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"?
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.
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.
Generally, having a random sample is more important than having a large sample size. The fact that lots of developers were surveyed means the survey tells us nothing about the language usage of all developers, since they were self-selected on a particular platform.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
When really, it's just that they answered this particular online poll on this website popular in the USA.
"JavaScript, the most poorly documented language on earth." Because, well, it probably is. You don't go to a central JavaScript reference guide, you google for stuff. Or maybe you're unemployed and have time to answer polls on websites.
MDN documentation is excellent. Node also now has pretty good docs. Googling vs. central docs is more driven by the culture of the programmers. Google's search algorithms also have most of the blame for driving searchers to blogs/articles/SO instead of central docs.
I do agree that this survey is not at all representative, which is why I decided to flag OP.
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.
"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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[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 97.2 ms ] threadWhy is the average of one thing compared with the median of another thing here?
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"?
A user "uses" javascript.
But anyways. This seems to be just a repost of the SO survey to what appears to be a victory to JS lovers.
Doesn't quite roll as nicely off the tongue, huh.
Generally, having a random sample is more important than having a large sample size. The fact that lots of developers were surveyed means the survey tells us nothing about the language usage of all developers, since they were self-selected on a particular platform.
Personally, I think Javascript would have died a well-deserved death a long time ago, if it weren't for web browsers.
> Most Popular Techonologies per Dev Type
http://arc.applause.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/stack_ove...
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.
When really, it's just that they answered this particular online poll on this website popular in the USA.
"JavaScript, the most poorly documented language on earth." Because, well, it probably is. You don't go to a central JavaScript reference guide, you google for stuff. Or maybe you're unemployed and have time to answer polls on websites.
I do agree that this survey is not at all representative, which is why I decided to flag OP.
[0] http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index
[1] https://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html
"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.