A programming language is essential for almost everything, whether it’s web development, machine learning, or data analysis. And every year we see the ranking of these languages fluctuate depending on the demand and popularity among developers. According to GitHub and TIOBE, there are at least 253 programming languages today, with JavaScript and Python leading the way.

JavaScript is not just a programming language, but a revelation of the IT world of the second half of the 20th century. No one would have guessed that JS would remain a leader, and have no competitors in its field. It is considered to be the most popular programming language in the world and is in high demand among various organizations. JS was originally only used for developing web browsers, but now it is used to create server-side websites and non-browser applications.

JS was created in 1995 in America by programmer Brendan Eich and was originally known as LiveScript. However, at the time, Java was the most popular language, so JS was promoted as Java’s “little brother.” Over time, JavaScript became a fully independent language.

By analogy, we can say that JS is a kind of “wizard” that animates the web page and browser: for example, the already familiar HTML is responsible for the markup of the site, CSS is responsible for its appearance, and finally JS implements all the processes. Programmers believe it takes considerably less time to write a program with JS.

Adding “behavior” elements to web pages is the basis of the ubiquity of JS. Many of these “behaviors” have been mentioned as:

• slides
• drop-down menus
• animations
• audio
• video
• show or hide information
• Zoom in/out
• display a timer or countdown
• gallery carousels on home pages and much more

JS is used every day, and we don’t even realize how often. For example, you’ve visited a site, clicked with your mouse, or the page has finished loading, then JS responds directly to those changes by performing certain functions. The same works with data entry on the site: JS allows you to check all required fields (name, address, e-mail) and, finally, the correctness of their filling (in the column where you need to write letters, the code will not allow to put a number).

It’s rather difficult to single out certain industries where JS is in demand because it is used in absolutely all spheres from business services to advertising and marketing. So now it is really impossible to imagine life without JS, because an analogue with such an elaborate system at the moment cannot be found, although we should not forget about the existence of Python, which is the easiest to use, but does not have such an extensive set of tools (e.g. script support by popular browsers, integration with page layout) as JS.

In recent years, Python has remained the favorite language of almost everyone who is just starting out in programming. The main reason for this is the simple syntax that makes Python easy to read, learn, and use.

It has open source code, extensive support modules, convenient data structures, and graphical interfaces for desktop applications. Unlike some other languages, it uses simple line breaks instead of symbols to define blocks of code. Python also helps speed up development with built-in classes and functions, as well as an extensive set of libraries that make writing code faster and easier. In addition, because the language is interpreted, it becomes possible to execute and test code immediately after it is written without an intermediate compression process.

The versatility of Python allows it to be used in a variety of industries. Quite often it can be found:

Depending on the intended use of the programming language, the choice will depend on either Python or JS.

Developers and researchers alike have divergent views on the choice of programming language: some believe that Python is much better because it has many libraries for scientific computing, data analytics, and machine learning, whereas JS does not. Moreover, Python supports many numeric data types, such as int, float, and fixed-point decimals, while JS works mostly with floating-point variables. In general, Python is considered to be the best language to accomplish tasks because the time spent is minimized, while JS will require much more time.

Others are more inclined to think that JS is much better for website development than Python for one simple reason: JS runs in the browser, while Python is a back-end server-side language. While Python is partially applicable to website development, you can’t use it separately as JS.

However, it’s safe to say that both of these languages will lead in the coming years for the simple reason that Python has both ease of learning and a huge number of libraries and breadth of use, while JS has frameworks for building applications and websites, which is essentially the only programming language for browsers. Python will dominate the world of machine learning, data science, and neural networks, and JavaScript will dominate the world of real-time web application development.

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Compared to last October, the rating also shows an increase in popularity of Assembler (from 17 to 10 place), Visual Basic (from 19 to 11 place), SQL (from 10 to 8 place), Go (from 14 to 12), MatLab (from 15 to 13), Fortran (from 37 to 18), Object Pascal (from 22 to 20), D (from 44 to 34), Lua (from 38 to 32). Perl (from 11 to 19 places), R (from 9 to 14), Ruby (from 13 to 16), PHP (from 8 to 9), Groovy (from 12 to 15), Swift (from 16 to 17) and Rust (from 25 to 26) declined in popularity.

As for other ratings on the popularity of programming languages, according to IEEE Spectrum rankings, Python is also in first place, followed by Java, C and C++. Next are JavaScript, C#, R and Go. IEEE Spectrum ranking is prepared by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and takes into account the combination of 12 metrics, obtained from 10 different sources (the method is based on the evaluation of search results for the query “{language_name} programming”, analysis of Twitter mentions, the number of new and active repositories in GitHub, the number of questions in Stack Overflow, mentions in the digital archive of journal articles and conference papers.

In the October PYPL ranking, which uses Google Trends, the top four for the year have not changed: Python takes first place, followed by Java, JavaScript, C#. The C/C++ language moved up to 5th place, displacing PHP on 6th place.

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JavaScript stays on top

Many web developers recognize that JavaScript has flaws and difficult parts. However, it is still the most used programming language. In a Stack Overflow 2020 survey, 69.7% of 47,184 professional developers surveyed favored JavaScript.

It is clear that JavaScript is not perfect. Still, it has a rich ecosystem of frameworks, libraries, and other useful tools, as well as a huge community of JS developers. On top of that, there’s a technical committee working on ways to improve JavaScript. It turns out that for the foreseeable future it will be almost impossible to displace JavaScript from the leading positions in web development. Although TypeScript is likely to come close and become an even more attractive alternative.

TypeScript continues to conquer new heights

TypeScript is often called an improved version of JavaScript, and with good reason. TypeScript takes all the strengths of JavaScript (because it is compiled into JS) and combines them with its own powerful features, such as static typing, module and interface support, and so on. In addition, TypeScript is easier to learn and easier to maintain and debug. Stack Overflow survey participants ranked Typescript (67.1%) as their favorite programming language right after Rust (86.1%).

According to the latest report from GitHub, JavaScript is also currently the most popular language. But the report also shows that TypeScript has grown rapidly in popularity in recent years.

JavaScript frameworks

We are already used to seeing React, Angular, and Vue.js among the leading JavaScript frameworks. The State of Frontend 2020 report revealed nothing new about the preferences of the more than 4,500 professional frontend developers surveyed.

But if you look at which frameworks they want to continue using or learning for their future projects, you’ll find a new name in the top three.

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