Can you name the most popular programming languages?

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Programming Language Popularity Quiz

Rating:	Report a mistake
Created by: moogles -
Contributed: September 23rd, 2009
Published: March 14th, 2010
Category: Science
Plays: 106,688

Tags: Popular Quizzes, Computer Quizzes, programming, Programming Languages

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	mat:	Oct 2nd, 2009 at 18:32 GMT	0 points
	Space after "C"?

	moogles:	Oct 5th, 2009 at 23:40 GMT	0 points
	yeah i know, is there a way to fix that?

	Psyk:	Oct 6th, 2009 at 18:12 GMT	14 points
	SQL a programming language? Also assembly is not a single language.

	kubilus1:	Oct 7th, 2009 at 20:45 GMT	0 points
	Hmm, 'C' and 'D' did not seem to work.

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	davidr:	Oct 27th, 2009 at 16:57 GMT	4 points
	Unfortunate that the source compounds all the different shells into one and all the different assembly languages. :-( How about adding asterisks to those two with a note that they're not single languages but classes of language?

	KitKatBeard:	Nov 2nd, 2009 at 03:34 GMT	-1 points
	A shell is not a language. Not even a type of language. Also, the source doesn't give a real reason for which languages are included in their data.

	nomuny12:	Mar 13th, 2010 at 12:10 GMT	2 points
	People still use COBOL and FORTRAN in the 21st century?

	biff_smiff:	Mar 13th, 2010 at 13:34 GMT	5 points
	Seems odd they'd include SQL, since it's not really a programming language...it's a query language (thus the QL). I'm sure "shell" is referring to linux sh scripts or the like.

	biskit67:	Mar 13th, 2010 at 15:59 GMT	8 points
	COBOL is definitely alive and kicking. The government uses it, most insurance companies, and I have been actively coding in it since 1994. We have some huge clients that run their entire businesses on software written in COBOL.

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	headcrash:	Mar 13th, 2010 at 16:12 GMT	7 points
	"A shell is not a language" - I've worked on entire admin systems written in bash and ksh. "SQL is not a language" - I think the implication here is PL/SQL, which most definitely is a language. "People still use COBOL" - there are more lines of COBOL in production systems than any other language. Overheard in 1988: "What language do you think we'll be doing RADAR work in, in the 21st century? - I don't know - but we're going to be calling it FORTRAN..."

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	thegrimreaper:	Mar 13th, 2010 at 16:35 GMT	9 points
	i have no idea how the percentages are so high...i got java and javascript, and i immediately clicked "give up"...i guess there are A LOT of computer programmers on sporcle...

	msreicher:	Mar 13th, 2010 at 19:46 GMT	26 points
	did you write a program that played this quiz 10,000 times today and produced a normally distributed range of questions answered correctly

smart_mom:

Mar 13th, 2010 at 20:41 GMT

-2 points

Can you accept machine for assembly? @msreicher: lol, I think you're right!

	LurkingGrue:	Mar 13th, 2010 at 21:06 GMT	3 points
	I thought of Assembly but then remembered that it was not a single language. And, msreicher and smart_mom, the spike in popularity today is probably due to this game's being posted on reddit.

	mybeaglebelle:	Mar 13th, 2010 at 21:38 GMT	14 points
	I know I'm gonna get voted down for this, but how did this get 15,000 plays? I mean, it's not a bad quiz, but it doesn't feel like something a lot of people would be interested in.

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	when_flies_pig:	Mar 13th, 2010 at 22:54 GMT	16 points
	How the hell did this get 17,000 plays today?

	moogles:	Mar 13th, 2010 at 23:21 GMT	3 points
	LOL woah i'm wondering the same thing pig/everyone else who commented. it wasn't me, fyi, i would have no idea how to write that kind of program. pretty funny though

	moogles:	Mar 13th, 2010 at 23:26 GMT	2 points
	ah, just read the comment about reddit, i guess that explains it. i have a question though: i have no idea where "Also try Hello, World!" came from; did psycho_fish somehow hack into my account or did the sporcle admins add that in when they saw how popular this quiz was getting?

	godpaul28:	Mar 13th, 2010 at 23:46 GMT	-1 points
	Is no one else like totally weirded out by this?

	godpaul28:	Mar 13th, 2010 at 23:47 GMT	0 points
	Ah just read the reddit comment too. Gotcha. All makes sense now

	wickethewok:	Mar 14th, 2010 at 00:35 GMT	3 points
	I assume the "SQL" entry includes stuff like T-SQL which offers procedural functionality. However, it is still a programming language on its own. SQL is just a declarative language, like Prolog and the like. Not every language is procedural, y'know...

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	naturefreak2101:	Mar 14th, 2010 at 04:51 GMT	0 points
	Ah reddit ... really? Sorry for the accusation. I need to get some of my quizzes on there too! :P

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	signe:	Mar 14th, 2010 at 07:50 GMT	1 point
	SQL is, by definition ("Structured Query Language"), not a programming language. As others noted, PL/SQL or T-SQL might qualify, but "SQL" is overbroad and incorrect.

	abanazerb:	Mar 14th, 2010 at 09:44 GMT	7 points
	Hmmmm... The quiz is headed "Most popular programming languages". In fact the source gets its figures from the frequency with which programming languages are searched for on the internet. In other words, this list has nothing to do with popularity (which implies much-used or, at a stretch, much-loved). Sorry, but that makes this quiz totally bogus (dude) unless you change the heading!

	Lthayer3:	Mar 14th, 2010 at 09:52 GMT	4 points
	I have to agree with the comments about standard SQL not being a 'programming' language in the same way as the others on the list. I mean, if query languages are going to be included, why not throw in other language types, too? HTML and XML would most definitely make such a list. Verilog and some other HDLs would have a pretty good chance, too. But I guess this is a problem to blame on the list maker (and their sources!) and not the maker of this otherwise nice quiz. Also, you may want to accept "BASIC" and "QBASIC", seeing as your source lumped that whole family of languages together.

	bondfool:	Mar 14th, 2010 at 15:26 GMT	3 points
	10 PRINT "This is all I know about programming" 20 GOTO 10

	SSM:	Mar 14th, 2010 at 16:07 GMT	-1 points
	Should be FORTRAN instead of Fortran I think.

	SSM:	Mar 14th, 2010 at 16:09 GMT	1 point
	Also, what is something like Matlab considered? It can certainly act like a programming language.

	BuggritHall:	Mar 14th, 2010 at 16:13 GMT	1 point
	No Sinclair Basic? Booo ha