In the list below, we go over the best and most in-demand programming languages for many of the most common use cases including web development, mobile development, game development, and more. It’s impossible to be a software developer these days without using JavaScript in some way. A programming language is a set of instructions designed to produce various types of outputs. Programming languages help us solve real-life problems. The general purpose of programming languages is to provide us with a convenient method of passing instructions to a computer. In the early 1970s, programming languages like C were introduced. Like natural languages, programming languages follow the rules for syntax and semantics. There are thousands of programming languages 1 and new ones are created every year. Few languages ever become sufficiently popular that they are used by more than a few people, but professional programmers may use dozens of languages in a career.

By rmchan@businessinsider.com (Rosalie Chan) of Business Insider |

The 14 most loved programming languages, according to a study of 65,000 developers

• Stack Overflow, a popular Q&A site for developers, surveyed 65,000 users about the programming languages they use and if they're interested in continuing to develop with them.
• Using those responses, Stack Overflow compiled a list of the 'most loved' programming languages.
• This survey was conducted in February, before the coronavirus pandemic was declared an outbreak in March.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

While developers don't always get to choose what they write code in, there are certain programming languages that they feel especially drawn to and want to go back to again and again.

Robot Programming Languages List

Stack Overflow, a popular Q&A site for developers with over 50 million monthly unique visitors just released its annual survey where it asks over 65,000 developers about themselves and their programming habits. It then used this data to compile a list of the programming languages that developers love the most.

To determine the winners, Stack Overflow asked developers which languages they're developing with the most and if they're interested in continuing to develop with them.

Notably, this survey was conducted in February, before the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak to be a pandemic. Different routines and challenges around remote work may have affected developers' choices, but we'll just have to wait until the next survey to see how, if at all.

For now, here are the 'most loved' programming languages, according to Stack Overflow, in descending order:

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Unless it is specified, the date is for the first working implementation.
More details about the languages in the History of language. Any comment is welcomed.

1948

• Plankalkül. First high-level language. The date is that of the first public description.

1949

• Short Code.

1951

• A-0 (starting work for Math-Matic).

1952

• Autocode.
  

1955

• FLOW-MATIC. By Grace Hopper, first language with words.
  

1956

• IPL.
  

1957

• Fortran.
• Math-Matic.
  

1958

• Fortran II.
• Lisp, work begins by John Mc Carthy at MIT..
• ALGOL 58 also called IAL (International Algorithmic Language). Original specification by a comitee of European and American computer scientists.
• IAL.
• UNCOL. First intermediate language for a virtual machine.
  

1959

• Lisp 1.5.
• COBOL, work begins.

1960

• ALGOL 60. Revision of ALGOL 58, and first implementation.
• APL, work begins.
• COBOL defined.
• First JIT functions used for Lisp.
  

1962

• APL implemented.
• Fortran IV appears.
• SNOBOL, work begins.
• Simula.
  

1963

• ALGOL 60 is revised.
• CPL. Universities of Cambridge and of London. Extended version of Algol 60. Predecessor of BCPL.
• PL/1, work begins.
• Joss.

1964

Programming Languages List

• Apl-360 is implemented.
• Basic.
• PL/1.
• COWSEL. Renamed POP-1 in 1966, sort of Lisp without parenthesis.
• MATHLAB. Became popular since MATHLAB 68.

1965

• Snobol 3.

1966

• Bcpl .
• Fortran 66.
• Lisp 2.
• Logo, work begins.
• ISWIM.

1967

• Snobol 4.
• Simula 67. First language with objets. They interact by calling methods of other object, a design taken by C++ and many other language. First also to implement coroutines.
• Mumps.
  

1968

• ALGOL 68.
• Altran (a fortran variant).
• COBOL officially defined by ANSI.
• Pascal - work begins.
• Logo implemented.
• Refal. Goal-oriented pattern-matching, simpler than Prolog (1970).
• QED: The scripting language of the editor uses regular expressions and one of first JIT interpreters, designed by Ken Thompson.
  

1969

• PL/I Implementation.
• B. Précurseur de C et C++.
• Planner.

1970

• Prolog - work begins.
• Smalltalk - work begins. Fully object oriented, they communicate by sending messages, a design taken by Objective-C.
• Pascal.
• MUMPS designed.
• POP-2. Seems to be the first functional language, applying lambda calculus.

1971

• PL-11.

1972

• Description of Plankalkül published.
• C.
• Prolog implemented.
• Intercal.
• SASL. Purely functional, based on ISWIM.

1973

• Comal.
• Forth. First stack-based language, a principle applied to the Java virtual machine.
• ML. Influenced most functional languages including Haskell, Erlang and OCaml.
• Golux. Hayes described a procedural and logic language but did not implement it.

1974

• COBOL, second ANSI specification.

1975

• Tiny Basic, runs on a microcomputer.
• Basic, from Bill Gates and Paul Allen implemented on Altair, an 8080-based microcomputer by Mits.
• Scheme. Sort of Lisp.
• MATLAB.
• CLU. Invented iterator and generator with the yield keyword.

1976

• DSL, Design System Language, ancestor of PostScript.

1977

• AWK. For text processing.
• Forth.
• Mumps - ANSI standard. Later renamed M.
• Ada, work begins.
• FIG-Forth, implementation of Forth.
• UCSD Pascal, on PDP-11 and Z80-based computers.
• Modula, work begins.
• IDL.
• Bourne Shell.
• Icon. Goal-oriented.

1978

• Fortran 77 ansi standard defined.
  

1979

• Rexx.
• Icon implemented.
  

1980

• Smalltalk-80.
• Modula-2.
• C++.

1981

• Common LISP work begins.
• Fifth Generation Computer System project based upon Prolog in Japan.

1982

• ISO Pascal.
• Objective C.

1983

• Ada implemented.
• C compilers for microcomputers by Microsoft and also Digital.
• C++ implemented.
• Turbo Pascal (advertised in Byte, great success).

1984

• Apl 2.
• Clipper.
  

1985

• Forth used to control a submersible that locates the wreck of the Titanic.
• Oberon started.
• Snobol 4 for microcomputers.
• Postscript delivered on a printer.
• AMPL. For modeling.
• Caml.
• Miranda. Functional, strongly inspired Haskell.
  

1986

• Smalltalk/V for microcomputers.
• Turbo Prolog.
• Actor.
• Eiffel.
• Erlang by Joe Armstrong.
• C++ achieved.

1987

• Hypertalk.
• Perl.
• SQL 87.
  

1988

• Oberon implemented.
• Tcl.
  

1989

• ANSI C specification published.
• C++ 2.0 defined with multiple inheritance.
• Modula 3.
• Miranda.

1990

• C++ 2.1 , defined with templates and exception-handling.
• Fortran 90 adds case statements and derived types.
• J language.
• Haskell.

1991

• Python.
• Visual Basic.
  

1992

• Dylan.
• Disco.

1993

• AppleScript.
• Self. Inspired by Smalltalk, uses a JIT interpreter before Java was invented.
• Lua.

1994

• Java. Preliminary version.

1995

• Java, first public release with the HotJava browser on May 23.
• Ada 95 - ISO revision includes OOP added support for real-time systems.
• JavaScript.
• PHP.
• Delphi, version of Pascal.
• Ruby.
• Mercury.

1996

• NetRexx.
• OCalm.

1997

• ECMAScript (Standard for JavaScript).
• Rebol .

1998

• Erlang open source.

1999

• Standard C99.
• Standard ECMAScript 1.5.
• Moto.

2000

• C Scharp (C#).
• D. A version of C++ with dynamic arrays and garbage collector.

2001

• Aspect J.
• Scriptol.
• SuperX++.

2003

• Factor.

2004

• PHP 5.
• Scala.
• Boo, derived from Python.
• ActionScript.

2005

Programming Languages List By Year

• Scriptol Interpreter.
• JavaFX Script.
• F#.

2006

• Objective Modula 2.
• Rust. System language as C.
• Cyclone.
• Haxe.

2007

• Clojure.
• Nu.
• Scratch (MIT).

2008

• EGL (IBM). Compiled into other high level languages. Evolution of a tool created in 1981.
• Objective J.

2009

• Agena.
• Crack. Scripting language by Google, with a C++ syntax.
• Go. System and server language by Google, replaces both C, C++ or Python.
• Noop.
• CoffeeScript.

2010

• Ani. All statements run concurrently in this language.
• Fabric.
• Gosu.
• Julia. Mathematical language compatible with C throught LLVM. Open sourced in 2012.

2011

• Dart. A JavaScript replacement by Google.
• DRAKON. Graphical language of specifications but with a universal use.
• Xtend. A successor to Java by the Eclipse Foundation.
• C++11. New version of C++.
• Pure. Functional language.
• Deca. System programming.
• Clay. Generic programming.
• Red. Rebol-like.
• Rust. Concurrent system language, alternative to C, by Mozilla. First compiler in 2012, used by the Servo rendering engine.
• Xtend. A Java pre-compiler by the Eclipse Foundation.
• Squirrel. Object oriented scripting language.

2012

• Blocky. Visual language by Google.
• Halide. Graphic language by the MIT.
• TypeScript. By Microsoft, alternative to Dart but compiled into JavaScript.
• Ceylon. By Red Hat. Similar to Dart or TypeScript but compiles into Java bytecode.
• Elixir. A clean version of Erlang.
• LLJS. Low Level JavaScript is intermediate between C and JavaScript and compiles in JavaScript.
• Kotlin. By JetBrain, for the JVM.
• Quorum. OOL with a clean syntax for the JVM.
• Elm. Functional and reactive. JS frontend.

2013

• Asm.js. Not a language in itself, but a subset of JavaScript with an AOT compiler. This is especially a new way to make applications.
• BODOL. Functional, Lisp-like language.
• Wolfram. Interface to Mathematica, for knowledge processing and symbolic computation.

2014

• Dotty. By one of authors of Scala, and derived from Scala.
• Hack. By Facebook, a version of PHP statically typed.
• Jeeves. By Jean Yang. A language adapted to protect user privacy. Implemented like extensions to Scala and Python.
• Swift. By Apple to remplace Objective-C on MacOS or iOS.
• Wyvern by Carnegie Mellon University, for high-assurance apps.
• Avail. Amost natural language.
• Loci. C++ less the complexity, compatibility through the LLVM code.

2015

• Crystal. Compiled language with the syntax of Ruby.

2016

• Simit. MIT, created to replace Matlab, syntax of Julia but compile to C++.
• Zig. A parody language from Mozilla which imitates Rust.

2017

• WebAssembly. W3C, intermediate language running in the browser.
• Hobbes. Morgan Stanley Bank. To be used standalone of as a pattern-matching extension to C++.

2019

• Bosque. By Microsoft. Another C-like designed to be simple while introducing new designs in programming.

For the alphabetical order, see the complete list.