
JavaScript is the most commonly used programming language - werencole
http://apl.as/tqwil#.VvF-4bcghgA.hackernews
======
ksenzee
JavaScript is the most commonly used programming language _among people who
answered this survey_. It is astounding to me that people assume the SO survey
is representative of all software developers, when in reality it's not even
representative of all SO users, let alone everyone who writes software.

~~~
smt88
This comment convinced me to flag the post, similar to the way I try to flag
all posts with headlines that misinterpret or misstate scientific findings. We
shouldn't reward authors who choose to twist facts in order to get clicks.

~~~
werencole
The headline is a quote from the Stack Overflow survey.

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smt88
The headline for the survey itself isn't misleading. It told me what it was
and was worth clicking on. The survey itself also included this sentence:
"This survey reached about .4% of all developers on earth."

My gripe is with clicking on something that isn't what it says it is, not with
whether or not the original survey was written up in a flawed way.

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sargas
This blog post was 3x longer than it should have been. The SO survey results
explain the situation clearly enough, which already makes it obvious that
everybody's perception about JavaScript being used in almost every aspect of
programming and by most of the devs, mostly because it was implemented first
on browsers, which are now some sort of ultimate medium for applications.

But anyways. This seems to be just a repost of the SO survey to what appears
to be a victory to JS lovers.

~~~
striking
Thus, misleading title. Should be "JavaScript is the most commonly used
programming language by people who also use Stack Overflow."

Doesn't quite roll as nicely off the tongue, huh.

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andrewstuart2
*by People Who Took a Stack Overflow Survey.

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werencole
This is the largest developer survey out there. VisionMobile may be No. 2 and
also has JavaScript as the highest.

~~~
ksenzee
Largest doesn't mean highest quality. JavaScript may well be the most widely
used programming language there is. However, this survey is too
unrepresentative to give us any evidence one way or the other.

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gibsjose
I know the article is referring to "most commonly used" in a different way
here (developers choosing it versus end users interacting with software
written in it), but I would think that C is still the most commonly used
language when you take the latter definition.

Think of all the machines running OS X and Linux (not sure about Windows), the
system calls and drivers on most phones, the microcontrollers in your car,
your toaster, your TV, etc.

I'd have to imagine C being the most "used" language, given that almost
everything we interact with all day long, regardless of whether we are
connected to the web, likely has something written in C on it.

Is there a ranking/estimate of this sort of "use"?

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Klathmon
I'm being cheeky here, but couldn't you make a case that the user doesn't
"use" C, they use the binary.

A user "uses" javascript.

~~~
sgeisenh
By that argument, shouldn't assembly be the most used programming language on
earth?

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tombert
Does Excel count as a programming environment? If it does, I'd like to see if
that outranks JS (my guess is that it does).

~~~
ibdknox
Depending on whose count you believe, there are 500-800M Excel users in the
world. So it's more than order of magnitude (if not two) smaller than Excel.

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Aardwolf
> "The United States has the highest average age of developers at 32 years old
> while the media age for the entire survey was 27."

Why is the average of one thing compared with the median of another thing
here?

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colanderman
Average can mean median:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average#Summary_of_types](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average#Summary_of_types)

~~~
Aardwolf
Does it here? Also, pun intentional?

~~~
colanderman
I don't know what the author intended, because "average" doesn't necessarily
mean "mean", despite what some here seem to think.

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yami
So PHP is the third most popular FRONT END technology... Tell me more about
it.

~~~
diggan
No, it's the third most popular technology used by people who identify as
front-end developers, as I understand it. Otherwise I don't know why php, sql,
java and others would be there at all...

> Most Popular Techonologies per Dev Type

[http://arc.applause.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/03/stack_ove...](http://arc.applause.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/03/stack_overflow_front_end-1024x665.jpg)

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innocentoldguy
I wonder if the results of this research would have been the same if there
were other viable options in the web browser. As a software engineer, I view
Javascript as a necessary evil, which has been thrust upon me by browser
manufacturers, rather than an elegant, well-thought-out language that I just
cannot wait to use.

Personally, I think Javascript would have died a well-deserved death a long
time ago, if it weren't for web browsers.

~~~
actsasbuffoon
There are hundreds of compile-to-JavaScript languages:
[https://github.com/jashkenas/coffeescript/wiki/List-of-
langu...](https://github.com/jashkenas/coffeescript/wiki/List-of-languages-
that-compile-to-JS)

~~~
innocentoldguy
Yep, there is. Personally, I like Elm. It still doesn't get me entirely away
from Javascript though.

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plugnburn
"Used" is not quite a correct term here. It's the most common high-level
runtime, yes. But what about the percent that _writes_ in JS? Not in any of
its derivatives like CoffeeScript, TypeScript, LiveScript, ClojureScript, Elm
etc, but in vanilla JS.

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brakmic
JavaScript is the most commonly used programming language among Full Stack-
Overflow Developers. ;)

~~~
werencole
Also among front-end and back-end, according to the survey.

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daxfohl
That this has happened, sets the bar pretty low for AI singularity.

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b3h3moth
This is not true[0][1]

[0] [http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index](http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index)

[1] [https://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html](https://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html)

~~~
smt88
The methodology of the StackOverlow survey does not prove anything, but your
sources aren't any better. I have never in my life searched "[language]
tutorial" because I always search something more specific (or I use "getting
started" instead). That removes me from PYPL completely.

~~~
b3h3moth
The methodology is quite different, TIOBE consider Google, Google Blogs, MSN,
Yahoo, Baidu, Wikipedia and YouTube.

"The ratings are calculated by counting hits of the most popular search
engines"

The difference compared with StackOverflow is obviously, but most probably _it
is obviously_ just for me.

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jrc66
youtube.com/watch?v=AH7pOUm5s9k

