SlashData: JavaScript and Python boast largest developer communities

A new report from SlashData highlights the huge growth in the global developer community over the past six months.

The developer economy research specialists estimate there are now 24.3 million global developers, as of Q1 2021. This has increased by around 14 percent from 21.3 million in October 2020.

JavaScript continues to attract new developers with around 1.4 million more than six months ago. The language also has, by some distance, the largest developer community at...

Microsoft announces its own LTS build of OpenJDK

Microsoft has announced the preview of its own build of OpenJDK, a free and open-source implementation of the Java SE platform.

The Microsoft Build of OpenJDK is a long-term support (LTS) distribution that includes binaries for Java 11, based on OpenJDK 11.0.10+9, on x64 server and desktop environments on macOS, Linux, and Windows.

In a blog post, Microsoft wrote:

“Microsoft deploys over 500,000 Java Virtual Machines (JVMs) internally – excluding all Azure...

TIOBE Index: Python slithers ahead of Java for the first time

The latest edition of the TIOBE Index has been released and highlights Python’s continued growth in popularity.

Here are the top 10 most popular languages according to TIOBE’s November 2020 index:

The most notable change in the top 10 is that exchange of places between Java and Python.

Python was created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991. The language has gained popularity in recent years due to its reputation of being relatively simple to...

Python holds its ground as Java slides in Redmonk’s language rankings

Programming language Python has had a good week, but the same can't be said for Java.

In language rankings this month released by IEEE, Python ranked number one with a comfortable lead ahead of Java. It's similar news in Redmonk's rankings this week.

Redmonk's biannual rankings measures GitHub pull requests and Stack Overflow queries over a period of six months to get an idea of the popularity of various programming languages.

JavaScript remains in top place...

GitHub warns Java developers about malware infecting NetBeans projects

GitHub has issued a warning to Java developers about malware which is specifically infecting NetBeans projects.

The security team for the world’s largest repository host has dubbed the malware Octopus Scanner and found “26 open source projects that were backdoored by this malware and that were actively serving backdoored code.”

GitHub notes the malware is designed to backdoor projects created using the Apache NetBeans IDE – a phenomenon they had not seen before...

Study: Demand for AR/VR devs surges, Go is the most in-demand language

Careers website Hired has posted its latest annual “State of Software Engineers” report which highlights some fascinating industry trends. The most notable statistic in this year's report is an 1400 percent surge in demand for AR/VR talent. Given the release of acclaimed headsets like the Oculus Quest, and the anticipated release of a PSVR 2 later this year, it's perhaps unsurprising to see demand growing so rapidly. Salaries for AR/VR jobs range from $135k - $150k in major US tech hubs....

Microsoft teaches Visual Studio Code a few new Java tricks

Microsoft has taught Visual Studio Code a few new tricks to help Java developers as we ease into the next decade.

The main feature is a new Call Hierarchy view. By right-clicking a function and navigating to Peek Call Hierarchy, a developer can see a full list of incoming and outgoing calls (it's possible to filter just either, if you so desire.)

Another welcome addition is Data Breakpoints. This feature allows breakpoints to be set if a variable...

JetBrains report highlights changes in the 2019 programming landscape

JetBrains has released its latest ‘State of Developer Ecosystem’ report which highlights some interesting changes in the programming landscape for 2019.

There’s little change at the very top of the language popularity list – Java is still the most popular, and JavaScript is the most used. Further down the list, we begin seeing interesting changes. Python, in particular, is a clear winner in the report.

Python has entered the top three primary languages...

Python overtakes JavaScript as most queried language on Stack Overflow, new data shows

A new study from crowdsourced QA testers Global App Testing has explored developers’ biggest pain points, with Python dethroning JavaScript as Stack Overflow’s most questioned programming language.

The research focused on JavaScript, Python, R, Ruby, C#, C++, Java, Objective-C, Swift, PHP and SQL – not so much 11 languages but 10 languages and a database – and went through a...

Java and JavaScript continue to dominate enterprise development landscape

Java and JavaScript remain the dominant languages in the enterprise developer landscape – but with more agile ways of working coming to the fore, they certainly won’t be exclusive going forward.

That’s the verdict of the Cloud Foundry Foundation in its most recent report focusing on the top languages for enterprise application development.