Use of the Ruby programming language increased 40 percent among North American software developers in an Evans Data survey being unveiled on Tuesday.
The latest Evans Data North American Development Survey found that 14 percent of developers in the region use Ruby part of the time, an increase from the 10 percent who used it this way in 2008. Meanwhile, 20 percent of developers expect to use it in the coming year.
[ Last year, InfoWorld discussed scripting languages like Ruby that are sparking a new programming era. ]
"The increasing adoption of developers using scripting languages correlates with today's overall emphasis on Web-centric applications, which have to be highly malleable to rapidly changing market-driven requirements," said John Andrews, president and CEO of Evans Data, in a statement released by the company. "Interestingly, while we see Linux continue to increase as a target platform, this category of development (scripting languages) reflects the greatest growth in targeting a non- Windows target platform."
Other findings in the survey include:
- Commercial SQL databases are 2.5 times more likely to be used as a primary database than open source SQL databases
- 60 percent of developers use agile methodologies some of the time
- 75 percent of applications considered for cloud deployments will require audit trails
Evans's biannual survey includes more than 400 North American developers. It measures use of scripting languages, 3GL languages, and platform targeting and migration. Technology adoption such as cloud, Web services, SOA, and parallel programming also are factored into the survey.