beautiful interactive chart showing top programming languages 2021
Horst JENS
While browsing my Email inbox 5:00 a.m. I made the half conscious decision to click on an article from the "Pycoder's weekly" newsletter. The click linked to an IEEE Spectrum blogpost with the title "Top Programming Languages 2021: Python dominates as the de facto platform for new technologies" and I read a bit deeper, because of the first sentence ("Learn Python") and because: who does not love to get ones own prejudices confirmed by external sources? I do!
This article linked to another article from IEEE Spectrum with the title "Top Programming Languages 2021" showing an interactive ranking of programming languages. The reason I write about it at all is that the inner child inside me was instantly captivated by the option to customize the ranking, moving sliders with weights around and looking how the ranking of programming languages changed dynamically:
Source: https://spectrum.ieee.org/ top-programming-languages/
To my delight it is actually difficult -but not impossible- to create a ranking where python does //not// show up as number one.
As someone making a living out of teaching python to children and adults, I am very pleased with the conclusion of the articles: Learn python. Of course, I should add, it is never too late to learn another programming language as well.
The interactive chart seems to be made using javascript, and in my eyes it's an excellent example interactive elements in data publishing: Instead of showing one or more rather boring, static rankings (optimized for print), create an interactive chart with an option to fine-tune many sliders to catch the interest and the play instinct of the (online) reader.
The irony that it needs a javascript-enriched website to show the superiority of python as a programming language is not lost to me. I therefore recommend taking a look into frameworks able to combine the power of python and javascript:
For example, the excellent interactive-chart-generating python framework bokeh visualization library to create interactive graphs for the webbrowser or the Vpython: 3d programming for ordinary mortals library to create 3D games and simulations running in the webbrowser.
Both bokeh and vpython are taught by myself at spielend-programmieren.at, if you are looking for an instructor...
