Programming languages faced ups and downs in their popularity and usage. A programmer who wants to stay in developer fields need to update themselves according to latest trend and demands of programming languages. Programming languages which were popular some years ago are not useful today. It is very important for a programmer or a new programmer who is going to start their career to learn such language which will be in trend for some time. Although no one can exactly predict which programming language will be popular in future. So to stay in developer field programmers have to adopt right programming language time to time.
It is very difficult to know which programming language is being used most widely and which not. TIOBE Software Company publishes index of popular programming languages on monthly basis. Ratings are based on the number of skilled people over the world, third party vendors. The popular search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo are used to get the latest trends. Here is the list of Top 10 Most popular programming languages based on OCT 2012 ratings on TIOBE. This list does not tell best programming language.
10. Ruby
Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, general purpose object oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk like feature. Ruby was developed by Yukihiro Matsumoto in the mid of 1990s. Ruby is a dynamic, open source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity. It has an elegant syntax that is natural to read and easy to write.
9. Perl
Perl is high level, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general purpose UNIX scripting language to make report processing easier. Science then it has undergone many changes and revisions. The latest stable version of Perl programming language is 5.16.1 released on 8 August 2012.
8. Python
Python is general purpose high level programming language designed by Guido Van Rossum which first appeared in 1991. The Python Syntax is said to clear and expressive. The important feature of this language is code readability. Python has a large and comprehensive standard library. Python is often used as scripting language, but it has also wide range of non scripting application. Most stable version of Python is 3.3.0 released on 29 September 2012.
7. Visual Basic
Visual Basic is the third generation event driven programming language. Visual Basic is Integrated Development Environment (IDE) from Microsoft. Visual Basic is designed easy to learn and use. Visual Basic was derived from Basic and enables the Rapid Application Development (RAD) of Graphical User Interface (GUI) application. Visual Basic access data using Data access object, remote data objects or ActiveX data objects.
Also Read: What is a function and how to use it?
6. PHP
PHP is the open source server side scripting language designed by Rasmos Lardorf which is first appeared in 1995. PHP was designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. It is one of the first developed server side scripting language to be embedded into HTML document rather calling an external file. PHP is installed on more than 20 million websites and 1 million web servers. Software’s that include PHP are WordPress, Joomla, Concrete5, MyBB, Drupal, etc.
5. C#
C# (C Sharp) is the multi-paradigm programming language which includes many programming discipline such as strong typing, functional, generic, object oriented (with classes) and component oriented. It was developed by Microsoft with in .NET initiative which appeared first in 2000. The most recent stable version of C# is 5.0 released in 15 August 2012.
4. C++
C++ (C plus plus) is the object oriented programming language developed by Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Labs in 1979. Earlier its name was C with classes but in 1983 it was renamed with C++, putting an increment operator. It has the feature of object oriented such as classes. Windows operating system is developed using C++.
3. Objective-C
Objective c is general purpose, high-level, object oriented programming language. It was first appeared in 1983 designed by Brad Cox and Tom Love. It is the main programming language used by Apple for the OS X and iOS operating systems. It was selected as the main language used by NeXT for its NeXTSTEP operating system, from which OS X and iOS are derived.
2. Java
JAVA programming language was developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems (Now merged into ORACLE Corporation). It was first released in 1995 and since then it is most popular language in use, especially for client-server web applications. Java is a object oriented programming language designed to have few implementation dependencies as possible. Java programs runs on Java Virtual Machine (JVM) environment. Java programs follow “write once run anywhere” (WORA) they need not to compile on every machine.
1. C
C programming language developed in between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs. C is the most widely used programming language over the time. There is rarely few computer architecture which does not support c language. The C language used to develop device drivers and other complex software. UNIX operating system is the best developed software through c language. C language influenced many others programming languages like C++, Java, PHP, Perl, objective-c, C# and others. Learning C languages is little crucial, but once you learn it you can easily go with other languages like JAVA, C++, PHP these languages used mostly same syntax as C uses.