New data shows JavaScript surpassed by Python as the most queried language on Stack Overflow
Global App Testing, crowdsourced by QA Testing Company, in a new study found that JavaScript has been dethroned by Python as the most asked-about programming language on the Q&A platform of Stack Overflow.
For those unaware, Stack Overflow is a question and answer community website for software developers and enthusiast programmers that allows users to ask and answer questions, and, through membership and active participation, to vote questions and answers up or down and edit questions and answers.
The QA company released an analysis of 11 most popular languages on the website, which namely included JavaScript, Python, R, Ruby, C#, C++, Java, Objective-C, Swift, PHP, and SQL.
In terms of raw volume of questions asked, JavaScript has been the most frequently asked about programming language with more than 1.75 million questions asked on Stack Overflow in its more than 10-year history. It is followed by Java in second place with 1.51 million, C# (1.28 million) in third place, PHP (1.26 million) in fourth place and Python (1.1 million) in the fifth position in Global App Testing’s analysis of Stack Overflow data.
According to the company, JavaScript leads the list because it has such a wide range of use cases. “If you work in any way with the internet, chances are you’ll need to know a bit of JavaScript,” Global App Testing wrote.
The JavaScript topic with the most questions was jQuery, a popular JavaScript framework, along with ‘function’, ‘duplicate’ and ‘string’ also as popular words.
However, if you look at the data split over a period of time, Python has overtaken JavaScript as Stack Overflow’s most questioned programming language. In fact, Python has surpassed JavaScript in terms of questions asked this year.
“Either Python is fast becoming the most popular programming language, or Python just has a bigger proportion of new coders compared to other languages,” the company wrote.
Python, a fairly general-purpose language, has been ever-growing in popularity, as it has become one of the go-to-languages of data scientists. Some of its frequent questions asked are about data processing libraries, which include top terms like “pandas” and “dataframe”. Besides this, users are also asking about the free and open-source web framework, Django.
“Each programming language has over time been geared toward — or was even designed for — a particular niche within tech. R is to data science as Swift is to iOS development as C++ is to video game development. This explains some of the differences in the types of problems that arise. This explains why we see “database” a commonly questioned concept in SQL but not, for example, Objective-C,” the company said.
“Despite these obvious differences, these visualisations represent some fundamental similarities within the different domains,” the company added. “Base-level data types such as strings and arrays – but not integers, floats, or Boolean values, apparently – are frequently pain points that cause developers of all stripes and creeds to turn to Stack Overflow.”
You can read the complete Global App Testing analysis here.
Source: QAOps Blog