“Because some things never change… but some things do”. If you know where that’s from, then you get a cookie for movie trivia. But that’s also suitable for the state of the programming languages in 2017.

The 2017 Stack Overflow Developer Survey shows this quite well. For the fifth year in a row it shows that JavaScript is the most commonly used programming language. A total of 61.9% of the respondents say they use it on a regular basis.

SQL comes in second with 50.8% usage. Java rounds up the top three with 39.3%. Also in the list are C#, Python, PHP, C++, C.

With lower usage are Ruby – 9%, Swift – 6.4% and others. What’s huge is that Python overtook PHP for the first time in 5 years, so there’s a healthy and steady trend there. The biggest losers are C#, C, Java, PHP.

Still, JavaScript and SQL are leading safely with a huge margin and they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. So, they are still a good investment when it comes to what programming languages to learn and to improve your skills for. The data here comes from a total of 36 935 respondents with the option to select multiple answers.

Now, let’s check out which are the most popular frameworks, libraries and etc. Here we have Node.js with 25.8%, followed by AngularJS – 24.3% and .NET Core with 18.3%. Also on the list we see React, Cordova, Firebase, Xamarin, Hadoop and Spark. Node.js also nets the biggest increase.

And finally, the most used platforms. Windows Desktop leads with 32.4%, followed by Linux Desktop with 26% and Android – 22.2%, the same as Amazon Web Services. After that we have Mac OS with 14.5% and iOS with 12.9%. Also on the list are Raspberry Pi, WordPress, Microsoft Azure, Arduino and even Windows Phone.

And while this is what the business demands, the actual preferences of IT pros are different. The survey has a question for the most loved, dreaded and wanted programming languages.

The most loved are Rust with 73.1%, Smalltalk (67%), TypeScript (64.1%), Swift (63.9%), Go (63.3%) and Python (62.7%).

The most dreaded are Visual Basic 6 (88.3%), VBA (80.4%), CoffeeScript (79.2%), VB.NET (77.2%), Matlab (72.3%) and Objective-C (68.1%).

Finally, the most wanted programming languages. They are Python (20.6%), JavaScript (18.6%), Go (13.5%), C++ (11.8%), Java (11.7%) and TypeScript (10.3%).

Also, there’s a vast difference between the needs, preferences and the technologies which actually pay the most. The top paying technologies worldwide are Clojure, Rust, Elixir, F#, Go, Perl, Groovy, Scala. But things are even more different from country to country. For example, the top paying technology in the US is Go, while in the UK is TypeScript. Meanwhile, in Germany the top payer is Java and in France is Python.

Still, most developers say they are generally satisfied with their jobs and careers. From 1 to 10, they most commonly answer 8, 7, 9 and 10. Also, the vast majority (62.1%) aren’t actively looking for new jobs, but are always open to new opportunities.