HN Explorer

Top 20 Programming Languages According to Wikipedia Page Views

12 points by awulf ↗ HN
1. Java (176482 Page Views in March 2011)

2. C (162303)

3. PHP (161177)

4. JavaScript (144278)

5. C++ (132777)

6. Python (97948)

7. C# (92544)

8. Visual Basic (90833)

9. Assembly language (76788)

10. Objective-C (66220)

11. Perl (58196)

12. Ruby (49573)

13. Fortran (47934)

14. VBA (43529)

15. Visual Basic .NET (42738)

16. BASIC (42576)

17. Lisp (37402)

18. COBOL (36246)

19. ActionScript (36209)

20. Pascal (35708)

I took the list of programming languages from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages and downloaded page view stats from http://stats.grok.se/.

The following entries were removed from the top list:

- XML, HTML, LaTeX, PostScript, Batch (Windows/Dos): I wouldn't classify these as programming languages.

- MUMPS, COMPASS, ChucK, MATLAB, KRYPTON, Inform, Arduino, Oracle, R: I assume people were actually searching for something different.

If you are interested, you can find the full list (including page count data for the last 24 months) on Google Docs: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AvObTduyoRZ-dHVzbzgxeC1ZZnE4ZXJDN0FyUTZCNmc&hl=en&authkey=CKLB1ccE

8 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 30.6 ms ] thread
arethuza
Why wouldn't you classify PostScript as a programming language?

From its page on Wikipedia:

"PostScript (PS) is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language"

Just because it's mainly been used as a page description language for printers doesn't mean that people haven't written applications in it - Arthur van Hoff even wrote a C to PostScript compiler in PostScript (pdb - allegedly standing for "Pure Dead Brilliant" - it was written in Glasgow).

awulf
It was a snap decision. It just didn't feel right to include PostScript in the list.

However, you are definitely right: PostScript is Turing-complete, and hence a programming language (as well as LaTeX and Batch, AFAIK).

rick_bc
You may want to include page views of wiki page in other (human) languages.
awulf
Here's the top 20 list for the German Wikipedia:

1. PHP (32519)

2. Java (31965)

3. C (27128)

4. C++ (24163)

5. JavaScript (22146)

6. Visual Basic (16598)

7. Python (15463)

8. C# (13792)

9. Visual Basic for Applications (9302)

10. Perl (9204)

11. Assembler (9084)

12. Brainfuck (8254)

13. Objective-C (8202)

14. BASIC (7209)

15. Ruby (7115)

16. PostScript (6633)

17. ABAP (6192)

18. FORTRAN (5984)

19. Visual Basic Script (5887)

20. Pascal (5803)

aquark
Interesting -- I am much more likely to read the Wikipedia page for a language I don't know than one I do. Not sure how to interpret the stats in that case.
wewyor
What else would matlab qualify for?

Matlab is huge in engineering and specialized fields.

awulf
MATLAB is both a computing environment AND a programming language. I assumed that people searching for "MATLAB" are rather looking for the environment. I may be wrong with that.