Popularity

Python is one of the world's most popular programming languages. In fact, it's more so than ever. Python climbed from third place to tie for second in the latest ranking of programming language popularity published by the analyst firm RedMonk. It’s the first time that a language other than JavaScript, which remains number one in the firm’s ratings, or Java, the other runner-up, has entered the top two since RedMonk started compiling its rankings in 2012.

During that time, developers could have opted to switch to a newer programming language, like Mozilla's Rust, Google's Go, or JetBrains' Kotlin. Meanwhile, newer programmers could have opted to learn the more widely used JavaScript, or been turned off by confusion over what tutorials, code samples, and open source code libraries would work with each version of Python. But if Python lost any developers due to the transition, it appears to have more than made up for them in new converts.

O'Grady cites Python's versatility as one reason for its ongoing popularity. Companies like Google, Dropbox, and Instagram all rely heavily on Python, as do countless smaller ventures. It also has a home in academia as the preferred data-crunching language of many scientists and mathematicians.

RedMonk ranks programming languages based on two criteria: the number of questions asked about each language on the question-and-answer site StackOverflow, and the number of projects based on each language hosted on the Microsoft-owned service GitHub. The idea is to spot trends in the software development profession.

RedMonk's assessment, at least as it relates to Python, is consistent with other measures. According to a survey by StackOverflow, Python is the third most widely used programming language, not counting HTML, behind only JavaScript and the database query language SQL. The survey found Python was the respondents' second-favorite language, after Rust. Meanwhile, the Tiobe index, which measures the number of search engine results for particular languages, shows Python has grown in popularity in recent years and now ranks third in the index, after Java and C.