It's official, these are the most hated programming languages around

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Aging COBOL takes the top spot

Glasses in front of computer screen
(Image credit: Kevin Ku / Pexels)

The Q&A site for professional programmers Stack Overflow has released its latest developer survey revealing that COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) is the most hated programming language by developers.

To better understand which programming languages are the most loved and the most hated, the firm surveyed over 80,000 developers from 181 countries around the world. Stack Overflow did this by asking them which programming languages they worked with in the past year, which ones they want to work with next year and what languages have they used in the past that they don't want to work with next year.

COBOL, which is used on mainframe computers, took the top spot for most hated programming language followed by VBA, Matlab, Objective-C and Groovy.

While developers usually don't have a chance to choose the programming language used by their organizations, businesses should take note of Stack Overflow's 2021 Developer Survey when creating job adverts as they may need to offer a bit more to fill positions that require the use of COBOL, Assembly, Perl, C and other less popular programming languages.

Most loved programming languages

Stack Overflow's developer survey also shed light on the most loved programming languages and for the sixth year in a row, Rust has taken the top spot as developer's most “loved language”.

While Rust is the most loved, only 5,044 of the developers surveyed nominated it compared to TypeScript which took the third spot with a total of 18,711 nominations. For those unfamiliar, TypeScript is Microsoft's take on JavaScript with a type system that compiles into JavaScript to help boost developers' productivity.

The most loved programming languages also include Clojure, Elixir, Julia, Python, Dart, Swift, Node.js and Go.

If you're interested in seeing which databases, cloud computing platforms, web frameworks, developer tools, online collaboration software and operating systems developers prefer, than it's certainly worth taking a look at the rest of the results from Stack Overflow's 2021 Developer Survey.

Via ZDNet

Anthony Spadafora
Anthony Spadafora

After working with the TechRadar Pro team for the last several years, Anthony is now the security and networking editor at Tom’s Guide where he covers everything from data breaches and ransomware gangs to the best way to cover your whole home or business with Wi-Fi. When not writing, you can find him tinkering with PCs and game consoles, managing cables and upgrading his smart home.