JavaScript and Java both loved and hated

JavaScript and Java both rank among developers’ most favorite and least favorite programming languages in JetBrains’ State of Developer Ecosystem 2022 report. The just-released report is based on a survey of more than 29,000 developers.

The most favorite languages cited in the report, relative to the number of programmers using them, were Kotlin, C#, Python, Rust, and Java. In terms of total mentions by participants, the most favorite languages were Python, Java, JavaScript, C#, and Kotlin.

The five languages most often mentioned as a least favorite were JavaScript, Java, PHP, C, and C++. When calculating unpopularity relative to the number of people using it, the “absolute champion” (disliked by 96% of its users!) was Perl, followed by Visual Basic, Delphi, C, and PHP.

The most commonly used programming language was JavaScript, which was used by 65% of respondents in the previous 12 months. TypeScript, Microsoft’s strongly typed JavaScript, was found to be the fastest growing. TypeScript was used by 34% of respondents, up from 12% in 2017. 92% of the TypeScript users also used JavaScript. Indeed, 75% of the coding community was involved in web development.

Published this week, the sixth annual report was based on responses from a survey of 29,269 developers from the around world, conducted May to July 2022. Other findings in the State of Developer Ecosystem 2022 report:

• One out of every two developers was planning to adopt a new language. The top choices were Go, Rust, Kotlin, TypeScript, and Python.
• Artificial intelligence/machine learning was the most promising technology among those surveyed, and Rust was the most promising programming.
• Python, which was the second most popular programming language, continued to strengthen its position, outperforming Java as the primary language in use by respondents and closing the gap with JavaScript.
• The operating systems most popular for deployment of development environments unsurprisingly were Wndows, macOS, and Linux.