Is Python The Fastest Growing Programming Language?
Python is a popular programming language that’s being adopted at a fast pace. It’s loved largely due to its simpler syntax, wide applications, and high demand. But, is it the fastest growing programming language around? While the term fastest growing can be difficult to define, Python is surely the fastest growing “major” programming language. If you take a look at the Stack Overflow Trends, it’ll clearly show its growth.
In a recent blog post, Stack Overflow has pointed out that the popularity of Python programming language is even larger if we focus on high-income countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, etc. These countries make up about 64% of the website’s traffic. Let’s take a look at some interesting trends outlined in the article:
Python is the most-visited tag in high-income nations
As said above, along with the rapid growth of Python in recent years, it has managed to do wonders in World Bank high-income nations. June 2017 was the first month when Python beat JavaScript and Java to become the most visited tag on Stack Overflow in such areas.
This change can also be attributed to the season nature of Java traffic; it’s heavily taught in undergraduate courses.
Future projection of major programming languages
With the help of STL model, which combines growth with seasonal trends, the growth of major programming languages has been predicted.
The STL model predicts that Python is on track to become the most visited tag in 2018 in high-income countries. However, it could be overtaken by Java in 2017 fall.
Overall fastest growing tags
If we include a number of other notable technologies, in high-income countries, smaller programming languages like R, Go, and Rust are showing growth faster or similar to Python. On the other hand, technologies like C++, PHP, C, Ruby, Perl, etc. are shrinking.
Python compared to other growing technologies
The growth of languages like Swift, TypeScript, and R is surely worth noting. The graph shown below compares the low-traffic, growing languages with Python. This comparison has been done due to Python’s unusual case of being the most visited and one of the fastest growing.
Programming trends in rest of the world
But, what about the growth of programming languages in the rest of the world? What about countries like India, Brazil, Russia, and China? Looking at the graph below, Python is still the fastest major programming language.
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