They analyze the trends in language usage, which ordinally had not change since the year before (C, Java, Objective-C, C++, C#, PHP, Visual Basic, Python and Javascript), but that show a number of developments. For instance, Perl is leaving room in favor of Python. Perl seems to be dying and with signs of becoming history. They also mentioned a strong resurgence of Javascript but I would like to add that a large number of developments in the web scripting world have been carried out, starting with CoffeeScript, a tiny language that translates 1-to-1 to JavaScript. See their web page for some use of the language. ClojureScript is another compiler, this time to translate Clojure into JavaScript.
I found the following paragraph of particular interest:
By all measures, C++ use declined last year, demonstrating that C++11 was not enough to reanimate the language's fortunes, despite the significant benefits it provides. I have previously opined that Microsoft's contention of a return to native languages being led by C++ was unsupported by evidence. It is now clearly contradicted by the evidence.I feel encouraged by this statement. I believed C++ is an awful language, and always has been. Back in the late 90's when I started programming and my teenage budget in a remote outpost included a non-disposable 486 DX2 with DOS, we had no choice but to get mainstream technical stuff, and that included C++ as the only advanced systems language. My experience, and I believe everybody's experience, is that programmer's time is more important than running time, and even hardcore C++ programmers recognize they put themselves in pain when facing non-standard tasks with the language. Some would argue that pain is what you pay for system performance, but that is not true (see the paragraph below). C++ will never grow on Big Data (data processing), mobile development or cloud computing, and I would expect that performance computing to also cut C++ usage in favor of more modern, maintainable system languages, such as the D language (or the one I describe below).
An interesting development they had not talked about in the area of systems programming, more than the D language, is Nimrod. It has cool features such as pointers that are traced by a lightweight garbage collector and others that directly translate to C++ pointers. Templates that can be called as operators are included, supporting metaprogramming, it supports inmutable objects, a number of syntactic sugars (such as being able to call len(x), x.len or x.len if there is only one argument, command and function-like calls like echo("hello") and echo "hello"...), first class functions and a very good mixture between Python indentation-defined blocks and Scala function definitions, as opposed to D's C-like syntax. Nimrod compiles to C, C++, Objective C and JavaScript. Definitely a good candidate to learn and to watch.
On the functional but high-performant side of the market we have Erlang, Haskell, Scala and Clojure. The first three are older, especially the first two ones. In my opinion, Clojure is simplest, especially when compared to Scala. This is patent when examining a source coude listing in both languages. Clojure lifts the programmer's productivity to new highs (I was able to code the Denarius' matching engine core in half a day). Definitely the way to go in the future.
