Stack Overflow was established in 2008 and since then it has served as an online developer community for software developers to gain information, share knowledge, and build their careers. Over 50 million advanced and amateur developers, visit Stack Overflow every month to ask questions, solve coding problems, acquire new skills, and find employment.
But what are the most common Stack Overflow queries asked by software developers? Global App Testing did some research – and here’s what they found:
- JavaScript
According to research from Global App Testing, JavaScript has been the most frequently queried programming language since Stack Overflow began. This is probably because JavaScript is ubiquitous over a wide range of applications and services. Anybody who works on the internet will, at one time, be required to know some information about this programming language. JavaScript has been in existence since 1995 while Stack Overflow was formed in 2008, and over the 11 years of Stack Overflow’s existence, ‘jquery’ was the most asked about JavaScript Framework.
- Python
Python is dethroning JavaScript as the most frequently questioned language according to Global App Testing. This programming language first appeared in 1990 and it has grown into one of the most used languages by developers. In Stack Overflow queries, the most mentioned questions related to Python are ‘pandas’, ‘dataframe’ and ‘django’.
- R
R programming language was created in 1995, and released in 2000. Both R and Python possess great data manipulation libraries, but in the case of data visualisation, some users say that R is better than Python. R Data processing concepts like ‘data frame’, ‘data table’ and ‘matrix’ are frequently questioned in Stack Overflow, while ‘ggplot’ was the most queried data visualisation term.
- Ruby
This programming language was first designed and created in the mid-90s. On Stack Overflow developer community, the word ‘rails’ was the most queried Ruby framework according to Global App Testing.
- C#
Another programming language that seems to bug developers is C# (pronounced as see sharp), which was developed in 2000 by Microsoft purposefully for its .NET family of tools. Developers used the .NET tag for questions related to C#.
- C++
Developed in 1985, C+ is the most commonly used language by video game developers. Many developers ask about ‘vector’, which is the main building block for the polygon. The polygon is simply the basic building block for the development of 3D video games.
- Java
In 1995, Java was developed as a general purpose program, and it became very popular in the late 1990s and the starting days of the internet. It was a propelling force behind a huge number of Windows software applications. Nowadays, ‘Android’ is the most asked about Java Framework.
- Objective-C
Objective-C was developed in 1984, and it was the main language used by Apple in the OSX operating system. In recent times, developers have been using it for iOS apps on iPhone devices. As a result, Stack Overflow shows frequent searches of ‘iOS’ and ‘iPhone’.
- Swift
After the introduction of Swift in 2014, Apple development has turned away from the use of Objective C. The frequent mention of ‘objective c’ in Stack Overflow queries with the tag #swift shows the thousands of Apple developers turning to Stack Overflow to gain new knowledge.
- PHP
Developed in 1995, PHP was made for web development. It continues to serve this purpose till today and the evidence is shown in the number of queries connected to the language’s ‘laravel’ data framework.
- SQL
This programming language was first created in the 70s by two IBM researchers. It is not a fully featured language like the other programming languages because it is specially designed for data manipulation only. The most frequent search points for SQL are ‘database’, ‘MySQL’, ‘query’, ‘select’ and ‘server’, which are all based on database access.
