Rants and Apps

Steve Yegge talks about The Next Big Language in his classic blog. The blog is already three years old, and there has not been that many changes in the world of programming languages in recent years.

According to TIOBE, the ten most popular programming languages have stayed the same in the last four years, and no language in the top ten has moved more than two positions in either direction.

In the last 12 moths, Objective-C has jumped from 32. to 12. on the list. There is an obvious reason for this; any software submitted to Apple’s App Store must be written in Objective-C. The popularity of iPhone and iPod touch has made Objective-C main stream language in a year, but it is still not even close to being a big language.

Another site that collects information about the programming language popularity, is lang.pop. Their results are collected from different web sites, and are very similar to TIOBE’s findings.

In his blog, Steve says that the NBL should arrive in 18-24 months. It has already been 37 months and nothing significant has happened. Instead, almost every one of the top 10 programming languages have found their niche and solidified their position in their respective areas. Let’s take a look.

• Java : Dominating enterprise server business
• C : Dominating low-level and embedded software
• C++ : Strong in many different fields, especially games
• PHP : Unfortunately still really popular on the web
• Visual Basic and C# : Strong in Windows software
• Python and Perl : Most popular scripting languages and doing well on the web
• Javascript : The language for web applications

If we consider C, C++ and Java to be the biggest languages, I don’t see any language currently in the top 20 taking their place. C++ might be the one that could lose the most popularity in the near future, because it is not really strong in any particular area, except maybe gaming, but I don’t see a single language taking its place. Most probably, different languages get some parts of its popularity in different areas.

PHP is a mess, Visual Basic and C# are too Windows oriented, Python is too slow, Perl is Perl, Javascript is stuck to its niche, Ruby is slow as hell. Honestly from a technical point of view, Go could be the next big language. It would require some serious brainwashing from Google. If Google starts shipping computers and mobile phones to people all over the world, and the only language you can use to develop software for those platforms is Go, then it might become the Next Big Language.

Usually when a new programming language had gained some popularity, it’s because there was a new opportunity and a big company behind it. The current market is taken. At the moment, I don’t see any holes where a new language could go and overtake the segment, because the other languages could not fill the hole.

It will require new type of hardware or a completely new need for software before the Next Big Language will have a chance to appear from nowhere. There must be huge financial support for the language, because companies will not want to waste their money experimenting with new and unproven programming languages.

The Next Big Language must be advanced, but I don’t think that it is the deciding factor. I would like that the Next Big Language would do everything that Steve has listed, but I think we will have to settle for less. There will be languages that will fulfill all Steve’s requirements for NBL, but the actual NBL won’t probably be chosen on technical merits.

People talk a lot about high-level languages like Haskell, Erlang, and OCaml, but not very many people actually get to write code for living in those languages. Young people need to decide what languages they need to learn to get a job in programming, and unfortunately, they start learning Java and PHP to get a job. I can’t blame them that most programming positions require Java, PHP, C# or Visual Basic skills.

I hope that before I retire I could see a new language rise and take over most of the programming world. Currently there are too many programming languages that I don’t want to write for living. I would like to see C++, Java, PHP, and Visual Basic disappear from this planet and be replaced by something awesome, but I don’t know, if that will happen in the next 30 years. Let’s hope Steve is right, and the Next Big Language is right around the corner.