Of Strategic Languages, Java’s Adoption Is Highest - Forrester Report
By Angsuman Chakraborty, Gaea News NetworkSunday, July 17, 2005
According to Forrester survey data and analysis, Java’s 66% penetration is the highest among strategic programming languages for enterprise applications. Visual Basic 6 (VB6) and C/C++ have nearly as much penetration as Java, but VB6 is past mainstream support and C/C++ has a comparatively limited ecosystem.
The two most strategic .NET languages, Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET) and C#, have 34% and 15% penetration, respectively. If all VB6 users converted to VB.NET, its share would increase to 70%. However, of those who report using .NET as a platform, about 42% are not currently using VB.NET or C#, indicating that Microsoft has yet to fully win over its base to .NET programming. COBOL is the only other individual language to garner more than 30% penetration although, as groups, so do scripting languages and 4GLs. For future enterprise application development, Java is the most prevalent language, but VB.NET and C# are also strategic.