The Top Programming Languages 2025
45 comments
·September 23, 2025mynegation
channel_t
I agree, I think it makes most sense to add them up to be the true #2.
sprobertson
And #1 on the jobs chart
jimbob45
Agreed. There’s a few consolidations I’d prefer, including BEAM-based languages as one.
pornel
It's hard to find good data sources for this, especially that StackOverflow is in decline[1].
IEEE's methodology[2] is sensible given what's possible, but the data sources are all flawed in some ways (that don't necessarily cancel each other out). The number of search results reported by Google is the most volatile indirect proxy signal. Search results include everything mentioning the query, without promising it being a fair representation of 2025. People using a language rarely refer to it literally as the "X programming language", and it's a stretch to count all publicity as a "top language" publicity.
TIOBE uses this method too, and has the audacity to display it as a popularity with two decimal places, but their historical data shows that the "popularity" of C has dropped by half over two years, and then doubled next year. Meanwhile, C didn't budge at all. This method has a +/- 50% error margin.
[1]: https://redmonk.com/rstephens/2023/12/14/language-rankings-u... [2]: https://spectrum.ieee.org/top-programming-languages-methodol...
kace91
As a backend dev (mostly working in fintech) I feel weirdly unable to find a target language to move to.
After working with Node and Ruby for a while I really miss a static type system. - Typescript was limited by its option to allow non strictness.
Nothing catches my eye, as it’s either Java/.Net and its enterprisey companies or Go, which might not be old but feels like it is, by design. Rust sounds fun, but its usecases don’t align much with my background.
Any advice?
ppeetteerr
Java is maturing into a syntactically nice language, albeit slowly, and it's the backbone of many medium and large companies.
You might have trouble finding small companies using anything but JS/Ruby/Python. These companies align more with velocity and cost of engineering, and not so much with performance. That's probably why the volume of interpreted languages is greater than that of "enterprisey" or "performance" languages.
TheDong
Take a page from janestreet's book: use ocaml.
Rust is also a general purpose language, there's no reason you can't use it for just about any problem space.
npalli
C++ of course. Backend and Fintech.
dismalaf
Fintech should have lots of C++ jobs no? They also seem to use ML languages like OCaml and Haskell more than the average industry...
zmz88
Gleam?
clumsysmurf
I have the same dilemma: a strongly typed / modern language with good tooling / library support. I'm also considering Kotlin / Gleam. With Kotlin, practically speaking, we're talking JVM again, along with its resource requirements.
cosmic_quanta
Well I'm happy that Haskell registers at all! At a level similar to ... LabView (oof). The article proper is rather uninteresting, I'm afraid.
chamomeal
It’s grating to see Haskell compared to labview, regardless of context lol
Joel_Mckay
Haskell is a fun language...
LabView is a kick in the pants...
I'd wager it is the installed base keeping LabView on life support. =3
7thaccount
Labview seems like a pain (I haven't used it), but I guess it's super useful for some uses. I recall SpaceX uses it for controlling launches. It comes with models for all manner of hardware.
Joel_Mckay
Haskell at least is fun.
My favorite Julia also made the list this year... nonzero users means there is hope for fun languages yet.
With the new Intel+NVIDIA RTX SoC deal, we can expect Python and C++ to dominate that list in the next few years. =3
hackthemack
I was pondering similar thoughts. Will LLM assistants ossify our current programming languages? My limited testing seems to show LLM assistants do well the more popular the language is (more data in its training), so is the hurdle for adoption of something new going to get even higher?
In an alternate universe, if LLM only had object oriented code to train on, would anyone push programming forward in other styles?
zenmac
>My limited testing seems to show LLM assistants do well the more popular the language is (more data in its training), so is the hurdle for adoption of something new going to get even higher
Not only that they also tend to answer using the the more popular languages or tool event when it is NOT necessary. And when you call it out on it, it will respond with something like:
"you are absolutely right, this is not necessary and potentially confusing. Let me provide you with a cleaner, more appropriate setup...."
Why doesn't it just respond that the first time? And the code it provided works, but very convoluted. if wasn't checked carefully by an experienced dev person to ask the right question one would never get the second answer, and then that vibe code will just end up in git repo and deployed all over the place.
Got the feeling some big corp may just paid some money to have their plugin/code to on the first answer even when it is NOT necessary.
This could be very problematic, I'm sure people in advertising are just all licking their chops on how they can capitalized on that. If one thing currently ad industry is bad, wait until that is infused into all the models.
We really need ways to
1. Train our own models in the open, with weight and the data it is trained on. Kinda like the reproducible built process that Nix is doing for building repos.
2. Ways to debug the model on inference time. The <think> tag is great, and I suspect not everything is transparent in that process.
Is there something equivalent of formal verification for model inference?
christophilus
I recently picked up Hare, which is quite obscure, and Claude was helpful as a better— albeit hallucinogenic— Google. I think LLMs may not lead to as much ossification as I’d originally feared.
fuzztester
What is your impression of Hare?
I had looked at it recently while checking out C-like languages. (Others included Odin and C3.) I read some of the Hare docs and examples, and had watched a video about it on Kris Jenkins' Developer Voices channel, which was where I got to know about it.
christophilus
I like it much more than Zig, and while I like Odin’s syntax more, Hare is more focused on the types of tooling I want to build, so I find Hare’s stdlib preferable. Give it a spin. It’s a simple language.
mock-possum
Of course it’s always been easier to find talent when working in more popular languages. That’s the big risk you take when you choose the road less traveled.
gt0
I'd like to see some clarity in these stats, it can't just be me that finds it hard to believe that there are significantly more Python jobs than Java. I wonder if job listings are saying "Python, C++" or something, so that's a point for Python, even though, the job is < 1% Python just for test rigs or something.
nnurmanov
English should be #1:)
armSixtyFour
huh. This seems to suggest there are more Rust jobs than Ruby. Wild considering how insanely popular Ruby was 10 years ago.
dismalaf
Ruby was super hyped 10 years ago. Now all the hype-based programmers are on to TypeScript and Rust... Ruby is IMO at a nice level now; able to avoid some of the worst ideas that hype based programmers like to inflict on people, but still popular enough...
fuzztester
Ruby became popular mainly because of Rails, which has gone down somewhat in popularity in recent years. That may be why Ruby is less popular now than it was 10 years ago. Also, they (Ruby and Rails) got popular much before 10 years ago, like around 2006 / 2007, when the Web 2.0 wave was starting. I had worked on a couple of dot-com projects in Ruby on Rails at that time, that is how I know.
zenmac
And Python got popular cause of LLM AI thing. It is a shame, cause it is quite slow. I had some good time with jython back in the 2 days, but really wished something more elegant (nim/rust/ocaml) has taken over this AI thing instead of python.
One thing is for sure, don't get tight down to one language cause it is popular today. Go with whatever make sense for you and your project.
null
maroon_unperson
LLMs could also ease adoption of new languages by making hiring less of a barrier to using something more niche. It becomes easier for someone to hit the ground running and be productive even if they still need to put the time in to become an expert.
Instead I find myself more concerned with which virtual machine or compiler tool chain the language operates against. Does it need to ship with a VM or does it compile to a binary? Do I want garbage collection for this project?
Maybe in that way the decision moves up an abstaction layer the same way we largely moved away from assembly languages and caring about specific processor features.
bgwalter
The methodology involves search hits, Stackoverflow, conference and journal articles.
In all of these Python is artificially over-represented. Search hits and Stackoverflow questions represent beginners who are force fed Python in university or in expensive Python consultancy sessions. Journal articles are full of "AI" topics, which use Python.
Python is not used in any application on my machine apart from OS package managers. Python is used in web back ends, but is replaced by Go. "AI" is the only real stronghold due to inertia and marketing.
Like the TIOBE index, the results of this so called survey are meaningless and of no relevance to the jobs market.
dismalaf
Nice to see my beloved R still has some mindshare... Also Ruby.
I totally expected JavaScript to get the 2nd spot but looks like TypeScript pulled the votes away. I personally consider JavaScript and TypeScript to be close enough for their numbers to be added up.