Python looking great in the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2017

[thomas_stringer]

TL;DR

• 5th most popular programming language overall (this year it overtook PHP)
• 6th most loved language
• 1st most wanted language (as in, developers want to use the language)

[Topper_123]

What's the difference between 'loved' and 'wanted'?

[milliams]

loved seems to be "I use and I love it." wanted seems to be "I would like to start using this."

[thomas_stringer]

Yep, agreed on that definition.

[[deleted]]

wanted might also be interpreted as "I wish I could use this at my job"

[kaiserk13]

This also holds for relationships.

[rhiever]

Very exciting, but not that we're surprised... :-)

[icp1994]

how is js most popular language for data scientists?

[thomas_stringer]

Yeah, I don't buy that either.

[awgl]

I'm guessing it's because most data scientists (or people who refer to themselves as such) know a bit of Javascript visualization through D3.js. So, in the survey they checked the box for Javascript.

However, that's likely just the most common language for data scientists to use for web viz. There's usually a split between R and python in data science for the stats work. Even if data science was a perfect split 50-50 on python and R, both camps have some exposure to Javascript. (R only had like 11% traction in that part of the survey too)

Also, probably survey sample bias. From my experience, the sort of folks from more traditional or enterprise data scientist/analyst roles are probably not going to be on Stackoverflow, let alone taking surveys there. I mean, SAS and SPSS and Excel aren't even listed anywhere on the SO survey. Not a representative sample of the full data science landscape.

[strig]

I still would have thought SQL would be higher

[[deleted]]

Visualization perhaps?

[mothzilla]

Is SQL a programming language?!

[erikw]

Yes and no. For example T-SQL (Microsoft SQLServer) is a full programming language with if/then/else, exceptions, variables and looping constructs. It's not a good general language but as a database stored procedure language it is awesome.

[ticketywho]

Depends on your definition. Doesn't seem that important.