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Dynamic language use is soaring in Asia, with more than 88 percent of developers in a recent survey saying they use some dynamic languages some of the time.
The study, conducted by Evans Data, looks at the use of dynamic languages such as PHP, Perl, JavaScript, Ruby and Python. In addition to 88 percent of developers saying they use dynamic languages some of the time, more than 40 percent said they use one more than half of the time.
According to the Evans study, JavaScript is the most widely used dynamic language. However, the study also showed that 45 percent of developers in Asia who use dynamic languages now use PHP in some of their projects. Moreover, according to the study, Asian developers predict their use of dynamic languages will remain the same in 2009, except that Perl is expected to decline and ActionScript, the basis for Flash development, is expected to increase.
Dynamic languages have traditionally been used to build small applications or for small jobs within bigger systems, but more developers are beginning to use these languages for mainstream development because they can be easier to use than other languages.
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“Software developers are always looking for ways to shed unneeded complexity and outdated methodologies and move to approaches that make programming simpler and faster, especially as more and more development is Web-centric,” said John Andrews, president and CEO of Evans Data. “The high use of dynamic languages in Asia Pacific is consistent with the high concentration of Web application development being conducted in that region.”
Evans Data’s survey of over 400 software developers in the Asia-Pacific region also showed that cloud computing is on the rise, with over 20 percent of surveyed Asian developers planning to launch cloud projects within the next six months; 60 percent of surveyed developers in the Asia region expect their development for mobile devices to increase; and Intel dominates the development market with more than twice as many surveyed developers targeting Intel processors as Advanced Micro Devices processors.