Survey: Python Use Up 45%

According to Evans Data's most recent North American Development Survey, the growth in Python use can be directly attributed to the use of Google's App Engine cloud development platform, which debuted with support for Python development. Google App Engine has since added Java as a second language supported on the platform. Evans Data officials said only 13 percent of developers surveyed said they used Python before Google announced its App Engine platform in Spring 2008, but that number has increased to 20.3  percent today.

Ironically, the Evans Data survey results were revealed on the same day -- Nov. 10 -- that Google announced a new programming language, known as Go, which could compete with Python as the language of choice for some projects. 

Meanwhile, according to the survey, the use of other scripting languages has remained relatively constant, with only small gains or losses in popularity among languages such as Ruby, PHP, Perl and ActionScript.

“Python has been around since 1989, but never had many users until recently,” said Janel Garvin, founder of Evans Data, in a statement. “This adoption change illustrates the power of Google and the promise of cloud computing on which Google’s App Engine depends. As the computing landscape evolves with the cloud, so will the adoption of surrounding technologies, as we see here.”

The Evans Data survey, conducted in October of 2009,  polled more than 500 software developers in North America on issues such as programming languages and  platform use,  web services and service oriented architecture (SOA), cloud computing, high performance computing, and development tools and methodologies.  

Other highlights from the Evans Data report include:

·         Only 8.7 percent of North American developers are currently using a cloud service as a development environment, but another 18 percent plan to within the coming year.

·         Agile is the most commonly used programming model being used today in North America, with slightly less than 40 percent more developers using it than the waterfall method.

·         Lack of corporate priority is the biggest inhibitor in the adoption and implementation of SOA.