Global Developer Report: Python’s rapid growth
The “Developer Economics: Developer Status 19th Edition” report released by a developer analyst and research company SlashData pointed out that the popularity of the C# language fell from third to sixth in three years. In terms of value, the use of C# is still growing, and it is particularly popular in game development. The report is based on more than 17,000 developers worldwide and analyzes the absolute number of programming language users.
The report pointed out that JavaScript still ranks first on the most popular list, with 12.4 million developers using the language. The second is Python, which has 9 million users, and Java, which has 8.2 million users. The programming languages of four, five, and six are not much different. They are C/C++ with 6.3 million users, PHP with 6.1 million, and C# with 6 million. Among them, JavaScript data includes TypeScript.
Slashdata compared these data with mid-2017 data and found that the number of developers using JavaScript has increased by 5 million during this period, and Java has increased by 1.6 million. In addition, driven by the rising use of data science and machine learning, the number of developers using Python increased by 2.2 million in the last year alone.
On the contrary, C#’s situation is not optimistic. In the context of the rapid growth of C/C++ and PHP, the language has dropped three rankings in the past three years. According to the report, C# may maintain its dominant position in the game and AR/VR developer ecosystem; but it may be because of the emergence of cross-platform tools based on Web technology that the language seems to be losing its advantage in desktop development. In addition, C# is not popular in data science, machine learning, and mobile. In the network and cloud fields, JavaScript, Java, and PHP are the most popular among developers, while C# is the average.
The application of C# in games will mainly benefit from its presence in popular game engines. Microsoft recently posted on this topic, mentioning Unity and CryEngine that use C# to write scripts, as well as .NET game engines such as MonoGame and Stride.
