Which programming languages do developers use the most? That’s a key question for those who want to break into software development, as it determines which languages they’ll want to learn first. For companies, it’s also important to keep an eye on which languages are rising (and falling) in popularity, as that can impact how apps are built and the tech stack maintained. 

Jetbrains recently conducted a massive survey of 31,743 developers worldwide, offering a comprehensive view into the habits of software developers and engineers. The company asked these technologists which programming languages they used the most over the past 12 months; this is how they answered:

That JavaScript should top this list of most-used languages should come as no surprise. Other surveys have also shown that JavaScript is an intensely popular language; in April, SlashData’s State of the Developer Nation estimated JavaScript’s developer community at 13.8 million, well ahead of Python (10.1 million), Java (9.4 million), and C/C++ (7.3 million). 

In February, a Devskiller report showed that 75 percent of companies are actively searching for JavaScript developers, notably more than other languages such as Java (51 percent) and HTML/CSS (48 percent). “Our findings indicate that JavaScript remains the go-to front-end IT skill,” the report continued. “It’s important to note that we are aware of the growing shift towards TypeScript as a replacement to JavaScript. The reason it was not specified in this report was because we classify most TypeScript coding test invitations on our platform as JavaScript.”

JavaScript’s popularity is also reflected in the rise of TypeScript, which is technically a JavaScript superscript (meaning whatever you code in it is transpiled to JavaScript), although many programming-language rankings such as RedMonk treat it as a full programming language. In the 2020 edition of the Stack Overflow Developer Survey, some 86.1 percent of surveyed developers said that Rust was a language they loved, followed by TypeScript (67.1 percent), Python (66.7 percent), Kotlin (62.9 percent), and Go (62.3 percent). TypeScript’s rising popularity means even more developers stay invested in the JavaScript ecosystem—which is clearly robust, and unlikely to fade anytime soon.