Importance of Programming Language Popularity

I wrote my first programs while I was in high school during the early 1980's.  I copied a BASIC program out of a book and typed it into the school computers text editor.  Of course I had no idea that I would need to compile the program, I just thought you wrote them and expected them to run.

In college I learned PASCAL, the bind and compile processes, and it all came together.  But I wasnt enamored with PASCAL at the time, in fact I was hardly enamored with computers at the time.  This was the age of MS-DOS, and other than an occasional flight simulation, computers at the time were nothing more than typewriters and spreadsheet calculators.

It wasnt until the graphical user interfaces of Windows and Apple that I began to get re-interested in programming.  So I began trying to learn C, and then eventually moved onto C++.  I fell in love with C++, and Borland's Object Windows Libraries (OWL).  Now this was programming.  I could move objects around on the screen, I could alter pixels individually, and I could easily create windows interfaces using OWL.

I went on to learn the x86 instruction set and the Assembly language.  This was a life altering experience, and really set gave me the education I needed to become a professional programmer.  Once I understood the architecture and relationships of the chips, memory, system registers, and the operating system, everything fell in place.

In an article last weekend by Esther Schindler, some interesting tidbits about programming language popularity are revealed.

Is Computer Language Popularity Important?

In business and managerial terms, however, the choice of a programming language is a much larger issue. A corporate standard language (or at least set of languages) ensures that the entire staff can read any in-house code, if not adequately maintain it. Predictability is a good thing, even if it's boring, though I've seen some mighty strange internal standards. In the mid 1980s, Ramada Inns let developers work on PCs in only Assembly language and interpreted BASIC, which meant that otherwise trivial apps were written in Assembly because none of the developers could stand BASIC. Turbo Pascal was smuggled in like booze at the office potluck.

This is so true.  Programming languages are a funny thing.  Schindler goes on to describe her fondness and comfort level with FORTRAN.  She reads FORTRAN like English, has FORTRAN dreams and tends to consider other languages in comparison to FORTRAN.

My situation is the exact same, only with Java.  I see Java code like Neo in the Matrix.  I read it as fluidly as I read a book, and when I'm in the zone I can write it faster than I can English.  Programming languages are very personal to many people.  And I think the reason for this is the commitment it takes to become an expert in a programming language.

The corporate perspective however is quite different, and in many ways conflicts with the personal affiliation programmers make with their languages of choice.  In application architecture, choosing a programming language and application platform is often one of the most arduous tasks in solution development.  Why?  Because programmers tend to become very biased over time.  But any company worth their IT salt, should ignore this bias and make these types of decisions based on what is best for their business.

Now, which is the most popular programming language?  Take a guess before you click this link, its a rather crude study, but the results are interesting none the less.  Programming Language Popularity   Hint:  Its not Java or C#.