{"slug": "most-popular-programming-languages-now-and-good-news-on-developer-job-growth", "title": "Most popular programming languages now – and good news on developer job growth", "summary": "Python, Java and JavaScript remain the top three programming languages in ZDNET's Index of Programming Language Popularity, which aggregates nine surveys from May to October 2026, including PYPL, Tiobe, GitHub Octoverse, Stack Overflow, JetBrains, Oxylabs and Tech Talent Portugal. The index, limited to mid- or late-2026 data to capture the effect of agentic coding tools such as Claude Code and ChatGPT Codex, also found that month-over-month growth in developer job postings has increased since those tools arrived. ZDNET's author said the findings were \"not at all what I had expected.", "body_md": "### ZDNET’s key takeaways\n\n- Python leads, but older languages still have staying power.\n- AI can build apps, but language rankings still tell a story.\n- Job posting data offers a surprising twist on coding’s future.\n\nA few days ago, my editor sent me a message over chat. She said, “Remember how well your most popular programming languages articles used to do? How has that shifted with vibe coding? Do those rankings even matter now?”\n\nWith that, I brewed the first of many satisfying cups of Pacific Bold and got to work. What I found was not at all what I had expected.\n\nThe upshot? Python, Java, and JavaScript still top the charts, but there have been other revealing shifts — both since last year and over the 10 years I’ve been tracking programming language popularity. But I also discovered that, ever since agentic vibe coding tools arrived, month-over-month growth in developer jobs has actually increased. I can prove it, and do so below — with charts.\n\nMore from ZDNET\n\n## **ZDNET Index of Programming Language Popularity**\n\nMy [most recent programming language study](https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-most-popular-programming-languages-in-2024-and-what-that-even-means/) was back in 2025. It was well into the days of generative AI. Notably, though, it was published *before* the advent of coding agents like [Claude Code](https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-install-configure-claude-code-ai-pricing-developers/) and [ChatGPT Codex](https://www.zdnet.com/article/you-can-use-openais-super-powerful-ai-coding-agent-codex-for-just-20-now/).\n\nIn that article, we upped our language analysis game quite a bit, creating our own in-house index of programming language popularity.\n\nThe problem with determining popularity (as many political pollsters know) is that it all depends on who you ask, when you ask, and how you ask. The same is true with programming languages. Do you measure GitHub repos and their predominant languages? How about job listings on certain job boards? Or perhaps you measure the number of sites found in a Google search?\n\nNone of those, alone, provides a clear picture of the state of programming languages. Instead, I used nine separate surveys, assigned weight to each language’s position in each survey, and then aggregated those weightings into a single scale.\n\nMy 2025 index included data from 2023 to 2025. But since coding agents became a disruptive force primarily in 2026, I limited this year’s index to mid or late 2026 surveys. This allowed me to see the impact of agentic coding reflected in the data itself.\n\n- [PYPL](https://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html) pulls data from Google search activity (October 2026).\n- [Tiobe](https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/) aggregates mentions and listings across popular websites (October 2026).\n- [GitHub](https://github.blog/news-insights/octoverse/octoverse-commits-pushes-reach-new-highs-in-2026-as-developers-build-with-agents/#h-language-choice-has-new-influence) publishes most-used languages by GitHub developers (October 2026).\n- [Stack Overflow](https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2026/technology/data#most-popular-technologies) publishes survey results with top-used languages (October 2026).\n- [The Consensus blog](https://theconsensus.dev/languages.html) indexes data from “builders of major software infrastructure systems” (October 2026).\n- [Tech Talent Portugal](https://campaign.landing.jobs/hubfs/TTTR2026/TTTR%202026%20-%20LandingJobs%20-%20Damia.pdf?hsLang=en) indexes survey data from Portuguese developers (May 2026).\n- [GigaZine](https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20260804-programming-gigazine-user) indexes survey data from Japanese language developers (August 2026).\n- [Oxylabs](https://oxylabs.io/press-area/most-in-demand-programming-languages) job listings analysis (May 2026). We[covered Oxylabs](https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-proxy-provider-i-tested-is-the-best-for-web-scraping-and-its-not-iproyal-or-marsproxies/) last year.\n- [JetBrains](https://blog.jetbrains.com/research/2026/08/programming-language-migration/) language usage analysis (August 2026).\n\nWhile the top entries are fairly consistent, our survey aggregate table shows that the results overall are quite chaotic. They were last time, too.\n\nAfter processing the data using the ZDNET framework, I selected the top 20 programming languages across all nine data sources. As you can see, Python, Java, and JavaScript still rule.\n\nI found a few things quite interesting. Note that both Visual Basic and VBA are on the list. In the survey aggregate, Fortran and COBOL were also on the list. While clearly languages from our deep, dark past, the presence of these Jurassic languages indicates that there is a definite need for ongoing support of legacy systems.\n\nI’ve actually done these language popularity studies going back ten years, although the earlier ones didn’t have the sophisticated multi-study aggregation methodology I’ve been using recently. Unfortunately, the earliest articles are inaccessible now, having been replaced with updated data years ago. Even so, I was able to find some of my original 2016 usage data in my server’s media database. I was able to incorporate this decade-old data into the following language preference migration chart.\n\nWhile there has certainly been a lot of movement over the years, most languages remain relevant, even if their ranking has increased or decreased over the decade.\n\nThe movement of Python into the top rank, and the decline of the more traditional C-like languages of Java and C++, indicate eager adoption of Python’s ease of use and capability, as well as its overwhelming level of adoption in AI workloads.\n\n**Also: [‘I can’t stop’: 80% of developers find AI coding more addictive than helpful](https://www.zdnet.com/article/i-cant-stop-80-of-developers-find-ai-coding-more-addictive-than-helpful/)**\n\nWhile Python is a hybrid tool, which is compiled into byte codes and then interpreted, the more traditional compiled languages have all dropped in usage. This reflects not only the productivity benefits of languages like Python, but also the rise in script-level languages for web use, and the fact that processors are so much faster that pure compilers don’t offer the same performance benefits they did in years past.\n\nAs for the question about how rankings have shifted with vibe coding, as we can see, a full 30% (and all three top languages) didn’t move at all. But the big question — whether language rankings even matter anymore — is coming up next.\n\n## Do language rankings even matter?\n\nEven a couple of years ago, if you were going to write code, you would have had to do it like a caveperson. You had to write every single line of code by yourself, maybe with some helpful advice from an AI. Now, you can go all the way from nothing to [commercial apps sold on the Mac App Store](https://www.zdnet.com/innovation/claude-code-vibe-coding-mac-app/), without writing a single line of actual code.\n\nWhile there has been considerable coverage of the recent wave of layoffs ([Amazon](https://www.pcmag.com/news/amazon-ceo-mass-layoffs-were-not-due-to-ai-but-culture), [Meta](https://www.pcmag.com/news/meta-cuts-8000-more-jobs-zuckerberg-personal-superintelligence), [Oracle](https://in.mashable.com/tech/110442/oracle-layoffs-2026-up-to-30000-jobs-at-risk-as-company-doubles-down-on-ai), [Xbox](https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/xbox-laying-off-3200-dropping-4-studios-reset-microsofts-games-strategy/)), there’s also a strong case to be made that [the idea of a developer apocalypse is overblown](https://www.zdnet.com/article/rumors-of-the-software-developers-ai-induced-demise-are-greatly-exaggerated/).\n\nWhen I started working on this article, I wanted to involve two types of data: language-by-language usage information, and developer growth or decline rates.\n\nWhile it’s very easy to find articles about developer layoffs, it’s a bit more challenging to find month-by-month data on available developer jobs. That said, I found a very interesting collection of datasets, buried fairly deeply on the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The St. Louis Fed (part of the United States’ central banking system) is well known for maintaining the Federal Reserve Economic Data library, affectionately known as FRED.\n\n**Also: [75% of developers I surveyed prefer Claude Code over Codex – here’s why](https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-most-developers-prefer-claude-code-over-codex/)**\n\nFRED has two interesting datasets from the job posting site Indeed. The first one is [Software Development Job Postings on Indeed in the United States](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/data/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE), with daily index offsets going all the way back to February of 2020. The second one is overall [Job Postings on Indeed in the United States](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/data/IHLIDXUS#data-table-observations), also with daily index offsets going back to February 2020.\n\nBefore I show you my first chart, I need you to wrap your head around what, exactly, this is indexing. Rather than an absolute number of jobs, the index offset shows the change in job counts from an arbitrary index date, in this case Feb. 1, 2020 (which just so happens to be right before the pandemic hit).\n\nWhat all that means is that the following chart shows the change in job listings available, but they’re not to scale. This is important, because it looks like the number of developer jobs in 2022 exceeded the number of all jobs. That’s not true. Instead, the *growth* of developer jobs exceeded the growth of all jobs as compared to the index date of Feb. 1, 2020.\n\nAs you can see, developer jobs took a big jump in the years following the pandemic, as infrastructure build-outs were rapidly updated to accommodate remote work and other urgent changes in IT requirements. But once the pandemic faded, the surge dropped.\n\nWe’re still seeing that in terms of layoffs. While experts might attribute some layoffs to AI, another reason people are being let go is that companies overhired at the beginning of the decade. If you follow the dotted line as the index point, you can see that programming job *growth* still hasn’t recovered from the pre-pandemic index point.\n\n**Also: [Claude Code vs. Codex: Why I use both and how to choose one](https://www.zdnet.com/article/claude-code-vs-codex-ai-coding-tools/)**\n\nBut if we can look at job growth relative to an arbitrary point in time, we’re not limited to February 2020. We can refactor the index offset data to base growth analysis from any other starting date.\n\nSo, I refactored, basing my starting point on Oct. 1, 2025, a year ago. October 2025 is, not coincidentally, when OpenAI’s Codex was first released for general availability. [I tried it a month earlier](https://www.zdnet.com/article/i-did-24-days-of-coding-in-12-hours-with-a-20-ai-tool-but-theres-one-big-pitfall/), before it was fully in general availability. I could immediately see the potential.\n\nClaude Code had been out for a while. But the second big milestone I wanted to showcase was when Claude Code’s auto-mode went live. This is a permissions level in Claude that lets it run for a lot longer, without human supervision, and yet still be fairly safe. I found auto-mode to be game changing in some of my development projects.\n\nLook at that chart. What do you notice?\n\nI noticed that growth in developer jobs is increasing faster than overall job growth. In fact, even as overall job growth declined from February to June 2026, demand for coders increased in that same time period. As I mentioned before, since the advent of agentic vibe coding tools, month-over-month growth in developer jobs has increased!\n\n**Also: [How I made a paid Mac app in 11 days with Claude – without writing a single line of code](https://www.zdnet.com/innovation/claude-code-vibe-coding-mac-app/)**\n\nAt the beginning of this article, I promised you something unexpected. Given how much developer attention is required in wrangling AI coding tools, I didn’t exactly expect job growth to plummet. But the one thing I really did not expect was to see developer job growth outperform the overall job market, especially now that AI agentic coding tools do such a good job of building working code.\n\nNow that it’s possible to get so many more projects done in a given block of time using these amazing tools, it seems like companies are hiring more people to keep up with the opportunities offered.\n\nWhat do you think? Have you seen more or fewer developer job opportunities since agentic coding became a thing? Let us know in the comments below.\n\n*You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to subscribe to* *my weekly update newsletter**, and follow me on Twitter/X at* *@DavidGewirtz**, on Facebook at* *Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz**, on Instagram at* *Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz**, on Bluesky at* *@DavidGewirtz.com**, and on YouTube at* *YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV**.*", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/most-popular-programming-languages-now-and-good-news-on-developer-job-growth", "canonical_source": "https://www.zdnet.com/innovation/most-popular-programming-languages-in-2026-developer-job-growth/", "published_at": "2026-11-03 13:09:57+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-11-03 13:21:48.374666+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["developer-tools", "ai-agents", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["ZDNET", "Python", "Java", "JavaScript", "Claude Code", "ChatGPT Codex", "GitHub", "Stack Overflow"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/most-popular-programming-languages-now-and-good-news-on-developer-job-growth", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/most-popular-programming-languages-now-and-good-news-on-developer-job-growth.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/most-popular-programming-languages-now-and-good-news-on-developer-job-growth.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/most-popular-programming-languages-now-and-good-news-on-developer-job-growth.jsonld"}}