Question

"On this website, you claim that C# is one of the most in-demand languages, and that Python is less in demand.  But the TIOBE index ranks Python 4th and C# 6th.  Can you explain?" -- Mahesh

My Answer

Hello Mahesh! I really appreciate your question and your analytical mind! And yes, I'd be happy to explain.

My goal in creating this website is to guide new developers towards skills that I personally know will lead them to a rewarding and stable career in software development.  When I first started working on the book The Byte Guide, I sent the following questions to as many software development recruiters as I could find on LinkedIn:

Hello! I hope I can impose on you to answer a few quick questions:

• What skills do you see that are in the most demand?  Java?  C#? Perl? Python? Mobile Development?
• If mobile, native Android?  Native iOS?  Or Cross-Platform?
• What skills do you find are the hardest to fill?
• If you were mentoring a group of young people considering a career in software development, what skill set would you steer them towards?

The answers all had a pretty similar feel to them.  I'll share a few that represent the best sample:

• From John Schultz: "Most in demand is .net/C# development. Hardest to find is mobile dev (.iOS and android). Cloud development is coming on strong using both Azure (MS) and AWS (Amazon)."
• From JoAnn Williams: ".net and Java developers continue to be in demand and seeing more opportunities with cloud technologies demand"
• From Patrick Andrews: "Mobile and PHP are the toughest. Mobile droid or ios are equally as hard. I'd tell them to know aws/mobile/microservices. That seems to be the future."
• From Hanah Root: "Javascript developers with experience in the newer frameworks is the hardest to fill. I am seeing a high demand for API developers"

(Side note: John and Patrick both make distinctions between "most in demand" and "hardest to fill".  While there is not as much demand for mobile developers and PHP developers, the spots that do come up are hard to fill, because there are less of these types of developers out there.)

Also, being a C# (and .NET) guy myself, I will be the first to admit that I'm probably biased. So just to put your theory to the test, I'd thought I'd turn to another popular measuring tool: The Monster Index.

The Monster index works like this: Go to www.monster.com, and in the top search, enter a skill, and your hometown, then hit search.  Let's do some comparisons!

My Home Town of Minneapolis:

My Current Town of Detroit:

World Capital of Tech Silicon Valley:

Rising Tech Giant Seattle:

One thing these numbers confirm that we already knew: Java is the undisputed king.

And I'll be the first to admit... these C# vs Python numbers were a surprise to me! And I'm also at a loss to explain why so many recruiters continue to mention C# as such a hot product, while not a single one of them ever mentioned Python. (One theory: the types of companies that use Python (ie: Google) don't NEED to use recruiters to find developers.)

Python just isn't a language that I personally know anything about, so it's hard for me to come up with any theories.  But a little bit of time on Google resulted in some good reading:

Python vs. C#: Comparison of the Programming Languages

Why is Python so Popular?

Surprising Facts Why Python is gaining more popularity among Developers

So Mahesh, thank you for bringing this to my attention!  I'm going to revise some of the verbiages on this site accordingly.  But yet, I also think I'm going to stick with promoting C# as well, for two reasons:

1. I know from personal experience that it can provide a great career
2. Tech recruiters continue to tell me it's the skill for which they see the most demand

That being said, I am grateful for the new insight on Python, and I'll give it the recognition it deserves.

Thanks!

Casey