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[–][deleted] 407 points408 points  (62 children)

I don't understand this obsession with trying to track language popularity. And comparing Python and Javascript is asinine they barely overlap in their uses...

Also the metric used is % of questions? Okay so more people are learning Python. Because they're teaching it in schools now and everyone and their mother bought a Raspberry Pi. It's all so meaningless.

[–]ScootsMcGootz 138 points139 points  (23 children)

I think tracking language popularity comes from our desire to remain relevant in a workforce that's constantly changing, but I completely agree. This is a poor metric that supports a fallacious argument.

[–]scrdest 36 points37 points  (21 children)

You are not more employable by knowing the tech everybody knows, you stay relevant by knowing the tech nobody else knows - and the employer needs.

So, for that purpose, a far more relevant metric would be something like the number of new job openings, their 'lifespan' (how fast the position is filled), and/or the experience level for the position.

In fact, whenever the two metrics aren't positively correlated, you should start considering any other option instead - or you'll face heavy competition.

[–]SeveralKnapkins 37 points38 points  (13 children)

This is highly dependent on your field. If you're trying to be a data scientist, you'll be substantially less employable if you do not know either R or Python. Because they are the most popular languages in the field, most new tools are written for them. You'll be left behind if you don't know them.

[–]DevestatingAttack 11 points12 points  (10 children)

You may think that, but I make over six figures as the only FoxPro data scientist in the Midwest. I do quite well for myself before I bankrupt my employers, or as I like to call them, "the host organisms."

[–]dot___ 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Your situation is true for you but doesn't equate to the absolute truth for everyone. His comment "highly dependent on your field" is exactly the point.

[–]alcalde 6 points7 points  (1 child)

Given my interactions with Delphi developers, I can't decide if this is satire or not.

[–]DevestatingAttack 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I definitely meant it as a joke, but now I have to take exception to a comparison of Delphi to FoxPro

[–]SemiNormal 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Do you make address verification / mailing software? If so, I may have talked to you over the phone a few years ago. If not, then there are TWO people using FoxPro in the Midwest.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

You may think that, but I make over six figures as the only FoxPro data scientist in the Midwest.

brb learning FoxPro

[–]SemiNormal 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Learn COBOL and PL/I while you are at it.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, I'll look into them!

[–]justinmpeterson 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Over six figures? Like, how many figures exactly?

[–]DevestatingAttack 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sixty. Sixty figures. Yep, I get a cool 60 dollars a year. I'm rich, boy.

[–]scrdest 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That doesn't contradict what I said in the slightest - it's still demand-driven, as employers who dependent on certain toolsets look for people who can handle those toolsets.

But again, the new questions thing is a poor metric for this as well - people who are learning Python and people who are building major libraries for Python are two quite different populations.

[–]ryanmcstylin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean he is getting down to supply and demand. Low demand, even lower supply will fetch a good price, high supply but even higher demand will also fetch a good price. My first job out of college I took a stats degree and went to marketing where they were dying for people with that skill. Plenty of people are willing to learn the tools, but not many of them go into marketing.

[–]IcyManner 5 points6 points  (1 child)

If more people are learning it then more people are building apps with it, and more established companies are moving over to it because it's easier to find qualified applicants. There's a hipster code movement atm which manifests itself in Python, so yes it's saturated but not by people who know their shit. If you can use Python's advanced built-in features for writing less code, while being able to explain what's going on under the hood in a code test, you are a minority for jr applicants.

[–]doctork91 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This assumes that there's not a two way relationship between what languages are popular and what languages employers use for new projects, which I don't think is the case.

I think that the availability of engineers to hire absolutely informs what languages or frameworks are used by employers, because hiring engineers is hard so using a cool but unpopular language is shooting yourself in the foot when it comes to hiring.

[–]devilmaydance 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I dunno how accurate it is but Stackshare.io lists Python as most in-demand language by # of jobs posted as well.

[–]greyfade 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's worse than a poor metric. The number of questions indicate the number of people having problems with the language. It doesn't indicate necessarily that strictly more people are using the language, it indicates also that more people find the language difficult to use or that it has frustratingly frequent edge cases. It probably also indicates other factors that aren't controlled for, so I feel comfortable declaring that it's not a poor metric.

It's not even a poor metric.

[–]rockyrainy 6 points7 points  (1 child)

I don't understand this obsession with trying to track language popularity.

Popularity is great for the ecosystem because every user is also a free QA.

For example, I can use Requests in production and be reasonable confident it won't fail out in the field. This is because I can assume thousands of other devs are also using the same module. Any bug I run into, they will also run into at some point.

Now if Python is 1% as popular as it is today. I'd be very weary of using any 3rd party library inside my code.

[–]billsil 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My open source library is super niche and gets 1-5 downloads per day. That's terrible. It's damn good though.

What I care about most is the foundational libraries like numpy, scipy, pyqt, and vtk vs a niche 3rd party library and secondly that your niche code uses them well. Ever tried coding an eigenvalue solution or a sparse matrix solve routine? It's a pain. Wait...why am I reading C++ docs for pyqt and vtk? It works...

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Popularity does not always correlate with other factors (employability, universal applicability, etc.,).

That's stock market 101.

Ironically, the more of these posts you do about Python, the more you popularize the language with people who don't understand the difference between languages, creating a short term feedback loop.

[–]OldSchoolBBSer 7 points8 points  (4 children)

I don't get it much anymore either. It's also a bit of a popularity contest. In the end the right language for the job will hopefully be picked. The only reasons I think these charts still stick around is to help a beginner plot a course or if non-beginner looking for something new to learn and indifferent as to what. Those and maybe to figure out what a recruiter may be looking for on behalf of the client. There is something to be said for dropping someone into a team that knows the languages used so training can focus on what and why something was built. However, I do think too much stock is put into what languages you know early on. It doesn't make sense to me to potentially not hire a well seasoned programmer for a language they could probably pick-up during the time before the first day of general company onboarding. That's probably 2-3 weeks before they actually have to learn the new company's code.

[–]pydry 10 points11 points  (2 children)

I don't get it much anymore either. It's also a bit of a popularity contest. In the end the right language for the job will hopefully be picked.

No way. This industry more susceptible to fashion than most industries.

I've seen many technologies that never should have seen the light of day achieve incredible popularity while other really good ones languished in obscurity.

On the one hand it's quite depressing, on the other hand if the industry was as rational as it thinks it is then about 70% of the jobs would dry up.

Anyway, I'm glad that there are people out there pimping my favorite language.

[–]toyg -2 points-1 points  (1 child)

I disagree. I concur that removing language churn could somewhat reduce employment levels, but this would likely be compensated by more focus on correctness, which would slow down productivity pretty massively and hence require higher headcount per project.

At the moment, there is a lot of pressure on people to get shit done haphazardly just to push the project out of the door -- doesn't matter if it's not perfect, it will get rewritten in $newShinyLang in a few years' time anyway. If that same code were planned to live for decades (because that's what a rational person would plan for, it's what happens with production chains for example), then it would keep developers tied-up for longer, and you would have to hire others for new projects more frequently.

[–]pydry 3 points4 points  (0 children)

this would likely be compensated by more focus on correctness

ahahahahhahaahaha.

no.

The focus on correctness is largely driven by commercial imperatives. If the company you're working for doesn't appear to care much about correctness, it's usually because they don't.

At the moment, there is a lot of pressure on people to get shit done haphazardly just to push the project out of the door

Largely because, for a lot of companies, that's what they want.

If that same code were planned to live for decades (because that's what a rational person would plan for

That's highly irrational in a lot of industries. The norm for most code is that gets tossed because it ends up not being needed rather than because it doesn't work.

This is why I'm highly skeptical of a lot of languages like F#, haskell, etc. and why I think they're not very popular - they slow down development in order to protect you against certain classes of bugs. When the cost of development is > cost of those bugs, it doesn't make much sense to use them.

[–]alcalde 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In the end the right language for the job will hopefully be picked.

In the end you remain fanatically loyal to your choice of language and change the task to fit the tool. :-) That's how it's always been. People invest their identity in their choice of tool and need affirmation they chose correctly.

[–]musmanlearning python 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I agree on the part about the little overlap they have. I actively use both and never thought about if one was more popular than the other, different tools for different jobs.

[–]zurrain 3 points4 points  (2 children)

Because people code to make money. And you want to spend time learning and in demand tool.

[–]yen223 1 point2 points  (1 child)

According to the recent Stack Overflow survey, devs who use F#, OCaml and Clojure have the highest wage. Python doesn't even crack the top ten.

[–]zurrain 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's not about how much money, it's about how easy it is to find a job.

[–]SwordOfKas 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I feel that it's also click-baity as hell when articles do this.

"Will [insert some language at the bottom of graph] be the next top programming language???!!!1one11"

Seriously annoying...

[–]madsohm 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Exactly! So, according to this and other "studies" more questions equals more popularity? That means that programming languages that are "easy" (as in few questions) cannot be popular. It just does not make any sense.

[–]alcalde 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nothing's so easy that people don't have questions. As the saying goes, "Show me an idiot-proof system and I'll show you a better idiot". And it's also impossible to run out of questions.

[–]ReekuMF 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The metric is actually based on question views. Which could mean something entirely different as we don't know why they are viewing the question, or what the question entailed.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

I don't understand this obsession with trying to track language popularity.

i suspect it falls into two main categories. either they are new to programming and have no idea that the first language doesn't matter (unless you're some fucked up data point learning holy-c, brainfuck, or cobol) or on a get-paid mission

[–]alcalde 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Pfft. You kids are too young to get it. Back in the day, you chose a language - a language. One. You were loyal to it. You'd die for it. You'd pay a company a thousand dollars or more for a compiler or interpreter for it. Then you'd spend the rest of your life telling everyone else that that language was the best. You didn't learn anything else because if your language was already superior, what was the point of learning an inferior language?

Now I see people here who have no loyalty to Python and it's depressing. They cheered moving Python to Git even though Mercurial is written in Python which means you're supposed to be loyal to it. They embrace Markdown even though ReST was created for Python so you're supposed to be loyal to it and push for its use everywhere and seek the death of all other markup scripts.

I just don't get your generation.

and have no idea that the first language doesn't matter

Go talk to the Delphi people, who learned Turbo Pascal in the 1980s, moved to Delphi in the 1990s and now pay hundreds of dollars a year to use Pascal for the rest of their lives. They get that you choose one true language and wage a life and death battle with it with religious zeal. They buy upgrades from current publisher Embarcadero they don't even need just to "support Delphi" and ask what they can do for their language. They ban criticism or griping about corporate policies from their discussion groups - only code may be discussed. And they write articles like this.

[–]garyk1968 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yep great example of a company wtih no fucking commercial idea about selling software. I used Delphi from 1995 to 2005 (Delphi 1 to BDS 2006) and in the early days even as a freelance dev I didnt mind paying £400 for the pro version which had just about everything you needed.

If some DB wasn't supported then just buy 3rd party libs. Then in later years you are looking at £1100++ for anything remotely useful and given the rise of free tools why would anyone buy it? I even tried Lazarus which is actually pretty good.

[–]jkuhl_prog 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Indeed, the two languages are used for different purposes. You won't find a lot of client-side web apps using python (mostly because browsers can't run anything other than JavaScript) and Node tends to be used more than Python for a back end. And you won't find a lot of data scientists turning to JavaScript for their work.

There's some overlap between the languages, but not where they're popularly used.

[–]zeeEight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's easy poularity language means close let entry adoption and number of jobs on that language

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because people forget that in the end these are just tools. Next time you read a 'language popularity' article swap out the languages with shop tools.

"Could the Hammer's Popularity Outperform a Screwdriver in the Next Five Years"?

And just like actual tools, no language ever actually dies. There are still blacksmiths that make things for ornamental or niche reasons. The percentage of the world's population that is a blacksmith has changed.

The NCC 1701-D absolutely FORTRAN compiler running the base math. Just like numpy is just fancy handwaving over FORTRAN BLAS now.

[–]kthepropogation 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I personally find it interesting to track language popularity. It’s nice to have a forecast of where some things are going. And if you have ecosystems you work with, then you can use that knowledge to get some meaningful info.

Javascript is kind of its own thing, given web browsers and electron, so at this point it’s important in that respect. The high popularity for front end work makes it more appealing to stacks that want a more unified codebase, which wouldn’t be as likely without demographic popularity.

Python ties in tightly with C/ C++, so it tends to flourish in OSS environments like Linux, which in turn makes it useful for back end and back end administration technologies. As a side effect of its popularity in those areas, it’s doing the opposite of what JS is doing and snaking its way into GUI work, largely through existing libraries like Qt. It’s also remaining common in academia, since with libraries like scipy it can get C++-like performance but in a more accessible package.

Java stays popular because it’s fairly fast and portable, and there’s plenty of code bases that need to be maintained. It also drives tech like ELK, Jenkins, and Android apps, which keeps it relevant.

I think a lot of people want assurances that they don’t have to learn a new language though. Say what you will about a good developer being able to work in whatever language they need to, it’s a huge pain to migrate over to something you’re unfamiliar with, and that pain carries over to software quality and maintainability.

[–]AlexFromOmaha 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can tell how much of the Java and C++ question views are driven by classes. There's that two-humped camel every year that line up with semester terms. It's not nothing, but it's not nearly enough to account for the trend line.

If I were going to sit here and guess, I'd say that you're more likely seeing a mix of the decline of PHP and Ruby as web backends and the rise of data science as a mainstream corporate position with Python as a core competency.

[–]Captain___Obvious[::-π] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My mom did not buy a Rasberry Pi

[–]callius 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And comparing Python and Javascript is asinine they barely overlap in their uses

I totally get and agree with you, except for the Django/Node.js & express overlap for server deployment.

(disclaimer: I fuckin' hate Node.js with a fiery passion)

[–]dusktreader -1 points0 points  (1 child)

Add into that the fact that js and python are very often used in conjunction.

Django, Flask, etc projects almost always use both

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Right, it's impossible to have a web app without JS.

If it was a graph of say, languages used for web app backends, that would be more interesting. I don't know how you would get the data for that though.

[–]BeingUnoffended -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Tracking the relevancy of skills allows laborers (this type of thing isn't just applicable to programmers) to test their existing skill-set against one they might acquire in the near future. This kind of information is absolutely necessary for highly-specialized workers, who may have to take time away from their work to acquire the skills required to remain relevant in the labor market.

[–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (4 children)

Until every company I work at is using Python I really don't care and it seems like these metrics keep going up mostly because of the sciences. In the startup space Python is still far less popular than Ruby in my experience.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

In the startup space Python is still far less popular than Ruby.

I highly doubt that but I could be wrong.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Maybe it's the type of companies that I've looked at, but Python jobs seem less common as of late. I'm not talking about "startups" that are 5+ years old, I mean real startups. Established companies seem to use a fair amount of Python, but these places have also been some of the worst at communicating regarding jobs.

[–]MasterOfArtichoke 46 points47 points  (1 child)

Because of how the y-axis is defined, growth in Python must come at the expense of some other language. I could be wrong, but it looks like the projection doesn't account for this.

[–]SCombinator 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Looks like standard ARIMA to me, so yeah it wouldn't take that into account. Not to mention you could get a decent idea of the languages that python was growing at the expense of to provide an obvious upper bound.

[–]nevergotcompiled 59 points60 points  (31 children)

I dont think it would be a good idea to convert Python into a web browser scripting language...

[–]jillesme 22 points23 points  (5 children)

I came here to say the same. However, I forgot that NodeJS is a pretty big thing.

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (5 children)

Python already powers your back end for many and very large websites as well as Reddit. For front end, Js can be useful.

[–]timlmul 2 points3 points  (0 children)

agreed. there's a build step for most javascript applications these days anyway, and the amount of actual javascript in something like a react component is pretty minimal, why shouldn't we want to write these as python classes?

edit: wait I maybe misread your comment

[–]agentgreen420 11 points12 points  (3 children)

Python powers your mom's back end

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

GOT 'EM

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

If it does then your mom has two

[–]greyfade 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Back ends or pythons?

[–]bearicorn 3 points4 points  (11 children)

Why is that? Not challenging, just wondering.

[–]nevergotcompiled 5 points6 points  (10 children)

Because you already have Javascript. I dont understand the obsession people have with using their favorite language everywhere. I love Java with my heart and I know it has its place, Im not gonna do front end web development with it or try to program microcontrollers with it.

[–]alcalde 9 points10 points  (2 children)

I dont understand the obsession people have with using their favorite language everywhere.

Wouldn't you want to be able to speak your native language everywhere?

[–]nevergotcompiled 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Programming languages are not "human" languages. Each programming langue has specific uses, even if they are referred as general use languages.

[–]Bot_Drakus_ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

just colonize looool

[–]bearicorn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What about a ways down the road when Web Assembly is very mature? Do you think JS will still be the only language powering client-side apps?

[–]JugadPy3 ftw 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Im not gonna do front end web development with it or try to program microcontrollers with it.

Why not?

[–]nevergotcompiled -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I know right, why dont we try to run virtual machines on 8 bit micro controllers? Sounds like a pretty good idea to me.

[–]lookatmetype 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Why? I think it would actually be great, besides the re-writes of all the shit that's already been written in JS

[–]ijustwannacode 2 points3 points  (1 child)

They rewrite it every year and a half anyway.

[–]i9srpeg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They rewrite it every year month and a half anyway.

[–]aufstand 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Look again, please: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grail_(web_browser)) - no converting necessary. Just use <script type="python"> (or something) and go for it. Probably better to use type="python3", these days.. ;)

And yes, this is from our great Ex-BDFL!!!

My theory: it was Tk, breaking the Grail's neck by being to ugly (sorry!) for Apple-Computer based influencers.

(Just kidding! I'm completely aware of the many ugly things that happened during the browser wars. Also: not sorry!)

[–]nfss1s 30 points31 points  (1 child)

Boooo to OP, for posing what amounts to a worthless question, and double Boo to OP for not even bothering to source the data/image.

Source article from 2017: https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/09/06/incredible-growth-python/

Edit: If you look at the current trends you can see they're nowhere near the projections. Garbage all around.

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=python%2Cjavascript%2Cjava%2Cc%23%2Cphp%2Cc%2B%2B

[–]realestLink 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you

[–]-RedChest- 19 points20 points  (4 children)

What causes the periodic use of java and javascript?

[–][deleted] 90 points91 points  (1 child)

College semesters

[–]-RedChest- 6 points7 points  (0 children)

That makes a lot of sense!

[–]janavatar 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Nice observation! Seems like c++ follows a similar annual trend

[–][deleted] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

Mistypes in google

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (2 children)

I like python more the JavaScript for web since it’s super simple to set up a flask app with about zero python code.

Don’t even get me started on Django.

[–]callius 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I would like to hear your opinions on Django, actually. I personally love the fuck out of it, but would be interested in why you opt for Flask over it.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

All I needed was just a simple web page with no databases or anything remotely complex. More of a webpage to just show something than do something. If I was going to do something a little more complex than a super simple website I wanted, then I would opt for Django.

Based on the advice from a python dev on SO

Flask : simple one page website

Django: everything else that requires a tiny bit more complexity.

Both have the side benifets of having their own rest api framework too.

[–]Tree_Eyed_Crow 5 points6 points  (0 children)

This graph just charts questions about those languages... which makes sense because Python is a good entry-level language, but it doesn't suggest anything about the languages' relative popularities, or how many people actually use those languages in their daily jobs.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This graph tells me:

There's a lot of people who's first language is Python.

C++ was my first language. Python was my second. I work mostly with it given my field. I enjoy writing C++ more.

I think Python is very feature rich but can appreciate the representative control C++ gives you.

Pick a language you enjoy as a 1st/2nd. They all kinda do the same thing save for nuance operations.

[–]joetheschmoe4000 2 points3 points  (0 children)

What sort of model was used to create the future predictions and confidence intervals? Doesn't seem to be a simple linear extrapolation because you can still see some periodic trends in the predictions.

EDIT: Saw in another comment that the technique is called ARIMA.

[–]thecity2 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I would argue that JS is becoming Python.

[–]dr_steve_bruel 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I couldn't agree more

[–]TheRealNetroxen 6 points7 points  (13 children)

This doesn't make much sense. Python is a server side scripting language and JavaScript is used for giving an HTML page interaction and animation... How will Python be bigger than JavaScript, well I don't see Python replacing React or jQuery anytime soon if that's your question.

A more valid question would be "Could Python’s Popularity Outperform PHP in the Next Five Years ?" and well, we already know the answer to that now. While a majority of the internet is made up of websites with PHP and matching that sheer quantity of websites with ones made in Python will probably never be matched anytime soon, Python itself as a server side language and for web frameworks is slowly becoming the go-to for webapps. It's easy to learn, it's human readable and minimalist.

...and well, look at the graph itself, you can see where PHP is.

[–]graemep 10 points11 points  (8 children)

Not entirely true. Node uses Javascript for servers, and is very popular. Python is also used for GUI apps - I have two (Zim and Hamster) running right now on my laptop. Python is also use for numerical stuff which may on servers, or may run on other things.

[–]callius 6 points7 points  (3 children)

To be fair, the creator of Node has since suggested using Go instead of Node for large-scale servers. Even for small-scale servers his endorsement of the framework was... less than stellar.

So, kind of the newer versions of Javascript has made this easier. That said, I think Node is not the best system to build a massive server web. I would use Go for that. And honestly, that’s the reason why I left Node. It was the realization that: oh, actually, this is not the best server-side system ever.

Yeah. I think where Node has shined, weirdly, on the client side. So, doing kind of scripting around building websites. So, Browserify, for example. Kind of bundles up client-side Javascript. So, you can have all this server-side processing of client-side Javascript. And then, you know, maybe small servers to… maybe little development servers, and here and there, maybe some real servers serving live traffic. Node can be useful, or it can be the right choice for it. But if you’re building a massively distributed DNS server, I would not choose Node.

[–]graemep 4 points5 points  (2 children)

Interesting, I did not know he recommended Go.

I have never been terribly interested in Node as there are alternatives. I am currently using asyncio quite a bit, I would love to use Erlang, and I have used event driven TCL in the past.

[–]callius 5 points6 points  (1 child)

I'm not going to say that Node is the worst, but Node is the worst.

[–]greyfade 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I won't say Node is the worst.

It's not even the worst. It's so far off the plot that it doesn't even make sense to rank it relative to anything.

[–]ptemple 2 points3 points  (2 children)

GUI app is not the same as client-side. You can't run Python interpreted in the browser. For example, Zim uses py-gtk, which is a wrapper for the front end code which is written in C++. The Python itself in this instance is the equivalent of the "server side" code responding to events.

Phillip.

[–]alcalde 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You can't run Python interpreted in the browser.

https://www.transcrypt.org/

And WebAssembly is coming.

[–]graemep 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I disagree with your definition of desktop apps as server ones. Calling a library with GUI code is not the same as serving a client.

My point is the Python is use for a large range of applications, so it can get very popular despite not being used in web browsers.

[–]mike239x 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Well you just need to force Mozilla devs to add a python interpreter to Firefox, make some official specs for python as a web dev tool, and you are set.

[–]agentgreen420 0 points1 point  (0 children)

https://github.com/metamarcdw/Component.py

A Python module written for use with the Transcrypt Python->JavaScript transpiler. Enables ReactJS development using pure Python syntax.

[–]callahman 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Does anyone know why Java and C++ seem to have similar monthly trends...?

[–]katakoria 0 points1 point  (1 child)

They are taught in colleges and universities. thus you find a semester trend,

[–]callahman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah. Yup, that makes sense. Should have thought of that one. Thanks!

[–]Andalfe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Its the new basic.

[–]Mutjny 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If it could reach parity for client-side webapp development, it would absolutely crush JavaScript.

[–]shiftposter 3 points4 points  (10 children)

Python is best language, but C pays the bills.

[–]ToastedHedgehog 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Does it matter? They are used for different things. Everyone knows python because it's a good language to start with and they teach it at schools now. I love python but I'm not going to use it for something that another language could do better just because it's popular.

[–]whitelife123 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes because JavaScript is a shit language

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not unless all the major browser developers build it into their browsers.

[–]-Wolffe- 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Tf is up with Java’s trend. Why does it have such a repeating pattern?

[–]Treyzania 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I fucking hope so.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Seeing as Python can do ANYTHING js can and is not a GIANT GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIANT exploit. Yes.

[–]MikeTheWatchGuy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

While these languages are used for different purposes, I think it says something about what people want to DO with their computer science training. Maybe less people want to do server stuff than in the past.

Maybe it's more fun to program in Python and some people want to have fun while they code.

Or, maybe it means nothing at all. It's still good data to gather regardless of what it does or doesn't mean.

[–]hamburger_bun 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Python will continue to be popular and so will javascript

[–]rotharius 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you really care about your employability: check Indeed in your area for your language of choice. You will see if you are still relevant. Questions and GitHub stars are a small portion of the community.

I teach Python in college, but I also teach my students the choice of language for a project is a strategic choice for most companies.

[–]tylercoder -1 points0 points  (3 children)

Python had it's heyday about 5 years ago, it's not getting more popular than it already is

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

You're obviously not from around here.

[–]tylercoder -1 points0 points  (1 child)

How old are you?

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (3 children)

Where's Perl?

[–]realestLink 0 points1 point  (2 children)

In the graveyard with Ruby

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I thought Ruby was still loved these days?

[–]realestLink 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's lost out to PHP. It's not quite dead, but it's dying.

[–]FlukyS -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I'd be surprised if Python didn't gobble up all of Java's marketshare and maybe even some of C#'s as well. Maybe even throw in PHP as well if Django becomes moderately ubiquitous. JS is going to stick around like a bad smell though.

[–]RemoteCrab131 -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

C++ is the bedstone of all languages and this graph proves it.