Why Python and React are so hot with programmers in India
BENGALURU: In a parallel universe, a clamour is on over the primacy of languages that are used to communicate to machines. Loyalties are reiterated, the pecking order is constantly challenged and there is a lot of venting over the
favourite languages that did not make the cut.

Every year since 1950 has seen developers coming out with one or more programming languages. While some languages have grown in popularity, multiplied as a family, many others have faded into oblivion. Ease of use, the free and open source nature, strong backing from a committed developer community and high performance are the key factors that make a programming language popular.

“The trends in India are very similar to trends worldwide,” says Viral Shah, co-creator of programming language Julia. Developers, he says, prefer modern and easy-to-use languages over traditional ones. “Ease of use makes it possible for developers to spend less time writing their programs, and high performance means the programs run faster in the cloud. Both of these directly translate into
money saved,” he says.

In the early 2000s, developers preferred to use C for systems programming, Java for enterprise applications, SAS for analytics, and Matlab for scientific applications. Today, developers prefer to use Rust for systems programming, Go for enterprise applications, Python/R for analytics, and Julia for scientific applications

Viral Shah | CEO, Julia Computing

There is no simple way to find the top programming languages. Nevertheless, there are certain unmissables like JavaScript, Python, Java, Swift, C and C++. Github’s survey shows that JavaScript, which makes web browsers interactive and dynamic, has consistently been the top programming language for the past six years. C and C++ are the best languages to develop games.

India, like elsewhere in the world, has been witnessing rapid growth in the Python ecosystem.

“Some of the fastest growing technologies in India include Python, Django and pandas. These are growing faster in India than in the US,” says Prashanth Chandrasekar, CEO, Stack Overflow, the Q&A site for programmers. Django and pandas are part of the Python ecosystem (web and data, respectively).

Python has outranked Java, for the first time, as the second most popular language on GitHub by repository contributors. “Since everyone is looking to invest in AI, Python is witnessing a phenomenal growth. The language is growing powerful by the day because it is open source and free—there is the flexibility to use its vast libraries (a collection of functions and methods that allows you to perform many actions without writing any code), modify them and then give back to the community,” says Dhiya Al-Jumeily, professor of AI at Liverpool John Moores University, UK.

Python is edtech firm Coursera’s most-subscribed programming language course, says Richard Wong, SVP of engineering.
The other side of the programming language growth story in India is driven by mobile development. India plays a prominent role in Android-based application development.

Kotlin is one of the fastest growing programming languages and it has gained popularity after Google announced that it’s the preferred programming language for developing Android applications. Clojure, Golang, Rust and Swift are a part of developers’ coding arsenal. With demand for full-stack developers going up, besides learning tools for development, one has to learn languages, databases, frameworks that are part of developer requisites. Developers profi cient with these programming languages can expect a 40%-60% jump in their compensation with a few years of experience

Sidu Ponnappa, SVP-Engineering, Gojek

“React.js, React Native have been registering huge growth in India,” says the Stack Overflow CEO. “React Native is a modern mobile application framework, which lets developers use React along with native platform capabilities. Their combined growth reflects the continuing importance of mobile, but moving to more modern tooling,” says Chandrasekar.

Another language that is gaining traction in India is Dart, which Github has ranked as the fastest growing programming language of 2019. Dart is optimised for developing applications for multiple platforms—mobile, desktop, backendand web. Flutter, a cross-platform mobile software development kit (SDK), uses Dart to build both iOS and Android apps from the same source code.

Delhiite Sashrika Kaur, a 21-year-old BTech student, is unlike the earlier generations who just wouldn’t code in any other language than their signature ones. Having learnt to code in C, C++, and Java, Kaur, a Google APAC Women Techmakers Scholar, had no biases in switching to Kotlin, the fourth fastest growing language on GitHub. “While working on Android applications, I switched from Java to Kotlin because Kotlin has lots of advantages over Java. For example, Kotlin has a feature that prevents crashes by nudging the developer to think about problems with their code,” says Kaur, who is also working with startups and mentoring students on Kotlin.

My first choice is always Java. But I have no qualms programming in Kotlin if it can cover some of the Java drawbacks. I guess my generation is open to everything new and exciting, despite our choices

Sashrika Kaur | student, Google APAC Women Techmakers Scholar 2019

Swift, exclusively used to code iOS applications, figures in ninth position in rankings compiled by IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). “Swift has begun to overshadow Objective C—code is shorter, faster to run, safe and more reliable for a richer app experience,” says iOS developer Robin Malhotra, who started to code on Swift in 2014. Swift and Kotlin, he says, will co-exist and it’s not one versus the other. “Though India has a significantly higher number of Android users, tech companies have both Android and iOS teams. App development in Swift is much faster than Objective C. The the latter is encumbered by legacy code,” he says.
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