January Newsflash

• Python has been declared as programming language of 2007. It was a close finish, but in the end Python appeared to have the largest increase in ratings in one year time (2.04%). There is no clear reason why Python made this huge jump in 2007. Last month Python surpassed Perl for the first time in history, which is an indication that Python has become the "de facto" glue language at system level. It is especially beloved by system administrators and build managers. Chances are high that Python's star will rise further in 2008, thanks to the upcoming release of Python 3.

• A couple of interesting trends can be derived from the 2007 data. First of all, languages without automated garbage collection are losing ground rapidly. The most prominent examples of languages with explicit memory management, C and C++, both lost about 2% in one year. Another trend is that the battle between scripting languages seems to be going on in the background. There is a continuous flow of new scripting languages. In 2006, Ruby entered the main scene, followed this year by Lua. In the top 50, Groovy and Factor are new kids on the block. None of these new scripting languages seem to stay permanently, they are just replaced by successors.

• What were the big movers and shakers in 2007? The big winners are Lua (from 46 to 16), Groovy (from 66 to 31), Focus (from 78 to 41), and Factor (new at 45). The most prominent shakers are ABAP (from 15 to 29) and IDL (from 23 to 48).

• What is to be expected in 2008? And, what became of the forecasts for 2007? At the beginning of 2007, I thought C# and D would become the winners and Perl and Delphi the losers. C# was indeed one of the big winners, and Perl one of the big losers. But the forecasts for D and Delphi were completely wrong. There has been no breakthrough for D. On the other hand, Delphi reclaimed a top 10 position... What about 2008? C, C++ and Perl will continue to fall. C and C++ because they have no automated garbage collection. C++ will get an extra push down because Microsoft is not actively supporting the language anymore. Perl is just dead. Java and C# will eventually be the 2 most popular languages. So I expect them to rise further in 2008. What new languages will enter the top 20 in 2008 is a wild guess, but I think ActionScript and Groovy are really serious candidates.

• Nguyen Quang Chien suggested to rename the OCaml entry to Caml. This has been done. Thanks Nguyen!

• In the tables below some long term trends are listed about categories of languages. The tables show that dynamically typed object-oriented languages are still becoming more popular.
  
  

  Category	Ratings January 2008	Delta January 2007
  Object-Oriented Languages	56.1%	+4.0%
  Procedural Languages	40.9%	-3.6%
  Functional Languages	1.9%	+0.2%
  Logical Languages	1.1%	-0.6%

  
  
  

  Category	Ratings January 2008	Delta January 2007
  Statically Typed Languages	56.2%	-1.5%
  Dynamically Typed Languages	43.8%	+1.5%