Ask HN: Which programming language(s) are big companies backing?
Companies use multiple languages internally. But sometimes big companies either build their own language(s) or back one of the open source language project. Some for strategic reasons, some because off-the-shelf languages do not meet their requirements, and some because their bread-and-butter relies on it. My understanding is following major companies have heavily invested in the below listed languages:
C++ (Microsoft and Facebook)
C#, F# (Microsoft)
Java (Oracle)
Rust (Amazon, Mozilla)
Go, Dart (Google)
Swift (Apple)
Any other major companies seriously backing programming language(s)?
The reason I am interested in this is because it gives some indication of whether the language will get serious traction long-term or will become an "also ran" language.
Languages that are used in the enterprise tend to survive longer. The ones that are used for consumer apps(e.g. Objective-C) or developed by companies for internal purpose tend to be expendable or get forgotten after initial hype.
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Likewise for Java, we have Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, HP, Pivotal, Alibaba, Red-Hat, SAP, PTC, Aicas, microEJ, Ricoh, Azul, Amazon, Google, among others that I might have forgotten.
Elm (NoRedInk)
Crystal (Manas)
They hired the Clojure and Elm language creators and extensively use the language. Crystal was created by a (small) company AFAIK[0] and still back it.
[0] https://manas.tech/projects/crystal/
Kotlin: JetBrains is the main backer and later got embraced by Google/Android
Hack (closely related to PHP): Meta/Facebook (but not used much anywhere else)
PHP: WordPress (one of the main reasons why is PHP so popular although not a major PHP backer as far as I know)
Python from Google, Nvidia, Microsoft and Companies with Machine Learning, AI etc.
Javascript from all major Browser Vendors.
As I have stated before the only programming language that broke the Top 10 list without a major industry or company backing was Ruby. There are lots of companies or Startup that uses Ruby, GitHub, GitLab, Basecamp, Cookpad, Stripe, Discourse etc. But the investment in Ruby or the VM itself is relatively tiny. Remember Shopify investing in Ruby is a fairly recent thing.
It is backed my Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and many more.
https://odin-lang.org/showcase/embergen/
K is backed by several financial institutions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_(programming_language)
Carbon is backed by Google
Google was an early supporter of TypeScript, which replaced their own JavaScript type annotation language in Angular. They did this despite having created Dart, which languished after the Blink team decided they couldn't support a Dart VM in the browser. Dart is now primarily used with Flutter to draw components with the Skia framework. It's also in the upcoming Fuschia OS. I don't think Dart is used much anymore for it's original intent to be used like JavaScript for DOM manipulation.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32626543
> Java (Oracle)
Java is huge at Amazon and Google, and it's used at every other company on the list too. Same with C++ - it's everywhere and there is a lot of it.
And that is what I am trying to understand, which languages(old and new) will have longer runway. C++ and Java are given because they are used at enterprise-level and by lot of other companies. But what about other languages? Just one or two companies supporting it for product development or many companies using it for tiny internal projects but not major projects makes a language vulnerable.
JavaScript and Python haven't come up in this thread at all so far and they're two most popular languages and will stay around for some time.
https://blogs.oracle.com/java/post/the-arrival-of-java-18
Not mentioned: Lua, which continues to be used in a lot of places.
And did anyone mention Erlang / Elixir / BEAM?
Because of the Roblox factor, there's going to be a huge number of Lua-proficient programmers entering the workforce over the next several years. I think it's usage will climb, edging out Python in places where you really want a simple and easy scripting language.
TypeScript (Microsoft), React (Facebook)