The programming language Java’s acceptance has been slowly and gradually declining in some programming language index rankings, but it can be popped again into the 2nd location in RedMonk’s hottest chart. 

Javascript even now regulations in RedMonk’s Q3 2021 language level of popularity rankings, which have been updated 2 times a 12 months given that 2010.   

Python overtook Java for the second spot in RedMonk’s Q2 2020 ranking, and it has remained there in Python’s shadow ever since, but now it has jumped a single location to next — a position it at the time once more shares with Python. 

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As RedMonk analyst Stephen O’Grady notes, Java’s regular third placing around the past yr was “prompting queries from observers as to no matter whether it was fated to a gradual drift down these rankings”. 

Tiobe’s CEO Paul Jensen final September said Java was in “actual trouble” for the reason that of a notable decline in its share of queries for programming languages on important search engines.    

But now, according to RedMonk, Java has ‘surged’ back again. “This would be a lot less of a surprise but for numerous of the language’s opponents — and, it should really be mentioned, the odd market analyst or two — creating regularly recurring epitaphs for the stalwart of enterprise infrastructure,” stated O’Grady. 

“The language as soon as established to operate cable established-top rated packing containers continues to be a workhorse, and importantly 1 that has continuously been ready to uncover new operate to do. Java’s general performance on these rankings carries on to impress all these several years afterwards. As it’s demonstrated a exceptional ability to adapt to a quickly shifting landscape, it can be a language that would be complicated to guess towards.”

RedMonk employs a blend of facts from GitHub and Stack Overflow to occur up with its semi-once-a-year language rankings. 

The top rated 10 languages in RedMonk’s latest rankings are: 

1. JavaScript
2. Python
3. Java
4. PHP
5. CSS
6. C++
7. C#
8. TypeScript
9. Ruby
10. C 

Rounding out the major 20 are:

• Swift
• R
• Goal-C
• Shell
• Scala
• Go
• PowerShell
• Kotlin
• Rust
• Dart

Although TypeScript’s position at 8th stays unchanged from the earlier quarter, O’Grady is optimistic it still may possibly have place to increase greater in potential. 

The rankings of Go, Kotlin and Rust didn’t improve, both. O’Grady has an exciting acquire on Go’s stagnation in light-weight of Java’s clear resilience. Google engineers constructed Go in 2007 ahead of releasing version 1. to the general public in 2012.    

“It appears to be plausible, as a result, that Java is retaining — as a result of a blend of adaptability on its portion and inertia on the enterprise’s — a big share of the company apps market place, which means that its would-be challengers — languages like Go, Rust and to a lesser extent Kotlin due to the fact of the shared JVM platform — are competing much less with Java than with each individual other,” he notes. 

One noteworthy drop was Julia, a quickly but youthful programming language with roots at MIT and supported by the business Julia Computing, which lifted $24 million in funding this summer months. The enterprise programs to develop its cloud supplying, JuliaHub. The enterprise has quite a few large-profile consumers, these as AstraZeneca, BlackRock, Microsoft, NASA, and the Federal Aviation Administration. 

O’Grady in 2018 branded Julia a language to watch in the future but also cautioned it could grow to be a area of interest language. 

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Julia was the fifth “most liked” language in Stack Overflow’s 2021 developer study released past week, but that was dependent on fewer than 800 developer responses vs . nearly 30 000 responses from developers who routinely use Java. 

A yr in the past, Julia, which targets facts science, was 24th in RedMonk’s rankings, but now it’s dropped again to 28th place. 

O’Grady reckons Julia’s adoption difficulty lies in the popularity of R and Python in the marketplace for examination and knowledge science. 

“Part of the issue [for Julia] lies in its concentrate on space with a notable aim on examination, Julia usually finds by itself competing for developers’ interest with Python and R, two languages that, whatever their flaws, have verified to be both well-liked and sustainably so.”

Google’s Dart programming language manufactured its debut in RedMonk’s top 20 this thirty day period and displaced Perl. O’Grady thinks Dart’s rise is attributable to Flutter, Google’s cross-platform UI framework for mobile screens, the internet and before long PCs, far too. 

Dart was also in Stack Overflow’s checklist of top rated 10 “most liked” languages — that is, languages that builders noted applying this 12 months and want to keep on employing up coming calendar year.