Programming Language Trends 2019 and Beyond: Insights on Elixir, Rust, Swift, .NET, and Emerging Infrastructure Languages
The 2019 programming language trends report analyzes the adoption stages of languages such as Elixir, Rust, Swift, .NET Core, and emerging infrastructure DSLs like Ballerina and Pulumi, offering insights for technology leaders and developers on where to invest their learning and development resources.
The report highlights key points: Elixir has entered the innovator adoption stage; interest in cloud‑focused languages, DSLs, and SDKs such as Ballerina and Pulumi is rising; Rust has moved from innovator to early‑adopter due to its use in infrastructure and networking; Python remains popular because of data‑science and education; iOS development is progressing toward early‑majority, and Kotlin’s Android adoption is increasing; .NET developers show strong interest in .NET Core, especially with the upcoming Core 3 release.
Its purpose is to help technology leaders make medium‑ to long‑term investment decisions and guide individual developers toward the most promising languages for future learning and skill development.
The article excludes separate Java/JVM and JavaScript/Web tracks, focusing instead on internal editorial discussions, public surveys, and private analyses that shape the adoption curves for various languages.
Mobile language focus: Elixir, a functional concurrent language on the Erlang VM, is now in the innovator stage; Rust is gaining traction in infrastructure, network data‑plane projects (e.g., Habitat, Linkerd 2.0) and as a WebAssembly partner; Swift’s popularity on iOS pushes it toward early‑majority, while Kotlin’s rise on Android mirrors this trend.
Infrastructure language focus: Growing interest in cloud‑native DSLs and SDKs such as Ballerina, Pulumi, and the still‑beta Dark language, all currently in the innovator stage and slated for deeper discussion at QCon San Francisco.
.NET trends: Strong enthusiasm for .NET Core, split into 2.x and 3.x adoption paths; anticipation of C# 8 adoption; continued interest in F# despite limited Microsoft backing; ASP.NET remains a primary web framework, while WCF persists in enterprises and Visual Basic is now considered a hobbyist language.
Various editor quotes provide additional context: JetBrains’ 2019 developer ecosystem survey ranks Java, JavaScript, Go, and Python among the most popular languages; multiple experts discuss Rust’s accelerating adoption, Elixir’s niche momentum, Swift’s potential as a mainstream language, and the uncertain future of languages like Pony and Dark.
The article concludes with references to external rankings (RedMonk, Tiobe) and invites readers to participate in a language usage survey, while also promoting related community groups and social media channels.
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