what-is-the-growth-in-programming-languages-over-time.scroll

author https://github.com/breck7 Breck Yunits
date 2017.12.09 12:00:00 -8000
groups All
title What is the growth in programming languages over time?

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* As I build up my database of programming languages I hope to be able to answer questions like:
 dateline

- is the rate of new language creation accelerating, slowing down, or constant?
- what spurs the creation of new programming languages?
- can we predict how many new languages will be released next year? in 5 years? in 10 years?

* At the moment I am tracking 533 computer languages and I currently have creation years for more than half of those, including for 271 of the most popular ones.

* Here is a simple line graph of the cumulative number of languages I have by year.

image images/programmingLanguagesOverTime.png

endSnippet

* I will wait until I have more data to do more serious analysis (for example: the dip in the growth rate toward the end is likely due to my incomplete dataset and not indicative of a trend change).

* But until I can provide a more comprehensive analysis, I thought I'd share my first look.

* Update (12/10/2017): a number of readers have pointed out that some of the languages on this list are not programming languages. Future posts like this will be sure to exclude those.

* Data used in this article as csv:

commaTable
 language,releaseYear
 plankalkul,1948
 g-code,1950
 flow-matic,1955
 regex,1956
 fortran,1957
 lisp,1958
 algol,1958
 cobol,1959
 ibm-rpg,1959
 mad,1959
 jovial,1960
 sako,1960
 si,1960
 teco,1963
 ascii,1963
 apl,1964
 basic,1964
 pl-i,1964
 simula,1965
 bcpl,1966
 mumps,1966
 logo,1967
 spss,1968
 b,1969
 gml,1969
 pascal,1970
 forth,1970
 scheme,1970
 isbn,1970
 lse,1971
 c,1972
 prolog,1972
 smalltalk,1972
 intercal,1972
 ml,1973
 sql,1974
 diff,1974
 sed,1974
 tcp,1974
 z-notation,1974
 lex,1975
 yacc,1975
 sas,1976
 s,1976
 awk,1977
 bourne-shell,1977
 idl,1977
 m4,1977
 datalog,1977
 pearl,1977
 modula-2,1978
 tex,1978
 x86,1978
 dbase,1979
 ada,1980
 scribe,1980
 udp,1980
 karel,1981
 maple,1982
 postscript,1982
 turing,1982
 abap,1983
 vhdl,1983
 turbo-pascal,1983
 matlab,1984
 objective-c,1984
 transact-sql,1984
 verilog,1984
 common-lisp,1984
 rpl,1984
 asn-1,1984
 simulink,1984
 cpp,1985
 clipper,1985
 stata,1985
 ampl,1985
 arm,1985
 bibtex,1985
 bison,1985
 ia-32,1985
 latex,1985
 mips,1985
 erlang,1986
 labview,1986
 oberon,1986
 eiffel,1986
 fjolnir,1986
 gas,1986
 gdb,1986
 gnuplot,1986
 mathcad,1986
 object-pascal,1986
 sgml,1986
 perl,1987
 sparc,1987
 unicode,1987
 wolfram,1988
 mathematica,1988
 octave,1988
 tcl,1988
 picolisp,1988
 bash,1989
 coq,1989
 http,1989
 z-shell,1990
 haskell,1990
 j,1990
 scilab,1990
 pl-sql,1991
 python,1991
 visualbasic,1991
 qbasic,1991
 antlr,1992
 gzip,1992
 opengl,1992
 powerpc,1992
 lua,1993
 r,1993
 k,1993
 applescript,1993
 brainfuck,1993
 html,1993
 pdf,1993
 utf-8,1993
 vba,1993
 cilk,1994
 racket,1994
 delphi,1995
 java,1995
 javascript,1995
 php,1995
 ruby,1995
 visual-foxpro,1995
 cfml,1995
 mysql,1995
 qt,1995
 vbscript,1996
 ocaml,1996
 asp,1996
 css,1996
 drakon,1996
 jscript,1996
 lilypond,1996
 postgresql,1996
 puredata,1996
 rest,1996
 squeak,1996
 supercollider,1996
 uml,1996
 xml,1996
 c--,1997
 mmx,1997
 modelica,1997
 rdf,1997
 rpm,1997
 curl,1998
 actionscript,1998
 soap,1998
 vml,1998
 vvvv,1998
 autoit,1999
 asterisk,1999
 netlogo,1999
 tom-oopl,1999
 unlambda,1999
 xpath,1999
 alice,2000
 csharp,2000
 cmake,2000
 drupal,2000
 geo-ml,2000
 sqlite,2000
 subversion,2000
 wsdl,2000
 xbl,2000
 d,2001
 visualbasicnet,2001
 processing,2001
 json,2001
 nsis,2001
 protobuf,2001
 svg,2001
 tinyc,2001
 yaml,2001
 scratch,2002
 gosu,2002
 jsharp,2002
 restructuredtext,2002
 textile,2002
 groovy,2003
 boo,2003
 autohotkey,2003
 q,2003
 amqp,2003
 llvmir,2003
 sawzall,2003
 whitespace,2003
 wordpress,2003
 scala,2004
 asymptote,2004
 markdown,2004
 nginx,2004
 owl,2004
 solr,2004
 tiddlywiki,2004
 fsharp,2005
 sagemath,2005
 django,2005
 git,2005
 haxe,2005
 linotte,2005
 mercurial,2005
 mql,2005
 puppet,2005
 rails,2005
 powershell,2006
 aws,2006
 hexagon,2006
 jquery,2006
 ooxml,2006
 sass,2006
 scss,2006
 vala,2006
 wml,2006
 yii,2006
 apex,2007
 clojure,2007
 cuda,2007
 cython,2007
 linq,2007
 lolcode,2007
 thrift,2007
 xcore,2007
 xquery,2007
 nim,2008
 geojson,2008
 pandas,2008
 pig,2008
 pure,2008
 sparql,2008
 umple,2008
 go,2009
 coffeescript,2009
 less,2009
 mongodb,2009
 opencl,2009
 redis,2009
 rust,2010
 azure,2010
 risc-v,2010
 dart,2011
 kotlin,2011
 elixir,2011
 google-cloud,2011
 schemaorg,2011
 stripe,2011
 swagger,2011
 webgl,2011
 julia,2012
 elm,2012
 qalb,2012
 typescript,2012
 asmjs,2013
 ats,2013
 crystal,2014
 hack,2014
 swift,2014
 idris,2014
 solidity,2014
 graphql,2015
 webassembly,2015

# Reproducibility Notes

* The data in this post comes from the PLDB database. It is possible to build a continually updating version of this article that updates as more data comes in.

ohayoCode
 html.h1 What is the growth in programming languages over time?
 web.get https://pldb.io/pldb.csv
  filter.where appeared > 1940
   group.by appeared
    rows.sortBy appeared
     rows.runningTotal count
      columns.setType appeared year
       vega.bar Number of Languages Created Each Year
        xColumn appeared
        yColumn count
       vega.line Cumulative Number of Languages
        xColumn appeared
        yColumn total

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