Making open source programming software using open-source programming language has taken its momentum in the last couple of years and continues to thrive. It’s not limited to a small scale. Even the tech giants like Google, Facebook, or Microsoft are rapidly adopting open-source projects of their own. It is the smart implementation that brings the advantages of those modern programming languages. At the same time, it has turned on the tide of open-source development. However, ranking programming languages is a highly controversial topic. Moreover, as the open-source ecosystem has expanded so much with the community members’ continuous contribution, it is difficult to narrow down the list. Interestingly, nowadays, most commercial applications are being developed by more than one open-source technology that breaks traditional programming languages’ boundaries.
Here are the 10 open-source programming languages that are being used most for open source projects.
1.JavaScript
2.Python
3.PHP
4.Swift
5.R Programming
6.C++
7.Go
8.Kotlin
9.Scala
10.Ruby
Related post – Pros and Cons of Open-Source Programming language
1. JavaScript
JavaScript always comes at the top of the list among the modern programming languages of open-source programming languages. It continuously integrates with the latest open-source projects. Due to which it has acquainted massive growth, which was unimaginable at one time. And there is more than one driving force or advantages of open-source programming languages behind its popularity. Furthermore, with Node JS runtime’s inception, it is being used as both front-end and back-end programming language in open-source projects. So, if you look around, more than 95% of websites today use JavaScript.
As a modern programming language, every day, it opens up new possibilities to develop something extraordinary. Therefore, most web developers are embracing JavaScript. Hence, with this random momentum, no doubt, JavaScript today is considered among the most popular open-source programming languages.
Features:
- Validates User’s Input
- Performs simple Client-side Calculations
- Platform Independent
- Greater Control to the browser
- Handles Dates and Time
- Detects the User’s Browser and OS
- Dynamically Generates HTML Content
- Saves variables in string
- Uses Arrow function
2. Python
Python has emerged as a full-fledged open-source programming language of recent times. With the soaring popularity of machine language applications and data analytics, python has occupied its permanent space due to its vast number of efficient plug-ins and third-party libraries. It has already gained a strong fan-base with prevalent libraries like SciPY and Panda. Not only limited to machine learning or analytics, but Python can also be used in a variety of projects like developing APIs, backend systems, scrapers, crawlers, etc. Even it is useful for developing complex desktop applications. These handy third-party libraries are one of the main reasons for the popularity of Python in the industry. This language can be used for almost all types of open-source projects except those that need low-level manipulation of the system.
Features:
- Free and open source
- High-level language, hence, easy to code
- Object-oriented language
- Integrated language
- Supports GUI programming
- Extensible language hence supports C, C++
- Portable language
- Interpreted language
- Dynamically typed language
- A large set of libraries
3. PHP
Though PHP has been distracted from its popular position as the de-facto programming language for web development, still it has not lost its glory as one of the most used open-source programming languages. Until JavaScript or Ruby come to the market, PHP has fuelled almost all modern websites. The percentage is almost 40%, considering the total number of active websites. It works well with CMS systems like Drupal and WordPress. Though apparently seems dead, this language is going to evolve for years to come and hold its position. The most promising feature of this language is its dynamic capabilities that blend accurately with database manipulation features.
Features:
- Simple
- Open Source
- Faster
- Interpreted
- Case Sensitive
- Platform Independent
- Flexibility
- Simplicity
- Error Reporting
- Efficiency
- Loosely Typed Language
- Security
- Real-Time Access Monitoring
- Familiarity
- Supports Scalar type declarations
- Supports Return type declarations
- Introduces Null coalescing operator
- Introduces Spaceship operator
- Supports Array constants
- Support for anonymous classes
- Unicode codepoint escape syntax
- Filtered unserialize()
4. Swift
Swift falls under the modern programming language category among the open-source programming languages. Though younger, this language is going strong these days. It is popular in the modern iOS application development space as it provides a lot of convenience to the developers. This is suitable for hi-tech open-source software projects. It is a very expressive language in its niche and offers even novice developers flexible iOS applications. This language is definitely good to go.
Features:
- Safe
- Expressive
- Fast
- Features in Swift make the codes easy to read and write,
- Supports multiple return values and Tuples.
- Generics
- Structs which support methods, extensions, and protocols.
- Fast iteration over a collection or range.
- Advanced control flow
- Functional programming patterns.
- Powerful error handling
5. R Programming Language
R programming language has received high appreciation in the statistical analytics field, enabling us to solve redundant graphics programming. This is ideal for ad-hoc analysis where you need to explore large datasets. Also, it is widely used in open-source data mining projects. This language has gained immense popularity among data scientists besides Python. Furthermore, it has a stronger object-oriented feature compare to other statistical programming languages. It leverages lexical analysis; thus, it is easier to learn.
R has another popular feature, which is Rd, a LaTeX like documentation format, which has gained wide popularity among the community. This helps you to create professional documentation for open-source projects. R is no doubt an innovative open-source programming language.
Features:
- R is an accessible programming tool
- R facilitates procedural programming
- R has the characteristics of object-oriented programs.
- R is an interpreted language.
- R has an effective data handling and storage facility,
- R provides operators for calculations on lists, arrays, vectors, and matrices.
- R has a collection of libraries designed specifically for data science.
- Investigate the data,
- Refines hypothesis on data and analyze them
- R helps to capture the right model of data through various tools.
- R Markdown integrates codes, outputs, and graphs to a report share with the world
6. C++
C++ is the sequel of C and comes under the world’s widely used open-source programming languages, which will not die soon. As we know every complex system from our operating system underlying language to the mainframe system, C++ is working behind it. This is used by some of the most prominent tech giants like Google to power their most resource-intensive programs. The reason behind it is, C++ gives programmers access to very low-level system components. Also, it is used in embedded systems.
In recent days when IoT smart devices are soaring at a high rate, embedded systems are the main backbone for it. Hence, it is expected that C++ is going to be used shortly at a more aggressive rate. Though not a modern programming language, C++ can solve most modern problems by building complex open source systems. These characteristics fall under the list of the most popular open-source programming languages.
Features:
- Object-Oriented
- Compiler based
- Simple
- Mid-level programming language
- Machine Independent or Portable
- Structured programming language
- Memory Management
- Rich Library
- Recursion
- Fast Speed
- Pointers
- Extensible
7. Go Programming Language
Go is a modern programming language that has peaked its growth in recent years to handle some of the hardest computation problems in simple approaches. However, it is very to learn Go even for the new programmers as it is straightforward. Besides, Go leverages all the benefits of the C language.
Features:
- Static typed
- Compiled language feature
- CSP style concurrency.
- Garbage collection
- Structural typing
- Concurrency Support
- Powerful standard library
Interestingly, Go is being embraced for the latest popular projects like Kubernetes, Hugo, Docker, and Ethereum as it offers all the requirements with convenience. It is expected to empower most future systems. Thus, Go is a compelling language for your next open-source projects from the latest development point of view.
8. Kotlin
Kotlin is another modern programming language among the open-source programming languages that have gained traction right from its inception. This is a statically typed modern programming language and runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Also, it can translate to JavaScript source code. The main reason behind Kotlin’s popularity is its compatibility with the Android system. Google officially recommends it as a substitute for Java. Thus, it is easily anticipated that Kotlin will be one of the most popular open-source programming languages soon.
Features:
- Kotlin is open-source.
- Kotlin compiles to JVM bytecode or JS.
- Full Java Interoperability.
- Defaulted parameters.
- Data Classes in Kotlin.
- No runtime overhead.
- Extension functions.
- Null Safety in Kotlin.
- Kotlin wants you to write less code.
9. Scala
Scala is another modern programming language that is considered one of the best open-source programming languages. It offers an innovative approach that combines both functional and object-oriented programming. It is a statically typed language and reduces bugs during the development phase. Scala can run both on JVM and JavaScript runtime, which leverages a more sustainable solution for the developers, especially in web development.
Features:
- Scala is Object-Oriented
- Scala is Functional
- Statically Typed
- Extensible
- Can perform concurrent and synchronize processing
10. Ruby
Although developed in the ’90s, Ruby gained its traction during the last decades. Ruby is an object-oriented, interpreted, and dynamic language. Interestingly, it has many similarities with Python. Ruby empowers most of the web apps with Ruby on Rails. It is used by some of the famous modern web apps like Airbnb, Github, Fiverr, etc. So, as a learner, if you want to contribute to big open source projects, then Ruby is for you.
Features:
- Object-oriented
- Expressive feature
- Flexibility
- Visual appearance
- Exception handling
- Dynamic typing and Duck typing
- Garbage collector
- Portable
- Statement delimiters
- Naming conventions
- Variable constants
- Keyword arguments
- Singleton methods
- Method names
- Case Sensitive
- Missing method