Which Programming Languages Are on the Rise?

Peter Wayner from InfoWorld wrote a story yesterday about the “7 Programming Languages on the Rise“. Noting that the “mainstream is broad and deep,” he says that most enterprise developers need to know one of the predominant programming languages, which he identifies as Java, C#, or PHP.

But he argues that a number of “niche languages” are beginning to gain in popularity.

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Wayner lists the following as up-and-comers:

1. Python
2. Ruby
3. MATLAB
4. JavaScript
5. R
6. Erlang
7. COBOL
8. CUDA Extensions

Some of these make sense: Google App Engine uses Python, for example. And we have written before at ReadWriteWeb about the increasing popularity of the open source statistical programming language R.

But, arguably, it’s hard to see JavaScript, Ruby or Python as “niche” languages. And even harder perhaps to see COBOL, one of the oldest programming languages, as such – although the InfoWorld story points to a recent Dice.com search that listed 580 jobs mentioning Cobol, in comparison to the 1070 that referenced Ruby.

Do you agree with the list? If not, what languages should (or shouldn’t) be on it?

And just as interesting, perhaps, what should be on the list of programming languages in decline?

Photo credits: Flickr user David Blaikie