that it is the only language in which you can write applications for the iPhone and iPad.