Which Programming Languages and OS Lead IoT Development? Survey Results

The rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) has left many developers unsure which programming languages and operating systems to choose for their projects.

We present findings from an Eclipse Foundation survey answered by 713 IoT developers, covering languages, cloud platforms, OS choices, messaging protocols, and hardware architectures.

C and C++ remain the top choices for constrained devices , with developers often using multiple languages, resulting in a total usage exceeding 100%.

For IoT gateways, which demand higher performance and resources, higher‑level languages such as Java and Python are common; Java is the most popular, chosen by 40.8% of respondents.

When building IoT solutions on cloud platforms that typically do not need direct hardware interaction, higher‑level languages like Java, JavaScript, Node.js, and Python dominate.

Linux leads as the operating system for constrained IoT devices , with 44.1% of votes, ahead of bare‑metal (27.6%) and FreeRTOS (15.0%). Windows ranks fourth, encompassing Windows IoT Core, Embedded, and WinCE.

Linux is also the most widely used OS for IoT gateways , selected by 66.9% of developers, far surpassing Windows at 20.5%.

Among Linux distributions, Raspbian tops the list with 45.5% usage, followed closely by Ubuntu Core at 44.4%; Huawei LiteOS accounts for 1.7%.

Most developers (84%) work with inexpensive development boards such as Arduino, BeagleBone, or Raspberry Pi, and 20% have deployed these boards in production IoT solutions.

For the full survey details, please read the original article.