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Title: RedMonk Ranks Top Programming Languages Over Time - and Considers
Ditching Its 'Stack Overflow' Metric

Link: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/06/2...

The developer-focused analyst firm RedMonk releases twice-a-year rankings of
programming language popularity. This week they also released a handy graph
showing the movement of top 20 languages since 2012. Their current rankings
for programming language popularity... 1. JavaScript 2. Python 3. Java 4. PHP
5. C# 6. TypeScript 7. CSS 8. C++ 9. Ruby 10. C The chart shows that over the
years the rankings really haven't changed much (other than a surge for
TypeScript and Python, plus a drop for Ruby). JavaScript has consistently
been #1 (except in two early rankings, where it came in behind Java). And in
2020 Java finally slipped from #2 down to #3, falling behind... Python.
Python had already overtaken PHP for the #3 spot in 2017, pushing PHP to a
steady #4. C# has maintained the #5 spot since 2014 (though with close
competition from both C++ and CSS). And since 2021 the next four spots have
been held by Ruby, C, Swift, and R. The only change in the current top 20
since the last ranking "is Dart dropping from a tie with Rust at 19 into sole
possession of 20," writes RedMonk co-founder Stephen O'Grady. "In the decade
and a half that we have been ranking these languages, this is by far the
least movement within the top 20 that we have seen. While this is to some
degree attributable to a general stasis that has settled over the rankings in
recent years, the extraordinary lack of movement is likely also in part a
manifestation of Stack Overflow's decline in query volume..." The arrival of
AI has had a significant and accelerating impact on Stack Overflow, which
comprises one half of the data used to both plot and rank languages twice a
year... Stack Overflow's value from an observational standpoint is not what
it once was, and that has a tangible impact, as we'll see.... As that long
time developer site sees fewer questions, it becomes less impactful in terms
of driving volatility on its half of the rankings axis, and potentially less
suggestive of trends moving forward... [W]e're not yet at a point where Stack
Overflow's role in our rankings has been deprecated, but the conversations at
least are happening behind the scenes. "The veracity of the Stack Overflow
data is increasingly questionable," writes RedMonk's research director: When
we use Stack Overflow for programming language rankings we measure how many
questions are asked using specific programming language tags... While other
pieces, like Matt Asay's AI didn't kill Stack Overflow are right to point out
that the decline existed before the advent of AI coding assistants, it is
clear that the usage dramatically decreased post 2023 when ChatGPT became
widely available. The number of questions asked are now about 10% what they
were at Stack Overflow's peak. "RedMonk is continuing to evaluate the quality
of this analysis," the blog post concludes, arguing "there is value in long-
lived data, and seeing trends move over a decade is interesting and
worthwhile. On the other hand, at this point half of the data feeding the
programming language rankings is increasingly stale and of questionable value
on a going-forward basis, and there is as of now no replacement public data
set available. "We'll continue to watch and advise you all on what we see
with Stack Overflow's data."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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