@@Manorainjan None of those ever became popular enough to make the top 11 list. Personally, I love Wirthian and derived languages (particularly Modula-2 and Ada), and Logo and Forth. I also like Scheme
@@timlocke3159 "None of those ever became popular enough to make the top 11 list." You don't say. I wouldn't have made that connection myself. Or would I? ;-) Maybe that's why I opened with: "Since programming is a rather complex matter, Your graph could be more complex too." BTW: His video "World's Largest Cities by Population 1950 - 2035" has 20 lines.
The Programming Wars The Era of Fortran (pre-1965 to 1980) The Rise of Pascal (1980 to 1985) The C and Ada Wars (1985 to 1987) The Absolute Reign of C (1987 to 2001) The Ascent of the Javas (2001 to 2018) The Python Empire (2018 and beyond)
If you account for the fact that python, c++, java, and so many other are C-family languages, that all major operating systems are written in C, and that C is used in 90% of embedded systems, it goes to show how it is truly, undisputedly, the greatest and most important programming language ever created. Viva C.
I wrote my first program in 1962. Knew every language on the list until 2000. It has been quite the 60 years. Been an instructor through professor. Programmer to systems analyst. A few years teaching, a few years doing; rinse and repeat.
I can beat you by one year - 1961. It was for the IBM 1401. Remember these languages: Assembler, SPS, RPG Currently picking up Python. I knew it was popular but didn't realize how popular until I saw this presentation - Cool stuff. Oops, forgot autocoder.
@robertcross7571 Quite hard early. Early languages had a similarity to math notation. FORTRAN = FORmula TRANslation. The main evolving difference was the logic control statements. Each language had a syntax to be learned. Those early languages allowed for what became known as spaghetti code. "Structured Programming" became the latest rage. Teaching that course was a learning experience. In the 80's I came to realize that a while loop with test at top was the only logic structure needed in a language. It is all done with flags to implement IF, IF_THEN, CASE, and all the others. Find out how to do the "do while" and I had learned the only logic structure technically needed. The math analog lasted virtually unchanged so it became a matter of learning syntax (and when possible macros so I could write my code in pseudocode). Each language learned more quickly. At the end of my career a new one took 2 days to learn and 2 weeks to write production programs. A typical program of mine is: DO WHILE (powered on) .CASE (1) IF (conditions) DO END ... (N) ENDCASE END DO And of course, being as I am, I consider the strange case of the robots built by evolution: While (Alive) If not content, do something else. End
You're a bad programmer if you didn't get rich like Bill Gates or Elon Musk, because in those days there was less competition and anyone could get rich just by coming up with a simple idea
PL/1 was the first language I ever learned, in the late 1970s. Surprised it didn't make it into the list, as IIRC it originated at IBM and was quite widely used. The version I used allowed you to descend into Assembler within the PL/1 source. With a macro pre-processor and pointers, it was very powerful and expressive.
was wondering the same thing. was a lot more user-friendly than c. always regretted that the latter became THE language and PL/1 died out. As for c++, don't get me started....
true i experience this in my company pretty often. We had our projects (first websites and later even apps) since like 2005 and from then we moved to new languages with the time. So there are many files in old code, that would need a lot of time to remake in new languages. The problem is, the code is written in an old style and difficult to read for younger developers like me. Our old developers don't work here anymore or are in managing positions. It's often a bit of pain to work on these old files xD
The longevity of Java and JavaScript is pretty incredible considering these languages have not been updated or supported in over a decade. Cobol and Fortran are run on a lot of legacy systems that haven't changed much in decades such as banking computers, atms, credit card systems as well as on military equipment.
BASIC - When more and more kids started learning programming C - That's all we got for seriously fast work C++ - I'm done with pointers Java - When they realized you can write once and run it on any device PHP - World Wide Web is the future! Python - When the scientific community started coding JavaScript - When bootcamp trained frontend 'devs' entered the game
C was fast but it wasn't safe. That wasn't so bad before networking but now we know we need safer languages. We would have been better off if we'd rejected C and C++ and kept using Ada, Modula-2, Oberon, etc.
C is still great for low-level embedded programming and pointers are one of the reasons why. It is easy to make careless errors with pointers, but I have seen many people get into trouble because they don't know what they are doing or because they are trying to show off by doing unnecessary fancy stuff.
@@sexygeek8996 Well, so were Modula-2, Ada and Oberon but they did it safely and they had safer strings where you couldn't write over memory after the strings with malicious code.
I've been paid to work in C and C++ since the mid 80's. My career as a software developer probably would never have started if it wasn't for Turbo C and Turbo C++. At the time, they said Ada was going to be the One Language to Rule Them All. The dean at my college said we should consider other professions because by 1990, computers would be writing all the software; and Artificial Intelligence would never work commercially. Today (last couple weeks) I was told C and C++ are dead, and RUST is the new One Language To Rule Them All. Yeah, once again, we got "Sauron's Ring" salesman again. Anyway, I could list all the languages I have been paid to program in, but funny thing: programming languages each have their Big Day. And eventually most programming languages fail to deliver once the hype wears off. I'm amazed C and C++ have lasted so long, and I'm glad they have. C++ is my absolute favorite, and for better or worse, C and C++ have delivered a hell of a lot. Due to its complexity, I don't think young devs will get the opportunity to master C++ in a fun/meaningful way. Could be I'm the end of the line. On the other hand, C and C++ are still here, and we've had quite a number "Sauron's Ring" languages wax and wane in that period. Maybe C and C++ will stick around kind of like the Tooth Fairy. Even COBOL still pays well for the extremely few people who mastered it. For the record, I've never been paid to work in COBOL, and that was a personal choice. Could never get into that language.
You're not. C++ is still very actively modernized. Smart pointers are now mainstream (new/delete is considered code smell!), and they are adding support for modules, finally fixing the include problem. They've also added things like lambda expressions and such. It's a totally different C++ from yesteryear.
@@LunaticEdit Interesting to hear about modules. Hadn't heard of that. I'd be surprised if they retire m4 (the pre-processor) after 40+ years. There are so many meta-programming improvements I'd like to see, beyond what I've seen up though cxx20. And why don't we have an int*XX where XX can be the number of bits we want in the integer (outside the scope of a struct)? FORTRAN was doing that in the 60's.
Currently learning c++, hoping that I can “master” it (even though that’s impossible, c++ is too big) but I’m doing pretty well for now. Been about a year, I’d say I’m intermediate. Refuse to say that any language is nicer than c++ except rust (which I don’t think will beat c and c++, but is a very nice language)
I remember I took over an internship in 2005 from a previous intern. The sponsors asked me to write it in their preferred Java based language which I had a course under my belt already. They said the previous intern did good but it was in a language they never heard of or could understand called Python. This was back in 2005. Fast forward 10 years after spending most my career in firmware C and some C++ for desktop apps I dove into Python because how easy it was and it was the ONLY way I could get OpenCV to install amd actually work. My Python got me a new job at a namebrand company, and that got me my job today. In 7 years my salary is now 200% what it was and I don't regret my Python transition today one bit. I still think about that intern that was using Python v1 for her internship deliverable, she probably makes way more than me. If she is reading this I want to say ;Hey sorry for making fun of you.
Python is that rare thing: a technically advanced language which has become popular through its merits and the testimonials of its users, not because some big corporation was pushing it.
i also code in python for 7y and i would like to ask you something, do you feel that python is way harder to master compared to C or easier? because i only dev in C for 2 years but i feel C easier to master.
For me personally, C is the most beautiful language. Both Linux' and Windows' kernel are written in C. I've written a lot of embedded software in C. It's wonderful. Over 50 years old and still the backbone of every product we use today, be it a server, a handheld, or a pc.
@@NafaniaXD I actually hate C style syntax. It has too many arcane symbols. I prefer keywords. Pascal uses IF...THEN BEGIN...END but in it's successors, like Modula-2, BEGIN was removed so it became IF...THEN...END, which is nicer than Pascal.
It was the common training language so practically everyone who majored in computer science had to take it as an intro course before going onto other languages.
Pascal (Delphi specifically) is what got me into the programming industry with no college degree. I just so happened to run into a small business owner who used delphi, and I just so happened to to have learned windows development on my mom's copy of Borland delphi. It's been many moons since I've used pascal, but I still owe my career to knowing it.
So interesting. I started programming in 2010, and the first three languages I learned were the top three most popular at the time (Java, JavaScript, and PHP). My dad learned in the mid 80s and he was taught Pascal, the most popular of his time. We are products of our time.
In 1981 I learned FORTRAN on the fly for a graphics course, then data structures in Pascal. But I loved C most of all, the way she’s bite if you weren’t careful ;)
I'm an old dinosaur... when I started my career we still programmed sort machines with patch boards and wires. If you needed your input sorted in a certain order before running your program, you needed to run the data cards thru the sorter first before using them as program input. I remember the excitement of our shop getting it's first IBM 3270 terminal and CICS software to be able to write and store programs electronically instead of punching them out on cards and storing them in file drawers. The senior programmers hogged that terminal up and didn't let us junior programmers use it. I worked on the first generation of supermarket bar code POS systems... did the systems programming, application programming, and field service tech work with them. Back then they ran a whole supermarket on a store controller with a 5M disk! We downloaded data to all the stores at night over a 2400 baud modem... took all night. Whole corporations used to be run on an IBM 360/370 with 16M of core... and probably one string of 8 DASD 3350 drives with 500M a piece, and a few 2400 series tape drives.
How about a 16K 360/30 running BOS using 2311 drives with 7.25 MB capacity and RPGI because not enough hardware to run COBOL. We upgraded to 32K to run DOS and COBOL.
@@rhymereason3449 We had rows of those and it was cool to watch operators lift the lid and use their hand on the top disk platter as a brake because they were in too big a hurry change the disk. Skin dust caused lots of R/W errors so the manufacturers started applying a friction material on the top platter. Only took a few skin burns to stop that practice.
@@saabyurk LOL... that's pretty wild! We had an operator who was 6'7" and about 350 lbs. He was surly with a bad temper... but management was afraid to fire him. He'd throw full boxes of computer paper across the room when a job would abend and tick him off. Once he cracked the console keyboard with his fist, and another time he put his foot through the glass door on the 1401 printer. Management would just replace the things he broke...
DNA isn't really programming tho, it doesn't get interpreted/compiled by anything - it just acts as a blueprint for making other proteins which do their job by themselves. And just to dispel the creationists who assume anything that supports their preformed beliefs is true: DNA is closer to an array of data constantly being modified and selected for using the genetic algorithm.
Part of Fortran diminishing status is not that it was superseded by anything better for what it is doing. It is that in 70-s 90% of computering was numerical scientific/engineering computations. Fortran is still one of the best tools for that. It is that since programming and computing has evolved in many different areas
In 1985 my college required FORTRAN for engineering majors (#5 in the list at the time) but nearly all students (including I) also took an elective for "C" (which was #1 in the list at the time). Very interesting how these languages evolved over time.
I'm surprised neither PL/1 nor RPG made it on this list. They were ubiquitous during the 1970s and 1980s. I was a computer consultant during that time and there was almost no demand for Fortran skills at all.. I don't believe Fortran was the most popular language for anywhere near as long as you portrayed. COBOL was much more heavily used, and is still in use even today.
Just about every large business through the 80s used COBOL on their mainframes with RPG for Reports. PL1 was big on IBM minis. C was big on all the other minis (DEC, DG) . Actuaries loved APL on a PC connected to the mainframe with an IRMA board
I program in assembly language and machine language since 1983. I will never stop. When you directly program the microprocessor, and build your own graphic interface, files access, etc. that's so cool! :)
I agree, with assembler you can build your own libraries and virtually create your own language. I have programmed in various different assembler languages since 1975.
@@Killerspieler0815 So can any other interpreter language, as long as the interpreter is installed on the target system. But Java is faster than most other interpreter languages.
@@Killerspieler0815 If you think Java is slow, good luck with python. Also no, Java isn't particularly good at running on every device. The argument that it is comes from a time where most languages were compiled. But the real blocker to running on different devices isn't the programming language, or even if it is compiled or not, but frameworks, UI ones in particular.
Java will not die off quickly. Similar to C/C++, a lot of existing systems are based on this technology. And even if the language dies, it will still prevail as a platform for other languages. There is a reason, Java being the most efficient interpreter language.
I am a scientist, still using Fortran for daily numerical computation, and Python (Matlab too) for visualization and machine learning things. There is nothing can beat Fortran (off course C/C++ also) for scientific computing; probably Julia is the closest candidate.
The main reason why interpreted/dynamic/slow languages like Python and JavaScript can exist is that PCs have gotten so powerful over the years. If we were stuck with hardware from the '90s, we would all be using C.
What do you mean 90s? I agree - more processor power seems to end up on eye candy. And programs seem to be expanding to fill the memory available. I remember the days of cycle counting on op codes and hacking code to save a couple of cycles in a loop which soon added up, as well as programming tricks to also save memory. Give developers of today a micro from the 1980s and see what they can get it to do...
The one thing that jaded me as I grew up in this era was the perpetual promise that there would be "one" language to run everywhere. One-size-fits-all solutions are almost always snake oil and sales pitches, but always seem to bend the ear of CEO's who read magazine covers but don't listen to tech people. Java was just one of the efforts that enjoyed the most success at realizing it, although it was and is a support headache. The universal presentation layer wouldn't truly evolve until the web/HTML/DOM model and browser capabilities truly started hitting their stride.
Yeah, agreed. There are still some great APL implementations available today, and it's a fun language to play with as a hobbyist. Dyalog APL is free for non-commercial use.
Nice touch with putting C on the screen from the very beginning. I expect 20 years from now it will be still in the top 10. We will always need language that offers maximum performance that is easily readable and compact.
Interesting timeline. I started COBOL programming in the late 70’s and loved every minute of it. Moved overseas in the late 80’s and into an IT Management role. Judging by the video, I made the right move. Still, Cobol paid well, as a contractor, in the UK in the 80’s.
It doesn't appear any automation programmers where surveyed. Ladder Logistics is pretty much a standard in PLC's and Scada heavily uses various flavors of Basic. Also where is SQL?
Taught myself BASIC around 1980 on a friend's TRS-80 and later on my own Commodore 64. Was picked to be part of my school's first computer science class. The teacher would get mad because a friend and I could debug his mistakes when he couldn't. BASIC taught me everything I needed to know to learn the "C languages" and on to Python today.
I have always regretted not majoring in comp sci in college.. I would 100% pick that without hesitation if I could go back. Programming seems fun and a very rewarding field to get into. I got my master's in a very different field recently. Got a remote job with a relatively light workload. Just started learning Python a month ago.
I've been programming for a living for the last 20 years, and there's a lot of change to the languages during that time. A lot of the languages look and/or work completely different today from 2 decades ago. Javascript has changed a lot and is being used for a lot of things not even conceived of then. PHP still has the same usage, but the language has changed to such a significant degree that it is not really the same language anymore. Even a very old and conservative language such as C has undergone some substantial changes.
No, PHP is not the same anymore. Although, code written 25 years ago will still run on PHP 8, with some changes. That is how backward compatible the core developers have kept it.
@@racketman2u Most deprecation have easy drop-in replacements. E.g. ereg vs preg_match. Unless you have a particularly complex code, you could make changes quickly. Also, unless, you're using a framework, getting old code to run on newer versions of PHP is trivial.
Yes and that type of rapid arbitrary changing is terrible for anyone who has developed expertise in a language. Forcing people to relearn is a ratioanlist weapon that puts talented programmers out of jobs.
@@u.v.s.5583 Same here. Our professors were very excited about Pascal and Modula-2, but we all wanted to use C instead. Gotta love the late 80's CS scene.
I self-taught BASIC during elementary school years. Then learned Pascal in AP computer science class in high school. That's when I had the most fun with computers, making my own games. Now, I'm just awe-spired by the level of technology we have today. I miss my Apple IIgs.
I started programming with assembly language with an 8080 micro processor. I then learned C while schools were teaching Pascal and ADA. I then learned C++ and started using VHDL (Hardware language similar to ADA in concept) and then onto verilog (another HW language similar to C). Retired now, so trying to pick up on Python. It seems like some of these languages are tied to Systems or graphical interfaces. I remember a fellow who specialized in Smalltalk which is used in the Chip testing industry. What's nice about C is you can get down to the machine level or write at a higher level. C++ brings in the object oriented aspects.
Interesting. I had in multiple occasions heard that there would still be around old systems coded in old languages, and each time specifically COBOL was mentioned, so I had assumed that at some point it would have been the most popular programming language. But apparently it never was most popular; Fortran was, but I don't remember it ever been mentioned. Were those two, COBOL and Fortran, then each used in different kinds of fields?
COBOL used exclusively for business programming. Fortran largely used for scientific programming. COBOL has always been a strong contender for the world's worst language.
@@jrstf If relational databases had been around in the 1960s the COBOL applications wouldn't have been so bad. The simple COBOL syntax was used to manipulate huge data in limited core memory. More modern languages would have had a tough time with that as well.
COBOL is used a lot in banking systems, and those systems don't like to change. There's was a saying floating around in my part of the world (don't know if it still holds) that if you want to get a lot of money early in your career, you learn COBOL and apply for a job in one of the large banks (preferably German). The drawback is less opportunities later on and the non-sexiness of it all.
@@dmitripogosian5084 IBM created the PL/1 language to bridge business and math, which should have replaced COBOL. PL/1 was innovative and influenced later languages like C and Perl. PL/1 was the first language to use classes and a preprocessor, supported pointers and was also suitable for systems programming. PL/1 has practically disappeared, partly because IBM mismanaged it.
I built a database development business on Visual Basic / Access between 2000 and 2020. Fashion moved on and I retired but for 20 years I had many happy clients and a good living.
I love the Groovy language but no one seems to think it’s cool. It’s so economical and easy to get stuff done. But mainly I work with python these days.
Interesting to see how some languages accompany the rise of related tech. Javascript and PHP for example rose as internet and web sites became more and more prevalent. Objective C I believe rose with the expansion of iPhone and Apple technology. While some others such as FORTRAN that is limited to desktop/ mainframe saw it's proportion decline.
Great watch. Be keen to see where C# is now. See it was dropping at the end. But with all the work with .NET Core, Blazor and the MAUI and the current version of C#, is this a future for many or something else. Plenty of jobs wanting C# so it must be in the top 3.
Wow brings the dead back to life! I paused at 1979 when I started programming and realised I worked in almost all languages on the list (Fortran mostly, hated cobol!) Then to see the rise of Ada which I was a huge proponent of but despaired of a good compiler and was eventually suffocated by its own beautiful weight. Now, as I program almost exclusively in php and scripting languages I am appalled that I haven’t even heard of about half the entries on the 2022 list! I do miss my old friends like pascal and lisp! :-)
I’m a retired embedded SW Engineer, started programming as a hobbyist in the mid 1970. I have dabbled in most of those languages and at one time or another was proficient in about half but what carried me through a 35 year career was Assembly, C and C++.
I saw my whole pre teens and programming career flash before my eyes. My first startup was in 2008 built in JavaScript and PHP. Interesting those 2 were in almost parity at the time.
It was interesting to see BASIC take off in the 8-bit computer era, especially after the arrival of the 1977 Trinity of the Apple II, Commodore PET and Tandy TRS-80, each of which had a BASIC in ROM. The PET had Microsoft BASIC from the start but the Apple II and Tandy TRS-80 upgraded to Microsoft BASIC within a year. Then it died down as the last 8-bit computers came out and were then replaced with the 16-bit Apple Macintosh, Atari ST and Commodore Amiga, which, while BASIC was available for them, it wasn't used much as better languages had become available. BASIC was great because every 8-bit home computer had it built in and it was easy to learn so even the average person could figure it out. Sadly the languages that replaced it weren't easy enough for the average person to use and now only a very small percentage of computer users can write any code.
Heck, I wonder why BASIC didn't dominate the late 70s into the 80s. It literally shipped with every home computer, and every business PC. That alone makes me wonder how they were counting popularity.
I learned Basic at the age of 8 on a ZX Spectrum (Sinclair Basic) in the 80's, then in college in the 90's I learned Assembly 8086 and C/C++, then many others came but Mr Clive Sinclair's Basic lives in my heart anyway 40 years after first contact. There is one more that I really like, LUA, a language developed in Brazil, many MS-DOS and Win9X era games were created with it.
It's said, any-one who ever came in touch with BASIC was lost for any other programming language. It's true for me. Python, C, you name it, always had the obstacle of not-knowing why you had to put these include=... in the first lines. In BASIC we just took off and we were going.
I studied programming between 2001 and 2004, I learned clipper, c++, cobol and visual basic, but in the end I dedicated myself to infrastructure, greetings from Chile
The dominants: Fortran - Primitive, coding into machine (almost assembly) C - Embadded systems Java & JavaScript - Web era Python - Machine Learning I wonder what next.
C is also at the heart of all our modern operating systems, it might not be the most uses language nowadays, it is still silently powering all of our modern devices !
I was programming in Fortran in HS in 1969-70, punching out card decks, loading them into a card reader for an IBM 360 and then debugging all the syntax errors. Helped a lot later in university EE courses. After graduation, wrote embedded uP assembly code for a major project by learning while doing. As an EE also had to code PLDs and then FPGAs along the way which is a very different programming experience.
It's not that obvious from this chart, but Python and Javascript really shot up years after they were first introduced. It didn't happen in one single surge.
As a software developer for about 35 years now, the most interesting chànge in that graph is the rise and fall of Java. It was a darling of the industry for so long, but is often seen as a support and maintenance albatross.
@@DataIsBeautifulOfficial Very valid point. I know a lot of network admins that have waged and won battles to get rid of Java because supporting it, especially on the desktop, became such a nightmare because so many apps depend on the "right" version of the JVM, have independent keystores, create curious unexpected dependencies, and then add Oracle on top of it sure didn't help. A great deal of automotive diagnostic tools are Java-based and that's it's own special nightmare for shops who may have very limited IT knowledge or resources.
They all have different uses. C# and Java is popular in the backend while Javascript is more like frontend thing and Python for data analyses, math or algorithms.
@@davidfrischknecht8261 Not really, if you look at your apps like discord, vscode, netflix, spotify, slack, or microsoft office, they are all just electron apps written in javascript, I'd say this is more popular than C++ honestly, even though C++ does have huge importance in the browser, gaming and adobe suite.
I have been doing COBOL since I graduated college in 2010. It is my favorite language still with how mature the tools have become over the decades, but for some reason the mainframe is detested by leaders who only chase the current buzz words.
I learned BASIC on the Vic-20 when I was 9 or 10, then got into QuickBASIC v4.5 (not QBASIC, I paid for the compiler), then started using x86 Assembly for slow parts, C, then C++, Eiffel, LISP, Java, Perl, Bash shell, SQL, C#, Javascript, PL/SQL, PHP, Clean, Python, Ruby, Erlang, Haskell... I think I got the order right. Working mostly in Python and JS nowadays.
@@timlocke3159 it's definitely a niche language (been around for 30+ years). but those who _ever_ got some grasp of it love it for life and to death, including myself. It's been FREE on the Raspberry Pi for years.
in memory; Pascal - 2002 BASIC - 2000 Assembly -1999 Fortran - 1997 ADA - 1995 COBOL - 1995 APL - 1992 ALGOL - 1989 hands down to the oldest remaining one (on the list) C: 1972- present
@@kopazwashere Assembly I get, since somethings still require that deep down fiddling at the machine language level. At least called from other languages (and not for the whole applicaton). But its surprising that Cobol still is relevant these days. That old hack of a language that surely can be replaced with much more efficient tools?
@@Magnus_Loov Nope, Cobol is still being updated and used. Not only on Mainframes, but Windows, Linux, Mac... GnuCOBOL. Many government, banks, big finance use COBOL and there are pretty good salaries now that we are retired...
Assembly is still in use and I guess it will never die since it is the most close thing to machine language. And probably C and C++ will live forever as well.
One of the biggest "what-if's" in my life was in 1988, when I was 12 years old, I discovered the giant manual in my Atari XE console was Titled, "BASIC Programming." I cracked it open and started to learn it and was fascinated. When my dad (who was an electrical engineer at the time) came home, I showed him. He was amazed I was able to learn what he learned on punch cards when he was in College. We messed with it day and night for months. Then we got bored and moved on to other things. Fast forward to 1995 and all I am seeing everywhere is this new Internet thing. I was in the military and busy with other things. I really wished that I had seriously pursued programming professionally.
I dove into Fortran IV for a school year starting in 1968 and also did a quarter of Assembly. Also learned a bit of BASIC. That was followed by programming my HP calculator for many years. I did a lot of serious HyperCard programming on my Mac for a number of years until a while after Apple dropped that, but produced some very useful tools for my architectural work. And I did lots of programming in a superset of Pascal that was built into my CAD program so I could create my own drawing tools to simplify my architectural work that I did for 40 years. Started looking at Swift but didn't follow through because life was too busy.
I was working as a software engineering contractor to the Naval Underwater Systems Center in the late 70s when the U.S. military declared that all subsequent software projects would be done In Ada. They launched a lot of educational projects to get everyone up to speed on the language. I was even a "reviewer" of the language as it was being more formalized. Strange, though, that you don't see Ada used just about anywhere today. As they say, "The best laid plans of mice and men and the U.S. military . . ." go POOF! It seems that you can't just declare that some programming language will be "used by all". Maybe they should have involved some actual, on-the-job, programmers in the decision. :)
I really love your graphs they're wonderful ! I used to watch the previous one and was amazed to see you did a new one :) May I ask if there is a source we can read to keep updated about these changes or you did the stats yourself for the video ?
I learned a little Basic in the 60s and FORTRAN and COBOL in college in the 70s. I really liked COBOL. My COBOL professor was awesome - I still use some of the basic computer stuff and logic I learned in his class.
It seems like everyone who grew up in the 60's and 70's says that. My business teacher said the exact same thing in class to us (minus him liking his COBOL professor).
When I was in college in 1998, they were actually teaching Pascal.....just saying. 🤦♂️ I told the instructor at the time that it was a waste of time to learn Pascal and was going to be absolutely useless in the job market. Colleges are still way behind teaching actual marketable skills.
Doing good Javascript and Python development work. Life is good. Just stay with the market developments and you'll do fine. Don't get stuck in a single language, because 'back then it was so cool'
Great video... but I think it had some notable exceptions... pretty sure RPG and PL/1 had much larger adaption in the mid-70's than C, Algol, APL, and Lisp which were primarily in the Universities, DOD, and research facilities. . Back then IBM's PL/1 was on a lot of mainframes as it was both a business and scientific language. And RPG was used by a lot of smaller shops running mid-sized systems.
Late to the party but I don't get it either. This video isn't my experience of 35 years in the industry. It says 'most popular' and not 'most used'. Ciobol was by far huge even when I graduated me of course it was never popular. Pl/1 and rpg also huge. But I worked in business and this seems to encompass scientific and education too.
It's very interesting to see how the importance of the programming languages changed over the course of time. Especially when you think about what caused these changes: New hardware New software Introduction of the internet New usages of data...
Thank you for this history. I found it weird not to see languages like Modula-2, Forth, Haskell or PowerShell and I was expecting Pascal to be a lot more prominent in the mid-80s as Turbo-Pascal was the go-to solution on PCs, or C/C++ from the early-90s for it was pushed by the Turbo C++ "revolution" (and everyone seemed to turn to C and Unix/Linux at the time), when it replaced Pascal in computer schools. From what I know, computer schools mostly teach Python nowadays, because its performance is close enough from pre-compiled code and when an application can support being written in Java or JavaScript, who cares about code efficiency anyway? When you see you can code Windows 95 desktop with a few applications entirely in JavaScript in a browser window and it lags less than the original one, why bother?
The Pascal shown in the video is mostly Modula-2 as this is what was used in uni and some business. Turbo Pascal for PC was at the end of the 80s and was a tiny fraction.
I have programmed in about 80% of those languages from Fortran, Pascal, Basic, C, C++, Java, Python, etc. Watching that time lapse I saw 4 things: 1) Languages reflected underlying hardware environments. 2) ADA was surprisingly popular. 3) Java was a language slayer. 4) My favorite, Ruby, never made it very high.
Pascal was one of the biggest losers IMHO. It was a very good and elegant language for its time (certain limitations notwithstanding, but they got addressed), and had a pretty strong position up until a point. The demise of Delphi, which was way ahead of its time, was the final nail in the coffin.
I have no programming knowledge, but wondering what do big financial intstitutions use. Its seems like they have very few problems over the years with constant changes in daily banking services. Im old enough to remember tellers filling in your passbook by hand.
Yeah, it took a very long time, but then found a few very hot niches. I’ve been a data engineer since 2014 and Python is absolutely the best at that. Not necessarily the best language, just the language with the best support for that particular function. You could use Scala if you’re a masochist or if you really need industrial strength stuff, especially with Spark, but Python is more than good enough.
I graduated college with a CS degree in 2017, and I spent 4 years working in COBOL doing object plug-in with a NetCOBOL compiler as my first job and went to another COBOL position after that. Not what I expected out of university as someone born in the 90s. 😂 Love these graphics!
first programming language I learned was BASIC in the 1980s where my father taught me programming basics as a kid, since then I learned about 12 programming languages. The language I enjoy the most is Python The quickest time took me to learn a language was Dart where I learned it in about 3 days The language that I find more difficulty writing a code in is Java The languages that I almost forgot how they look like are Fortran & Assembly The language I want to learn next is JavaScript (I may find that I already know most of it) The 2 most powerful languages in my opinion are C/C++ & Python. Be careful of 2 things, pointers in C++ and lists in Python.
Java: 17 years of dominance C: 15 years Fortran: 14 years Pascal: 5 years Python: 3 years? JavaScript: Technically is leading right now if you include TypeScript and all the Github traffic.
JavaScript is barely leading if you add up with TypeScript. But I hope it finally dies and TypeScript (or even better, Dart) fully replaces it. The spread to server and desktop via NodeJS and Electron was the worst thing that could happen. And Python will probably rule for 10+ years since it's easy, dynamically typed BUT still type-safe (unlike JS which is a complete mess).
If you add Typescript to Javascript, you have to add all the JVM based languages to Java as well. That would be a very strong competitor. Nonsensical in anyway.
@@_piulin_ TypeScript, Golang, and Rust are probably the future, but for now JS is almost everywhere, which pisses me off when professors just teach Python then C, or Java then C.
@@tmicecave It's aimless if all the surveys are ignored. StackOverflow, Github, and other sites should be taken into account when teaching students programming but probably not so much when you're already employed as a developer.
Python will sit at the top for a few more years, TypeScript will take JavaScript's place, C# will take Java's place. Go and Rust will move up pretty fast.
Most used. Not necessarily for major applications such as banking and those other areas where you don't wand uncontrolled rounding errors. Financial planning, medicine, science don't want last-cent accuracy - my blood test results have three digits and implied or explicit scaling factors, but that would never do for recording financial transactions.
My first touch with programming was through game maker 8. Its based on C++ and c#. I rarely used the actual code, but really abused variables and learned a lot for if/else commands, creating events, checking collisions, changing sprites and animations, and applying actions (self, other, specific object/s). My best was making a 25lvl mario game which was published in game maker website and had 55% rating in 2012. I saw a video in Python about making a 3d game and actually could understand a lot of the commands used, as well as the fact that it seemed quite flexible at a first glance. Usually i see people hate Python, as it is first taught in universities (computer science, maths) and it is not fully properly explained. I want one day to start programming (javascript, python, c++, C#), so that i can make games (by far the hardest thing in programming) I had a minor touch with GL Basic, but i never liked the design and the interface (not for me) and didnt spend a lot of time learning the commands. In high school we also learned micro worlds pro (greek version of a beginner programming) which was too simple and boring for me!
assembly is not programing language is text of instructions. Microprocessors(Like Arduino,8051)or i486 is reads assembly C language is simplified assembly and converted to Assembly. Python is more simplyfied C.
What are the units for these numbers? Edit: Nevermind, I had read the description but got confused when the percentages didn't add to 100. I see now that each language had a percent as a popularity value.
Roses are red, 'Super Thanks' works just fine
Unexpected ‘{‘ on line 39
Python and C++ programmer here xD
@@Czlog python doesnt have this sh*t
Since programming is a rather complex matter, Your graph could be more complex too ;-)
What about LOGO, Oberon, Occam and FORTH?
@@Manorainjan None of those ever became popular enough to make the top 11 list. Personally, I love Wirthian and derived languages (particularly Modula-2 and Ada), and Logo and Forth. I also like Scheme
@@timlocke3159 "None of those ever became popular enough to make the top 11 list."
You don't say. I wouldn't have made that connection myself. Or would I? ;-)
Maybe that's why I opened with: "Since programming is a rather complex matter, Your graph could be more complex too."
BTW: His video "World's Largest Cities by Population 1950 - 2035" has 20 lines.
Can we just take a moment to appreciate how C has been in the chart since the 70s till the modern era of programming?
@Jonas Jonaitis I agree.
@@tabooretka Around 80% of all embedded devices are created using C according to analytics insight.
Bad habits....
C is the best language to learn and can do anything you can think of. In contrast python is a trash language.
@@Patrick1985McMahon For many cases is C/C++ very unsuitable (too expensive). I am sure you know it.
That's why Python is where it is in the rankings.
The Programming Wars
The Era of Fortran (pre-1965 to 1980)
The Rise of Pascal (1980 to 1985)
The C and Ada Wars (1985 to 1987)
The Absolute Reign of C (1987 to 2001)
The Ascent of the Javas (2001 to 2018)
The Python Empire (2018 and beyond)
Rust or bust (2030+)
С++ (1970-immortal) 😁👌
@@ArhemonT1000 Elaborate.
It's in fact JS/TS empire
Yeah, the rise of python surprised me. I knew it was popular but not that popular.
If you account for the fact that python, c++, java, and so many other are C-family languages, that all major operating systems are written in C, and that C is used in 90% of embedded systems, it goes to show how it is truly, undisputedly, the greatest and most important programming language ever created. Viva C.
Very true.
Yes, most languages these days are C-based.
Quite, although it's all Assembly underneath 😉
Semantics != syntax
@@Lupinicus1664no, it’s machine code, that’s what you mean. Because, what you’re saying is, it’s all typescript underneath.
I wrote my first program in 1962. Knew every language on the list until 2000. It has been quite the 60 years. Been an instructor through professor. Programmer to systems analyst. A few years teaching, a few years doing; rinse and repeat.
Respect!
Oh, so _you're_ the guy who taught today's programmers...
I can beat you by one year - 1961. It was for the IBM 1401. Remember these languages: Assembler, SPS, RPG Currently picking up Python. I knew it was popular but didn't realize how popular until I saw this presentation - Cool stuff. Oops, forgot autocoder.
@robertcross7571 Quite hard early. Early languages had a similarity to math notation. FORTRAN = FORmula TRANslation. The main evolving difference was the logic control statements.
Each language had a syntax to be learned.
Those early languages allowed for what became known as spaghetti code. "Structured Programming" became the latest rage. Teaching that course was a learning experience. In the 80's I came to realize that a while loop with test at top was the only logic structure needed in a language. It is all done with flags to implement IF, IF_THEN, CASE, and all the others. Find out how to do the "do while" and I had learned the only logic structure technically needed. The math analog lasted virtually unchanged so it became a matter of learning syntax (and when possible macros so I could write my code in pseudocode). Each language learned more quickly. At the end of my career a new one took 2 days to learn and 2 weeks to write production programs.
A typical program of mine is:
DO WHILE (powered on)
.CASE
(1) IF (conditions) DO END
...
(N)
ENDCASE
END DO
And of course, being as I am, I consider the strange case of the robots built by evolution:
While (Alive)
If not content, do something else.
End
You're a bad programmer if you didn't get rich like Bill Gates or Elon Musk, because in those days there was less competition and anyone could get rich just by coming up with a simple idea
PL/1 was the first language I ever learned, in the late 1970s. Surprised it didn't make it into the list, as IIRC it originated at IBM and was quite widely used. The version I used allowed you to descend into Assembler within the PL/1 source. With a macro pre-processor and pointers, it was very powerful and expressive.
was wondering the same thing. was a lot more user-friendly than c. always regretted that the latter became THE language and PL/1 died out. As for c++, don't get me started....
How amazing that some programming languages are so old and are still in regular use today.
Agreed. I find it interesting how difficult it is to move on from old languages given the reliance we have on old programs
true i experience this in my company pretty often. We had our projects (first websites and later even apps) since like 2005 and from then we moved to new languages with the time. So there are many files in old code, that would need a lot of time to remake in new languages. The problem is, the code is written in an old style and difficult to read for younger developers like me. Our old developers don't work here anymore or are in managing positions. It's often a bit of pain to work on these old files xD
and to see a FURRY here OwO
During the pandemic if you knew Cobol made bank.
The longevity of Java and JavaScript is pretty incredible considering these languages have not been updated or supported in over a decade.
Cobol and Fortran are run on a lot of legacy systems that haven't changed much in decades such as banking computers, atms, credit card systems as well as on military equipment.
BASIC - When more and more kids started learning programming
C - That's all we got for seriously fast work
C++ - I'm done with pointers
Java - When they realized you can write once and run it on any device
PHP - World Wide Web is the future!
Python - When the scientific community started coding
JavaScript - When bootcamp trained frontend 'devs' entered the game
True
C was fast but it wasn't safe. That wasn't so bad before networking but now we know we need safer languages. We would have been better off if we'd rejected C and C++ and kept using Ada, Modula-2, Oberon, etc.
C is still great for low-level embedded programming and pointers are one of the reasons why. It is easy to make careless errors with pointers, but I have seen many people get into trouble because they don't know what they are doing or because they are trying to show off by doing unnecessary fancy stuff.
@@sexygeek8996 Well, so were Modula-2, Ada and Oberon but they did it safely and they had safer strings where you couldn't write over memory after the strings with malicious code.
@@timlocke3159 C wasn't meant to be safe. It was meant to be simple, trust the programmer and give him (or her) real power.
I've been paid to work in C and C++ since the mid 80's. My career as a software developer probably would never have started if it wasn't for Turbo C and Turbo C++. At the time, they said Ada was going to be the One Language to Rule Them All. The dean at my college said we should consider other professions because by 1990, computers would be writing all the software; and Artificial Intelligence would never work commercially. Today (last couple weeks) I was told C and C++ are dead, and RUST is the new One Language To Rule Them All. Yeah, once again, we got "Sauron's Ring" salesman again. Anyway, I could list all the languages I have been paid to program in, but funny thing: programming languages each have their Big Day. And eventually most programming languages fail to deliver once the hype wears off. I'm amazed C and C++ have lasted so long, and I'm glad they have. C++ is my absolute favorite, and for better or worse, C and C++ have delivered a hell of a lot. Due to its complexity, I don't think young devs will get the opportunity to master C++ in a fun/meaningful way. Could be I'm the end of the line. On the other hand, C and C++ are still here, and we've had quite a number "Sauron's Ring" languages wax and wane in that period. Maybe C and C++ will stick around kind of like the Tooth Fairy. Even COBOL still pays well for the extremely few people who mastered it. For the record, I've never been paid to work in COBOL, and that was a personal choice. Could never get into that language.
Interesting! Thanks for sharing.
You're not. C++ is still very actively modernized. Smart pointers are now mainstream (new/delete is considered code smell!), and they are adding support for modules, finally fixing the include problem. They've also added things like lambda expressions and such. It's a totally different C++ from yesteryear.
@@LunaticEdit Interesting to hear about modules. Hadn't heard of that. I'd be surprised if they retire m4 (the pre-processor) after 40+ years. There are so many meta-programming improvements I'd like to see, beyond what I've seen up though cxx20. And why don't we have an int*XX where XX can be the number of bits we want in the integer (outside the scope of a struct)? FORTRAN was doing that in the 60's.
Currently learning c++, hoping that I can “master” it (even though that’s impossible, c++ is too big) but I’m doing pretty well for now. Been about a year, I’d say I’m intermediate. Refuse to say that any language is nicer than c++ except rust (which I don’t think will beat c and c++, but is a very nice language)
I still love C. I've found with a good compiler it produces fast and relatively tight executables
I remember I took over an internship in 2005 from a previous intern. The sponsors asked me to write it in their preferred Java based language which I had a course under my belt already. They said the previous intern did good but it was in a language they never heard of or could understand called Python. This was back in 2005.
Fast forward 10 years after spending most my career in firmware C and some C++ for desktop apps I dove into Python because how easy it was and it was the ONLY way I could get OpenCV to install amd actually work. My Python got me a new job at a namebrand company, and that got me my job today. In 7 years my salary is now 200% what it was and I don't regret my Python transition today one bit. I still think about that intern that was using Python v1 for her internship deliverable, she probably makes way more than me. If she is reading this I want to say ;Hey sorry for making fun of you.
Python is that rare thing: a technically advanced language which has become popular through its merits and the testimonials of its users, not because some big corporation was pushing it.
i also code in python for 7y and i would like to ask you something, do you feel that python is way harder to master compared to C or easier? because i only dev in C for 2 years but i feel C easier to master.
@@vuvu7005 bruh
@@brennethd5391 "i feel C easier to master"
you being very honest that's a good way to start....! Hope someday your message will reach out to her.
For me personally, C is the most beautiful language. Both Linux' and Windows' kernel are written in C. I've written a lot of embedded software in C. It's wonderful. Over 50 years old and still the backbone of every product we use today, be it a server, a handheld, or a pc.
I hadn't realized how popular Pascal was and for how long before C took off. Ada too.
Pascal was the C before C. I learnt it and it has some really interesting syntax.
@@NafaniaXD I actually hate C style syntax. It has too many arcane symbols. I prefer keywords. Pascal uses IF...THEN BEGIN...END but in it's successors, like Modula-2, BEGIN was removed so it became IF...THEN...END, which is nicer than Pascal.
It was the common training language so practically everyone who majored in computer science had to take it as an intro course before going onto other languages.
Pascal (Delphi specifically) is what got me into the programming industry with no college degree. I just so happened to run into a small business owner who used delphi, and I just so happened to to have learned windows development on my mom's copy of Borland delphi. It's been many moons since I've used pascal, but I still owe my career to knowing it.
@@LunaticEdit Delphi was interesting. One of its architects went to Microsoft and contributed to .Net
So interesting. I started programming in 2010, and the first three languages I learned were the top three most popular at the time (Java, JavaScript, and PHP). My dad learned in the mid 80s and he was taught Pascal, the most popular of his time. We are products of our time.
True
In 1981 I learned FORTRAN on the fly for a graphics course, then data structures in Pascal. But I loved C most of all, the way she’s bite if you weren’t careful ;)
@@johngriswold yeah, clearly C was popular since it got so many spin-off languages and stayed relevant for many many years.
Oof, sorry to hear you had to learn on three such crappy languages.
@@BlunderMunchkin I appreciate the sympathy! I'm working in Go now so there's a happy ending.
I'm an old dinosaur... when I started my career we still programmed sort machines with patch boards and wires. If you needed your input sorted in a certain order before running your program, you needed to run the data cards thru the sorter first before using them as program input. I remember the excitement of our shop getting it's first IBM 3270 terminal and CICS software to be able to write and store programs electronically instead of punching them out on cards and storing them in file drawers. The senior programmers hogged that terminal up and didn't let us junior programmers use it. I worked on the first generation of supermarket bar code POS systems... did the systems programming, application programming, and field service tech work with them. Back then they ran a whole supermarket on a store controller with a 5M disk! We downloaded data to all the stores at night over a 2400 baud modem... took all night. Whole corporations used to be run on an IBM 360/370 with 16M of core... and probably one string of 8 DASD 3350 drives with 500M a piece, and a few 2400 series tape drives.
How about a 16K 360/30 running BOS using 2311 drives with 7.25 MB capacity and RPGI because not enough hardware to run COBOL. We upgraded to 32K to run DOS and COBOL.
@@alexisbono24 I loved the 2311 drives... you could watch the seek heads going back an forth... made the system seem alive.
@@rhymereason3449 We had rows of those and it was cool to watch operators lift the lid and use their hand on the top disk platter as a brake because they were in too big a hurry change the disk. Skin dust caused lots of R/W errors so the manufacturers started applying a friction material on the top platter. Only took a few skin burns to stop that practice.
@@saabyurk LOL... that's pretty wild! We had an operator who was 6'7" and about 350 lbs. He was surly with a bad temper... but management was afraid to fire him. He'd throw full boxes of computer paper across the room when a job would abend and tick him off. Once he cracked the console keyboard with his fist, and another time he put his foot through the glass door on the 1401 printer. Management would just replace the things he broke...
The most popular programming language is still DNA.
Well actually ☝️🤓
Really great point! Still is amazing to me how some people think it just happened by random chance! Clearly by intelligent design! Yes..God!
What's that ?
@@Ronadhoba you don't know what is DNA? Basically your hair's, eye's color's code, your base height code and the keywords are A,C,G,T
DNA isn't really programming tho, it doesn't get interpreted/compiled by anything - it just acts as a blueprint for making other proteins which do their job by themselves. And just to dispel the creationists who assume anything that supports their preformed beliefs is true: DNA is closer to an array of data constantly being modified and selected for using the genetic algorithm.
Oh man great video again! It's hard to believe that are still people using Fortran nowadays! My teacher of Computational astrophysics does it!
In parts of aviation, Fortran is still strong, and I am not sure if there is an actual alternative to Fortran.
I am in astrophysics, and I do use Fortran daily :) Nothing really beats it for large numerical simulations (well, you can use C/C++)
Part of Fortran diminishing status is not that it was superseded by anything better for what it is doing. It is that in 70-s 90% of computering was numerical scientific/engineering computations. Fortran is still one of the best tools for that. It is that since programming and computing has evolved in many different areas
@@dmitripogosian5084 oh you're in astro too?
@@galactic_3787 Yes, cosmology mostly
In 1985 my college required FORTRAN for engineering majors (#5 in the list at the time) but nearly all students (including I) also took an elective for "C" (which was #1 in the list at the time). Very interesting how these languages evolved over time.
Where is swift ? 😮
I'm surprised neither PL/1 nor RPG made it on this list. They were ubiquitous during the 1970s and 1980s. I was a computer consultant during that time and there was almost no demand for Fortran skills at all.. I don't believe Fortran was the most popular language for anywhere near as long as you portrayed. COBOL was much more heavily used, and is still in use even today.
Just about every large business through the 80s used COBOL on their mainframes with RPG for Reports. PL1 was big on IBM minis. C was big on all the other minis (DEC, DG) . Actuaries loved APL on a PC connected to the mainframe with an IRMA board
Agreed - PL/I is clearly missing from the data set.
Loved using RPG for 5 years. Made so many tasks easy to code.
I program in assembly language and machine language since 1983. I will never stop.
When you directly program the microprocessor, and build your own graphic interface, files access, etc. that's so cool! :)
I agree, with assembler you can build your own libraries and virtually create your own language. I have programmed in various different assembler languages since 1975.
C is portable assembly. C++ adds classes to it and other powerful features. You are missing out. I did assembly also, ain’t going back.
I am so glad my college focused on RPG and Cobol. Done a lot for me in life.
Java just refuse to die off. Even Oracle tries to make people stop using it.
But, Minecraft! :)
the only good thing on Java is that it can run on any device , but dont expect speed
@@Killerspieler0815 So can any other interpreter language, as long as the interpreter is installed on the target system. But Java is faster than most other interpreter languages.
@@Killerspieler0815 If you think Java is slow, good luck with python.
Also no, Java isn't particularly good at running on every device. The argument that it is comes from a time where most languages were compiled. But the real blocker to running on different devices isn't the programming language, or even if it is compiled or not, but frameworks, UI ones in particular.
Java will not die off quickly. Similar to C/C++, a lot of existing systems are based on this technology. And even if the language dies, it will still prevail as a platform for other languages. There is a reason, Java being the most efficient interpreter language.
I am a scientist, still using Fortran for daily numerical computation, and Python (Matlab too) for visualization and machine learning things. There is nothing can beat Fortran (off course C/C++ also) for scientific computing; probably Julia is the closest candidate.
The main reason why interpreted/dynamic/slow languages like Python and JavaScript can exist is that PCs have gotten so powerful over the years. If we were stuck with hardware from the '90s, we would all be using C.
What do you mean 90s?
I agree - more processor power seems to end up on eye candy. And programs seem to be expanding to fill the memory available. I remember the days of cycle counting on op codes and hacking code to save a couple of cycles in a loop which soon added up, as well as programming tricks to also save memory.
Give developers of today a micro from the 1980s and see what they can get it to do...
Why not Rust?
If you added gas gas gas music it would be more attractive for gen z :D
nice video btw
The one thing that jaded me as I grew up in this era was the perpetual promise that there would be "one" language to run everywhere. One-size-fits-all solutions are almost always snake oil and sales pitches, but always seem to bend the ear of CEO's who read magazine covers but don't listen to tech people. Java was just one of the efforts that enjoyed the most success at realizing it, although it was and is a support headache. The universal presentation layer wouldn't truly evolve until the web/HTML/DOM model and browser capabilities truly started hitting their stride.
Surprised how long APL last. Such a fun and interesting language.
Yeah, agreed. There are still some great APL implementations available today, and it's a fun language to play with as a hobbyist. Dyalog APL is free for non-commercial use.
Nice touch with putting C on the screen from the very beginning. I expect 20 years from now it will be still in the top 10. We will always need language that offers maximum performance that is easily readable and compact.
Rust is much more readable than C and is less prone to memory management errors.
@@wyqtorLets see how many decades it takes for Rush to make it to the top ten.
@@Axel_Andersen Did you not watch the video? It’s already in the top 10
@@wyqtor Less prone to memory management errors usually comes with being somewhat memory inefficient (or not efficient as it can be)
@@orangeguy5374 I did but it did no register, sorry, my bad.
Beautiful and instructive animation. Would be perfect to cite the multiple surveys used as data sets.
Interesting timeline. I started COBOL programming in the late 70’s and loved every minute of it. Moved overseas in the late 80’s and into an IT Management role. Judging by the video, I made the right move. Still, Cobol paid well, as a contractor, in the UK in the 80’s.
It doesn't appear any automation programmers where surveyed. Ladder Logistics is pretty much a standard in PLC's and Scada heavily uses various flavors of Basic. Also where is SQL?
SQL is a query language, not a programming language.
I'm so glad this channel is back making content. Data is so good
Data is beautiful
VBA has been underrated. Its practically on every office PC computer. Most use it with macros and don't even know it.
It's still my favourite language ... but that just shows my age!
Microsoft never updates VBA. That's why we love VBA. We'd hate it if Microsoft tried to make it like C#.
Taught myself BASIC around 1980 on a friend's TRS-80 and later on my own Commodore 64. Was picked to be part of my school's first computer science class. The teacher would get mad because a friend and I could debug his mistakes when he couldn't. BASIC taught me everything I needed to know to learn the "C languages" and on to Python today.
That moment in 2014 when all the C-like languages were alongside each other.
I have always regretted not majoring in comp sci in college.. I would 100% pick that without hesitation if I could go back. Programming seems fun and a very rewarding field to get into. I got my master's in a very different field recently. Got a remote job with a relatively light workload. Just started learning Python a month ago.
What was your qualification?
Never too late to go for it
You would have been taught Fortran in a C/C++ world.
Python can change your life for the better
I've been programming for a living for the last 20 years, and there's a lot of change to the languages during that time. A lot of the languages look and/or work completely different today from 2 decades ago. Javascript has changed a lot and is being used for a lot of things not even conceived of then. PHP still has the same usage, but the language has changed to such a significant degree that it is not really the same language anymore. Even a very old and conservative language such as C has undergone some substantial changes.
No, PHP is not the same anymore. Although, code written 25 years ago will still run on PHP 8, with some changes. That is how backward compatible the core developers have kept it.
@@mucholangs I wish that was the case, but there has also been a lot of deprecation in the last few years.
@@racketman2u Most deprecation have easy drop-in replacements. E.g. ereg vs preg_match.
Unless you have a particularly complex code, you could make changes quickly.
Also, unless, you're using a framework, getting old code to run on newer versions of PHP is trivial.
Yes and that type of rapid arbitrary changing is terrible for anyone who has developed expertise in a language. Forcing people to relearn is a ratioanlist weapon that puts talented programmers out of jobs.
This explains why I learned Fortran, COBOL, BASIC, C and Pascal in my younger days. I guess Assembly was just a bonus for the Engineering students.
Given the inefficiency of most processors at that time, anyone who really needed speed used assembly.
I never really learned COBOL, but am guilty of the remainder of the list.
@@u.v.s.5583 Same here. Our professors were very excited about Pascal and Modula-2, but we all wanted to use C instead. Gotta love the late 80's CS scene.
I self-taught BASIC during elementary school years. Then learned Pascal in AP computer science class in high school. That's when I had the most fun with computers, making my own games. Now, I'm just awe-spired by the level of technology we have today. I miss my Apple IIgs.
You have Swift appearing in 2013, but it wasn’t announced until 2014.
I started programming with assembly language with an 8080 micro processor. I then learned C while schools were teaching Pascal and ADA. I then learned C++ and started using VHDL (Hardware language similar to ADA in concept) and then onto verilog (another HW language similar to C). Retired now, so trying to pick up on Python. It seems like some of these languages are tied to Systems or graphical interfaces. I remember a fellow who specialized in Smalltalk which is used in the Chip testing industry. What's nice about C is you can get down to the machine level or write at a higher level. C++ brings in the object oriented aspects.
Interesting. I had in multiple occasions heard that there would still be around old systems coded in old languages, and each time specifically COBOL was mentioned, so I had assumed that at some point it would have been the most popular programming language. But apparently it never was most popular; Fortran was, but I don't remember it ever been mentioned. Were those two, COBOL and Fortran, then each used in different kinds of fields?
COBOL used exclusively for business programming. Fortran largely used for scientific programming. COBOL has always been a strong contender for the world's worst language.
@@jrstf If relational databases had been around in the 1960s the COBOL applications wouldn't have been so bad. The simple COBOL syntax was used to manipulate huge data in limited core memory. More modern languages would have had a tough time with that as well.
COBOL is used a lot in banking systems, and those systems don't like to change. There's was a saying floating around in my part of the world (don't know if it still holds) that if you want to get a lot of money early in your career, you learn COBOL and apply for a job in one of the large banks (preferably German). The drawback is less opportunities later on and the non-sexiness of it all.
COBOL is banking, FORTRAN is scientific number crunching (it is FORmula TRANslator after all)
@@dmitripogosian5084 IBM created the PL/1 language to bridge business and math, which should have replaced COBOL. PL/1 was innovative and influenced later languages like C and Perl. PL/1 was the first language to use classes and a preprocessor, supported pointers and was also suitable for systems programming. PL/1 has practically disappeared, partly because IBM mismanaged it.
I built a database development business on Visual Basic / Access between 2000 and 2020. Fashion moved on and I retired but for 20 years I had many happy clients and a good living.
what an artistic work I don't have words. outstanding
I love the Groovy language but no one seems to think it’s cool. It’s so economical and easy to get stuff done. But mainly I work with python these days.
Interesting to see how some languages accompany the rise of related tech. Javascript and PHP for example rose as internet and web sites became more and more prevalent. Objective C I believe rose with the expansion of iPhone and Apple technology. While some others such as FORTRAN that is limited to desktop/ mainframe saw it's proportion decline.
Great watch. Be keen to see where C# is now. See it was dropping at the end. But with all the work with .NET Core, Blazor and the MAUI and the current version of C#, is this a future for many or something else. Plenty of jobs wanting C# so it must be in the top 3.
Wow brings the dead back to life! I paused at 1979 when I started programming and realised I worked in almost all languages on the list (Fortran mostly, hated cobol!) Then to see the rise of Ada which I was a huge proponent of but despaired of a good compiler and was eventually suffocated by its own beautiful weight. Now, as I program almost exclusively in php and scripting languages I am appalled that I haven’t even heard of about half the entries on the 2022 list! I do miss my old friends like pascal and lisp! :-)
I’m a retired embedded SW Engineer, started programming as a hobbyist in the mid 1970. I have dabbled in most of those languages and at one time or another was proficient in about half but what carried me through a 35 year career was Assembly, C and C++.
I saw my whole pre teens and programming career flash before my eyes. My first startup was in 2008 built in JavaScript and PHP. Interesting those 2 were in almost parity at the time.
It was interesting to see BASIC take off in the 8-bit computer era, especially after the arrival of the 1977 Trinity of the Apple II, Commodore PET and Tandy TRS-80, each of which had a BASIC in ROM. The PET had Microsoft BASIC from the start but the Apple II and Tandy TRS-80 upgraded to Microsoft BASIC within a year.
Then it died down as the last 8-bit computers came out and were then replaced with the 16-bit Apple Macintosh, Atari ST and Commodore Amiga, which, while BASIC was available for them, it wasn't used much as better languages had become available.
BASIC was great because every 8-bit home computer had it built in and it was easy to learn so even the average person could figure it out. Sadly the languages that replaced it weren't easy enough for the average person to use and now only a very small percentage of computer users can write any code.
insight appreciated.
Learned Basic at 9 years old through ZX Spectrum Sinclair Basic, it was my first programming language, later, in college (90's), C/C++/Assembly 8086
Basic was easy to learn and readily available because it came with every computer at that time, but it really is a lousy language.
@@sexygeek8996 For sure but it was pretty popular for a 10 year period.
Heck, I wonder why BASIC didn't dominate the late 70s into the 80s. It literally shipped with every home computer, and every business PC. That alone makes me wonder how they were counting popularity.
I learned Basic at the age of 8 on a ZX Spectrum (Sinclair Basic) in the 80's, then in college in the 90's I learned Assembly 8086 and C/C++, then many others came but Mr Clive Sinclair's Basic lives in my heart anyway 40 years after first contact. There is one more that I really like, LUA, a language developed in Brazil, many MS-DOS and Win9X era games were created with it.
@@simon_patterson In my case, in south america, far away from Clive's land, Britain
I learnt BASIC on my uncle's ZX Spectrum in the 2010s lol
@@simon_patterson cool!!
Same, started with Basic when I was 7 or 8, can't recall, on a Commodore VIC-20.
It's said, any-one who ever came in touch with BASIC was lost for any other programming language. It's true for me. Python, C, you name it, always had the obstacle of not-knowing why you had to put these include=... in the first lines. In BASIC we just took off and we were going.
I studied programming between 2001 and 2004, I learned clipper, c++, cobol and visual basic, but in the end I dedicated myself to infrastructure, greetings from Chile
I love how python rose so quick. I do so love it myself. And raspberry Pi4
The dominants:
Fortran - Primitive, coding into machine (almost assembly)
C - Embadded systems
Java & JavaScript - Web era
Python - Machine Learning
I wonder what next.
C is also at the heart of all our modern operating systems, it might not be the most uses language nowadays, it is still silently powering all of our modern devices !
What comes next is machines writing the code for you. Scary stuff.
Fortran is higher level or on par with C. C is all about pointers, Fortran is much more about arrays. Especially F90 and later.
I was programming in Fortran in HS in 1969-70, punching out card decks, loading them into a card reader for an IBM 360 and then debugging all the syntax errors. Helped a lot later in university EE courses. After graduation, wrote embedded uP assembly code for a major project by learning while doing. As an EE also had to code PLDs and then FPGAs along the way which is a very different programming experience.
Another ex punch card jockey!
@@A_R_B_G I'm facing a similar issue as of now. Did you reroute the HS2 optical IF-byte with the connected line parentheses ? Thanks!
Did you punch sequence numbers so that in case you were to drop your deck, you could sort the cards back into order?
Loved writing code in Pascal and C back in the early 80s.
Learned Turbo Pascal in the mid 90's and really loved it!
COLBOL. Used with the old timey data bases, IMS, DB2, CICS. Probably over $2 trillion of code written and still running.
COBOL?
It's not that obvious from this chart, but Python and Javascript really shot up years after they were first introduced. It didn't happen in one single surge.
As a software developer for about 35 years now, the most interesting chànge in that graph is the rise and fall of Java. It was a darling of the industry for so long, but is often seen as a support and maintenance albatross.
I think ties to Oracle really hurt it in the end.
@@DataIsBeautifulOfficial Very valid point. I know a lot of network admins that have waged and won battles to get rid of Java because supporting it, especially on the desktop, became such a nightmare because so many apps depend on the "right" version of the JVM, have independent keystores, create curious unexpected dependencies, and then add Oracle on top of it sure didn't help. A great deal of automotive diagnostic tools are Java-based and that's it's own special nightmare for shops who may have very limited IT knowledge or resources.
@@DIYDaveOK Who is running Java on the desktop? Java is the perfect language for server-side processing.
@@AmazingChinaToday Very few people now, but it used to be used in the places where you now see Javascript web stuff, and Electron apps.
@@DataIsBeautifulOfficial it was buyed as a pack from Sun
They all have different uses. C# and Java is popular in the backend while Javascript is more like frontend thing and Python for data analyses, math or algorithms.
You should disambiguate your use of the term "front-end". A desktop app is also a front end, but most are written in C or C++.
@@davidfrischknecht8261 you should get laid
@@davidfrischknecht8261 Desktop apps are from ancient times.
Python is great for backend unless youre doing banking
@@davidfrischknecht8261 Not really, if you look at your apps like discord, vscode, netflix, spotify, slack, or microsoft office, they are all just electron apps written in javascript, I'd say this is more popular than C++ honestly, even though C++ does have huge importance in the browser, gaming and adobe suite.
Can we expect GO to take Python's place maybe in a decade?
Sus about the accuracy. 3.7% of all programmers using or learning C# in 1999 Q4, before the first release of C# and .NET? x for doubt.
I have been doing COBOL since I graduated college in 2010. It is my favorite language still with how mature the tools have become over the decades, but for some reason the mainframe is detested by leaders who only chase the current buzz words.
I learned BASIC on the Vic-20 when I was 9 or 10, then got into QuickBASIC v4.5 (not QBASIC, I paid for the compiler), then started using x86 Assembly for slow parts, C, then C++, Eiffel, LISP, Java, Perl, Bash shell, SQL, C#, Javascript, PL/SQL, PHP, Clean, Python, Ruby, Erlang, Haskell... I think I got the order right. Working mostly in Python and JS nowadays.
Great adventure!
Seeing JavaScript briefly claim the top spot in Q3 2018 and suddenly everything that’s wrong with the world suddenly makes sense.
*Wolfram L* is the _most satisfying_ programming language for the casual programmer (science, engineering, maths, economics, finance, etc)
I don't see it around much. Probably because it's not available for free.
@@timlocke3159
on top of it as always.
@@timlocke3159 it's definitely a niche language (been around for 30+ years). but those who _ever_ got some grasp of it love it for life and to death, including myself. It's been FREE on the Raspberry Pi for years.
You should try Julia. It's also free and you can type Greek letters and all sorts of symbols for the names of your variables. Even emojis! 😀
@@wyqtor That sounds like an amazing sales pitch on why not to use it.
in memory;
Pascal - 2002
BASIC - 2000
Assembly -1999
Fortran - 1997
ADA - 1995
COBOL - 1995
APL - 1992
ALGOL - 1989
hands down to the oldest remaining one (on the list)
C: 1972- present
Bold of you to say cobol and assembly died pre-2k but they're still used today...
And still dominates most of critical infrastructure.
@@kopazwashere Assembly I get, since somethings still require that deep down fiddling at the machine language level. At least called from other languages (and not for the whole applicaton).
But its surprising that Cobol still is relevant these days. That old hack of a language that surely can be replaced with much more efficient tools?
@@Magnus_Loov Nope, Cobol is still being updated and used. Not only on Mainframes, but Windows, Linux, Mac... GnuCOBOL. Many government, banks, big finance use COBOL and there are pretty good salaries now that we are retired...
Assembly is still in use and I guess it will never die since it is the most close thing to machine language. And probably C and C++ will live forever as well.
One of the biggest "what-if's" in my life was in 1988, when I was 12 years old, I discovered the giant manual in my Atari XE console was Titled, "BASIC Programming." I cracked it open and started to learn it and was fascinated. When my dad (who was an electrical engineer at the time) came home, I showed him. He was amazed I was able to learn what he learned on punch cards when he was in College. We messed with it day and night for months. Then we got bored and moved on to other things. Fast forward to 1995 and all I am seeing everywhere is this new Internet thing. I was in the military and busy with other things. I really wished that I had seriously pursued programming professionally.
I dove into Fortran IV for a school year starting in 1968 and also did a quarter of Assembly. Also learned a bit of BASIC. That was followed by programming my HP calculator for many years. I did a lot of serious HyperCard programming on my Mac for a number of years until a while after Apple dropped that, but produced some very useful tools for my architectural work. And I did lots of programming in a superset of Pascal that was built into my CAD program so I could create my own drawing tools to simplify my architectural work that I did for 40 years. Started looking at Swift but didn't follow through because life was too busy.
I was working as a software engineering contractor to the Naval Underwater Systems Center in the late 70s when the U.S. military declared that all subsequent software projects would be done In Ada. They launched a lot of educational projects to get everyone up to speed on the language. I was even a "reviewer" of the language as it was being more formalized. Strange, though, that you don't see Ada used just about anywhere today. As they say, "The best laid plans of mice and men and the U.S. military . . ." go POOF! It seems that you can't just declare that some programming language will be "used by all". Maybe they should have involved some actual, on-the-job, programmers in the decision. :)
Wow, thanks for sharing! Interesting.
i dont understand why Ada fell out of favor. it is a good language. did/does what Rust claims today.
@@paherbst524 I appreciated Oracle pl/SQL which is based on Ada. In comparison tsql is meh.
Can you show the source?
Is TIOBE Index?
If not, can you show the source for "Javascript" for example?
Great work by the way
PYPL, TIOBE, StackOverflow and Amazon Products API.
I used C64 basic then DOS Qbasic. Learned pascal in 1990 and I'm still using it (delphi) for everything :)
Pascal rocks!
Writing in assembler is like building a house by gluing sawdust together.
c/c# is like the center of programming, its like the basic building blocks if u get what i mean
I really love your graphs they're wonderful !
I used to watch the previous one and was amazed to see you did a new one :)
May I ask if there is a source we can read to keep updated about these changes or you did the stats yourself for the video ?
I learned a little Basic in the 60s and FORTRAN and COBOL in college in the 70s. I really liked COBOL. My COBOL professor was awesome - I still use some of the basic computer stuff and logic I learned in his class.
It seems like everyone who grew up in the 60's and 70's says that. My business teacher said the exact same thing in class to us (minus him liking his COBOL professor).
COBOL was the worst language I learned, b/c I already knew C and Pascal, and then it is a nightmare.
open source GnuCOBOL
Where is SQL??
These days not used as a standalone language as it once was. But it is a language. Should be ranked.
When I was in college in 1998, they were actually teaching Pascal.....just saying. 🤦♂️
I told the instructor at the time that it was a waste of time to learn Pascal and was going to be absolutely useless in the job market.
Colleges are still way behind teaching actual marketable skills.
Doing good Javascript and Python development work. Life is good.
Just stay with the market developments and you'll do fine. Don't get stuck in a single language, because 'back then it was so cool'
Great video... but I think it had some notable exceptions... pretty sure RPG and PL/1 had much larger adaption in the mid-70's than C, Algol, APL, and Lisp which were primarily in the Universities, DOD, and research facilities. . Back then IBM's PL/1 was on a lot of mainframes as it was both a business and scientific language. And RPG was used by a lot of smaller shops running mid-sized systems.
Yes, I was wondering why the percentages didn't come close to adding up to 100% in the early years.
PL/1 was the language I learnt first in 1973. Then Fortran, then HP Basic and C++ 20 years later.
Indeed. PL/I was the main language then.
Late to the party but I don't get it either. This video isn't my experience of 35 years in the industry. It says 'most popular' and not 'most used'. Ciobol was by far huge even when I graduated me of course it was never popular. Pl/1 and rpg also huge. But I worked in business and this seems to encompass scientific and education too.
It's very interesting to see how the importance of the programming languages changed over the course of time. Especially when you think about what caused these changes:
New hardware
New software
Introduction of the internet
New usages of data...
Thank you for this history.
I found it weird not to see languages like Modula-2, Forth, Haskell or PowerShell and I was expecting Pascal to be a lot more prominent in the mid-80s as Turbo-Pascal was the go-to solution on PCs, or C/C++ from the early-90s for it was pushed by the Turbo C++ "revolution" (and everyone seemed to turn to C and Unix/Linux at the time), when it replaced Pascal in computer schools. From what I know, computer schools mostly teach Python nowadays, because its performance is close enough from pre-compiled code and when an application can support being written in Java or JavaScript, who cares about code efficiency anyway? When you see you can code Windows 95 desktop with a few applications entirely in JavaScript in a browser window and it lags less than the original one, why bother?
The Pascal shown in the video is mostly Modula-2 as this is what was used in uni and some business. Turbo Pascal for PC was at the end of the 80s and was a tiny fraction.
I have programmed in about 80% of those languages from Fortran, Pascal, Basic, C, C++, Java, Python, etc.
Watching that time lapse I saw 4 things:
1) Languages reflected underlying hardware environments.
2) ADA was surprisingly popular.
3) Java was a language slayer.
4) My favorite, Ruby, never made it very high.
Pascal was one of the biggest losers IMHO.
It was a very good and elegant language for its time (certain limitations notwithstanding, but they got addressed), and had a pretty strong position up until a point.
The demise of Delphi, which was way ahead of its time, was the final nail in the coffin.
I have no programming knowledge, but wondering what do big financial intstitutions use. Its seems like they have very few problems over the years with constant changes in daily banking services. Im old enough to remember tellers filling in your passbook by hand.
Surprised how fast TypeScript became popular
The fact that Python is booming now makes it feel like it just came out of nowhere but it actually took it's sweet a** time 😂
Ya been around since the late 90s didn't become popular until around 2010 or so.
Could be because people also use it for data analytics (which is a hot industry since 2010) and not just programming. Same with R.
Yeah, it took a very long time, but then found a few very hot niches. I’ve been a data engineer since 2014 and Python is absolutely the best at that. Not necessarily the best language, just the language with the best support for that particular function. You could use Scala if you’re a masochist or if you really need industrial strength stuff, especially with Spark, but Python is more than good enough.
I graduated college with a CS degree in 2017, and I spent 4 years working in COBOL doing object plug-in with a NetCOBOL compiler as my first job and went to another COBOL position after that. Not what I expected out of university as someone born in the 90s. 😂
Love these graphics!
Damn
Nice. At least you have a rare skillset and can fill the empty positions left by the old retiring folk.
@@DataIsBeautifulOfficial Repent, sinner- Heil GOD
first programming language I learned was BASIC in the 1980s where my father taught me programming basics as a kid, since then I learned about 12 programming languages.
The language I enjoy the most is Python
The quickest time took me to learn a language was Dart where I learned it in about 3 days
The language that I find more difficulty writing a code in is Java
The languages that I almost forgot how they look like are Fortran & Assembly
The language I want to learn next is JavaScript (I may find that I already know most of it)
The 2 most powerful languages in my opinion are C/C++ & Python.
Be careful of 2 things, pointers in C++ and lists in Python.
Wait typescript is about to take over c#. I never expected this to happen.
Java: 17 years of dominance
C: 15 years
Fortran: 14 years
Pascal: 5 years
Python: 3 years?
JavaScript: Technically is leading right now if you include TypeScript and all the Github traffic.
JavaScript is barely leading if you add up with TypeScript. But I hope it finally dies and TypeScript (or even better, Dart) fully replaces it. The spread to server and desktop via NodeJS and Electron was the worst thing that could happen.
And Python will probably rule for 10+ years since it's easy, dynamically typed BUT still type-safe (unlike JS which is a complete mess).
Not the same score man 🤣
If you add Typescript to Javascript, you have to add all the JVM based languages to Java as well. That would be a very strong competitor. Nonsensical in anyway.
@@_piulin_ TypeScript, Golang, and Rust are probably the future, but for now JS is almost everywhere, which pisses me off when professors just teach Python then C, or Java then C.
@@tmicecave It's aimless if all the surveys are ignored. StackOverflow, Github, and other sites should be taken into account when teaching students programming but probably not so much when you're already employed as a developer.
Why is php still alive? What psychotic force is keeping that thing relevant??
the internet, 70% of websites run on PHP
PHP is one of the best languages. I use it everyday. It’s a meme that it’s bad/hard to use. Script kitties, and keyboard monkeys think PHP is bad.
lamp ?
It could also be nice to see a pie chart of the use percentage.
I don't think the languages are mutually exclusive. Most of the time, the numbers added up to way more than 100.
Pie charts are more like lie charts 💀
Thanks!
Thank you!
Python will sit at the top for a few more years, TypeScript will take JavaScript's place, C# will take Java's place. Go and Rust will move up pretty fast.
Literally why is python first
easy to learn
@CoolStop2 fair
Most used. Not necessarily for major applications such as banking and those other areas where you don't wand uncontrolled rounding errors. Financial planning, medicine, science don't want last-cent accuracy - my blood test results have three digits and implied or explicit scaling factors, but that would never do for recording financial transactions.
Nothing but it's open source and has vast extensive libraries for different use cases from Web Development to building LLMs
My first touch with programming was through game maker 8. Its based on C++ and c#. I rarely used the actual code, but really abused variables and learned a lot for if/else commands, creating events, checking collisions, changing sprites and animations, and applying actions (self, other, specific object/s). My best was making a 25lvl mario game which was published in game maker website and had 55% rating in 2012.
I saw a video in Python about making a 3d game and actually could understand a lot of the commands used, as well as the fact that it seemed quite flexible at a first glance. Usually i see people hate Python, as it is first taught in universities (computer science, maths) and it is not fully properly explained.
I want one day to start programming (javascript, python, c++, C#), so that i can make games (by far the hardest thing in programming)
I had a minor touch with GL Basic, but i never liked the design and the interface (not for me) and didnt spend a lot of time learning the commands.
In high school we also learned micro worlds pro (greek version of a beginner programming) which was too simple and boring for me!
Game maker language doesn't have much in common with C#... Its more like a custom JavaScript
Incrível o Delphi quando conheci o Delphi 10 e Java na época dos estudos no Tecnico.
I always wondered why Delphi isn't way more popular than it should be ...
assembly is not programing language is text of instructions.
Microprocessors(Like Arduino,8051)or i486 is reads assembly
C language is simplified assembly and converted to Assembly.
Python is more simplyfied C.
What are the units for these numbers?
Edit: Nevermind, I had read the description but got confused when the percentages didn't add to 100. I see now that each language had a percent as a popularity value.
A most popular database would be nice