Indeed.com tracks job statistics. I’ve been scouting there to determine what SnagAJob.com can and should be doing in future releases of our site. Along the way, I built this report which shows jobs posting as a percentage of all job postings for popular programming languages over the past 3 years.
As you can see, Java still beats C# 2:1 in popularity today. But C# is growing and Java has been essentially flat. Also, notice that Visual Basic is slowly declining and was eclipsed by C# in late 2005. C++ is flat, too. At the current rate, C# would eclipse C++ in the next 2 years and would overtake Java in popularity within 7 or 8 years. A lot can change in 8 years, though.
Also interesting, as of Q4 2007, there are more advertised jobs requiring Python skills than there are for COBOL. You gotta love that. Ruby seems to be tracking right along with Python. Javascript and C# are almost the same line. I predict that will continue and that the Python and Ruby lines will move upward and track just below Javascript line because of the rise in Silverlight and client-centric web programming that’s coming. XAML's a penny stock today but look at the relative growth in this graph.
Unless VB shifts back to its pre-.NET roots, it's a dying language, in my opinion. Not that I liked VB5 or VB6 at all but those who did like VB before .NET really loved it. Since .NET, there's not a lot of love for VB from anyone. VBx, the dynamic version of VB that's part of Microsoft's Dynamic Language Runtime initiative could change all that.
What's going to happen with C++ is anyone's guess. Maybe it will be around forever. I'm predicting doom and gloom for C and C++ at 3:14:07 a.m. on Tuesday, January 19, 2038.
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