Editing Computer programming (section)

===Measuring language usage===
It is very difficult to determine what are the most popular modern programming languages. Methods of measuring programming language popularity include: counting the number of job advertisements that mention the language,<ref>{{cite web|url = http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2007/09/11/226631/sslcomputer-weekly-it-salary-survey-finance-boom-drives-it-job.htm|title = SSL/Computer Weekly IT salary survey: finance boom drives IT job growth|date = 11 September 2007|first = Nicholas|last = Enticknap|url-access = registration|access-date = June 24, 2009|archive-date = October 26, 2011|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20111026035734/http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2007/09/11/226631/SSLComputer-Weekly-IT-salary-survey-finance-boom-drives-IT-job.htm|url-status = live}}</ref> the number of books sold and courses teaching the language (this overestimates the importance of newer languages), and estimates of the number of existing lines of code written in the language (this underestimates the number of users of business languages such as COBOL).

Some languages are very popular for particular kinds of applications, while some languages are regularly used to write many different kinds of applications. For example, [[COBOL]] is still strong in corporate data centers<ref>{{cite web|last1=Mitchell|first1=Robert|title=The Cobol Brain Drain|url=http://www.computerworld.com/article/2504568/data-center/the-cobol-brain-drain.html|publisher=Computer World|access-date=9 May 2015|date=2012-05-21|archive-date=February 12, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190212185631/https://www.computerworld.com/article/2504568/data-center/the-cobol-brain-drain.html|url-status=live}}</ref> often on large [[mainframe computer]]s, [[Fortran]] in engineering applications, [[scripting language]]s in [[World Wide Web|Web]] development, and [[C (programming language)|C]] in [[embedded software]]. Many applications use a mix of several languages in their construction and use.  New languages are generally designed around the syntax of a prior language with new functionality added, (for example [[C++]] adds object-orientation to C, and [[Java (programming language)|Java]] adds memory management and [[bytecode]] to C++, but as a result, loses efficiency and the ability for low-level manipulation).