It is difficult to determine which programming languages
are most widely used, and what usage means varies by context. One
language may occupy the greater number of programmer hours, a different
one have more lines of code, a third may utilize the most CPU time, and
so on. Some languages are very popular for particular kinds of
applications. For example, COBOL is still strong in the corporate data center, often on large mainframes; FORTRAN in engineering applications; C
in embedded applications and operating systems; and other languages are
regularly used to write many different kinds of applications.
Various methods of measuring language popularity, each subject to a different bias over what is measured, have been proposed:
- counting the number of times the language name is mentioned in web searches. (see Google Trends)
- the number of books sold that teach or describe the language[3]
- estimates of the number of existing lines of code written in the language—which may underestimate languages not often found in public searches[4]
- counts of language references (i.e., to the name of the language) found using a web search engine[5]
- counting the number of projects in that language on SourceForge and FreshMeat.[6]
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