On the Need for Empirically Investigating Fast-Growing Programming Languages.

The research community has extensively explored various aspects of programming languages (PLs) such as developer sentiment analysis, ecosystem dynamics, pull request trends, energy consumption, and more. Existing research has predominantly focused on “Popular PLs” with the largest unique user bases which considers users since the language's inception. However, our approach shifts to examining “Fast Growing Languages” (FGLs) - those experiencing significant growth in their user base in recent years. We see this perspective as an essential exploration for understanding the current developer interest in both established and emerging languages. In this short note, we discuss (i) An empirical study on understanding how developers perceive these FGLs, analyzing their emotions through 1.86M Github comments (ii) Discuss potential future research on fast-growing PLs at the cross-section of programming languages and software engineering.