Rust language tops Stack Overflow survey

news

Jun 2, 20202 mins

2020 developer survey finds Rust ‘most loved,’ Python ‘most wanted,’ and Perl, Scala, and Go the ‘top paying’ languages

Rust earned the top spot as the “most-loved” programming language for the fifth consecutive year of Stack Overflow’s developer survey, while Python slipped from second place to third place, behind TypeScript.

Stack Overflow’s “most loved” languages are those with the highest percentage of survey respondents who currently use the language and want to continue using it. The company also surveyed developers about the languages they currently use but no longer want to use (“most dreaded”), the languages they currently don’t use but are most interested in using (“most wanted”), the languages that draw the highest salaries (“top paying”), and the languages most commonly used (“most popular”).

Announced May 27, 2020, the Stack Overflow 2020 Developer Survey polled nearly 65,000 developers worldwide in February. Here are the top 10 results in the aforementioned categories.

The Stack Overflow 2020 Developer Survey’s top 10 “most loved” languages:

Rust, 86.1 percent
TypeScript, 67.1
Python, 66.7
Kotlin, 62.9
Go, 62.3
Julia, 62.2
Dart, 62.1
C#, 59.7
Swift, 59.5
JavaScript, 58.3

The Stack Overflow 2020 Developer Survey’s top 10 “most dreaded” languages:

Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), 80.4 percent
Objective-C, 76.6
Perl, 71.4
Assembly, 70.6
C, 66.9
PHP, 62.7
Ruby, 57.1
C++, 56.6
Java, 55.9
R, 55.5

The Stack Overflow 2020 Developer Survey’s top 10 “most wanted” languages:

Python, 30 percent of respondents
JavaScript, 18.5
Go, 17.9
TypeScript, 17.0
Rust, 14.6
Kotlin, 12.6
Java, 8.8
C++, 8.6
SQL, 8.2
C#, 7.3

The Stack Overflow 2020 Developer Survey’s top 10 “most popular” technologies:

JavaScript, 67.7 percent of all respondent
HTML/CSS, 63.1
SQL, 54.7
Python, 44.1
Java, 40.2
Bash/Shell/PowerShell, 33.1
C#, 31.4
PHP, 26.2
TypeScript, 25.4
C++, 23.9

The Stack Overflow 2020 Developer Survey’s top 10 “top paying” languages:

Perl, $76,000
Scala, $76,000
Go, $74,000
Rust, $74,000
Ruby, $71,000
Bash/Shell/PowerShell, $65,000
Objective-C, $64,000
Haskell, $60,000
Julia, $59,000
Python, $59,000

Stack Overflow reasoned that perhaps since Perl was also amongst the most-dreaded languages, it was possible the high salary was set to compensate for the dearth of developers who want to use Perl.

Stack Overflow also noted the survey was taken before the COVID-19 virus had impacted every nation worldwide and asked survey readers to keep this in mind when looking at the salary and job data. Last month Tiobe suggested that the C language, commonly used in medical equipment, could be gathering more interest as a result of the pandemic. Python and R, used in data science, also might draw more interest due to the virus.

by Paul Krill

Editor at Large

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Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.