There are always new contestants in the popularity contest for computer languages. The jobs site Indeed has rounded up the ones that employers want the most.
Indeed, which has more than 200 million unique monthly visitors, tallied the most requested computer languages in tech job postings. It compared posts from employers in San Francisco, San Jose, California, and the wider US between October 2017 and October 2018.
They found that a few are a safe bet no matter where you live. Java, which Android is built on, and Python, another universal application language, topped the list everywhere. Their decades-long reign across different platforms and devices means they will stay relevant for years to come.
Many of the other ones reflect the daily demands of the digital economy. HTML (technically a “markup language”), CSS, and JavaScript are the scaffolding behind the web you see every day, from WordPress sites to Facebook. On the back end, SQL and PHP power functionality such as retrieving data and displaying dynamic content.
Languages built by tech giants such as Microsoft’s C# (pronounced “C sharp”) and Apple’s Swift for iOS and macOS applications didn’t crack the top 10. It’s not that they aren’t popular, though. Microsoft’s and Apple’s choice of languages are both cited as among the most desirable for developers, even if they aren’t as ubiquitous in job listings. Perhaps a bigger surprise is that Amazon Web Services did make the list. It isn’t a language per se, but it’s increasingly difficult to get by in cloud computing without it.