Hyped and Overhyped Programming Languages in 2026

Every few years the industry rediscovers that programming languages are not religions.

Then we immediately behave like they are religions.

Someone posts a benchmark. Someone else says memory safety. Someone says developer experience. A distributed systems person appears from under a bridge and whispers “Erlang solved this in 1998.” A startup founder announces they are rewriting their CRUD app in Rust because “performance.” A senior engineer quietly opens another Java service and gets paid.

So let’s talk honestly about programming language hype in 2026.

Not “which language should I learn?”

That question is usually a proxy for anxiety, not engineering strategy.

The better question is:

which languages are getting real adoption for new work, which ones are quietly useful, and which ones are mostly powered by conference talks, nostalgia, or logo slides?

My bias up front: a language being used by a big company does not mean the language is growing. It often just means the company has old systems, large teams, and enough money to keep an ecosystem alive inside its own walls.

That distinction matters.

Scala at LinkedIn, Ruby at Shopify, PHP at Meta history, Erlang at Ericsson, COBOL at banks — all real. Also not the same signal.

A big logo means “someone important has code in this language.”

It does not mean “you should start a new project in it in 2026.”

the signals that actually matter

When I look at a language, I care about four signals:

1. Hiring volume: are companies hiring for it outside of a few specialist niches?
2. New project energy: are people choosing it for greenfield work?
3. Ecosystem growth: libraries, tooling, docs, package quality, deployment paths.
4. Operational fit: does it make production easier, or just make the code look impressive during review?

Logo collection is much lower on the list.

This is where a lot of language debates go wrong. Engineers love saying “Company X uses language Y.” Sure. Company X also has internal frameworks, staff engineers, migration budgets, old decisions, and a Slack channel called #why-is-this-still-running.

You are not Company X.

the 2026 scoreboard

Here is the rough landscape I would use when talking to an engineering team in 2026. The status is intentionally opinionated, not a scientific taxonomy.

The shape is clear: Python and TypeScript are the center of gravity, Java remains the enterprise cockroach in the best possible way, Go is still extremely sensible, and Rust is the most legitimate “new serious systems language” story of the last decade.

Everything else needs context.

Python is not hyped; Python is infrastructure now

Python’s current dominance is not just beginner tutorials and data science notebooks anymore.

The AI wave made Python even more central because the entire machine learning ecosystem already lived there: PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face, notebooks, evaluation scripts, data pipelines, glue code, SDKs, model serving wrappers, and a million tiny tools with names like convert_final_final_v2.py.

Stack Overflow’s 2025 survey showed Python jumping significantly, with 57.9% of all respondents reporting extensive use. GitHub’s Octoverse 2025 headline was even louder: AI helped push TypeScript to number one, but Python remained one of the core languages of the AI/open-source wave.

Python is overused in some production systems, yes.

But it is not fake hype.

It is the language people reach for when they want to connect things, test ideas, automate workflows, call models, parse weird files, and make the machine do something before lunch.

That has enormous value.

My criticism of Python is not adoption. It is operational laziness. Python makes prototypes cheap, then teams pretend the prototype is a platform. That is how you end up with a critical revenue job running from a notebook nobody owns.

Python is dominant. Python is useful. Python also needs adult supervision.

TypeScript is the safest hype bet in 2026

TypeScript is barely “hype” now. It is the default serious language of the web.

The interesting thing is that GitHub Octoverse 2025 said TypeScript reached number one on GitHub, driven by AI, agents, and typed languages. That tracks with what I see in practice: when agents generate code, types become more valuable, not less.

A type system is not magic, but it is friction against nonsense.

In a world where humans and LLMs are both producing code, friction against nonsense is underrated.

TypeScript won because it gave JavaScript teams a migration path instead of a purity lecture. That is why it beat most “better language for the web” dreams. It did not ask the industry to move house. It renovated the messy house everyone already lived in.

Would I start a web product in plain JavaScript in 2026?

No.

Not because JavaScript is dead. Because TypeScript is the cheapest safety upgrade you can buy.

Go is underrated because it is boring on purpose

Go is one of those languages that makes programming language enthusiasts slightly sad and production engineers quietly productive.

It is not expressive in the way Scala people want.
It is not clever in the way Haskell people want.
It is not as safe as Rust.
It is not as batteries-included as Java.

And yet Go keeps winning in cloud infrastructure because it has the correct personality for a lot of backend work: simple binaries, fast builds, good concurrency, decent performance, easy deployment, easy hiring, low ceremony.

That is not sexy. That is useful.

A lot of engineering organizations do not need a language that lets the smartest person on the team feel brilliant. They need a language where the tired on-call engineer at 2 a.m. can understand the service quickly.

Go is very good at that.

Rust is both genuinely important and definitely over-prescribed

Rust has earned its hype.

Memory safety without a garbage collector is a big deal. The security story is real. The tooling is good. The community has produced serious infrastructure. Microsoft, Amazon, Cloudflare, and others are not playing with it for vibes.

Rust belongs in systems programming, performance-sensitive infrastructure, security-sensitive components, runtimes, networking, CLI tools, embedded work, and places where C or C++ bugs become expensive.

But.

There is always a but.

Rust is also being recommended for things that do not need Rust.

If your team wants to build a normal JSON-over-HTTP internal service and nobody on the team is already fluent in Rust, choosing Rust because “performance” can be architectural cosplay.

You are not building a browser engine. You are returning invoices.

Rust is a serious language. It is also a language where the learning curve is part of the cost model. If the cost is worth it, great. If not, Go, Java, Kotlin, C#, or TypeScript probably get you to production faster with fewer emotional support threads in Slack.

Java is the language everyone keeps predicting will die while it keeps getting paid

Java is not fashionable. Java does not need to be fashionable.

Java has hiring volume, libraries, observability, deployment patterns, mature frameworks, JVM performance, and decades of production scar tissue encoded in boring defaults.

That matters.

The RedMonk January 2026 ranking still had Java in the top three. Stack Overflow 2025 had Java around 29% among all respondents and nearly the same among professional developers. TIOBE still places Java near the top. You can argue with the methodology of each index — and you should — but when every imperfect index says “this thing is still very large,” believe the direction.

Would I choose Java for every new backend? No.

Would I be worried joining a serious company with a large Java estate? Also no.

Java is not hype. Java is employment.

Scala and Ruby are the warning labels for logo-based thinking

Scala and Ruby are the perfect examples of why “big companies use it” is not enough.

Scala had a very real moment. It gave JVM teams functional programming, expressive types, and a path into big data tooling. Spark mattered. Twitter mattered. LinkedIn mattered.

But the ecosystem became heavy. The learning curve was real. Build times hurt. The community split between “powerful language” and “why is this implicit doing crimes?” And many teams that wanted pragmatic backend work eventually chose Java, Kotlin, Go, or TypeScript instead.

Scala is not dead. But its hype declined.

Ruby is different. Ruby on Rails changed web development. Shopify, GitHub, and Basecamp are not fake examples. Rails remains productive and mature.

But Ruby no longer feels like where the center of new backend energy is moving. It is a great way to build certain products if the team already likes Rails. It is not the obvious default in 2026 for a company trying to maximize hiring pool, cloud-native tooling, AI integration, and long-term ecosystem growth.

This is the pattern:

large installed base ≠ expanding frontier.

You can make money in declining-hype ecosystems. Sometimes a lot of money. But do not confuse maintenance gravity with adoption energy.

PHP is funny until you remember the web runs on it

PHP is easy to mock because PHP spent years earning the jokes.

And yet, PHP is still everywhere.

WordPress alone makes PHP impossible to ignore. Laravel keeps modern PHP much more pleasant than outsiders assume. Wikipedia exists. Huge amounts of commerce, content, and internal tooling still run on PHP.

But would I start a greenfield backend platform in PHP in 2026?

Probably not, unless the team had a strong PHP/Laravel advantage or the product lived naturally in that ecosystem.

PHP is not dead. It is just not where I would go looking for broad new-language momentum.

Clojure, Elixir, Erlang, and Haskell are small for grown-up reasons

Niche does not mean unserious.

This is where beginner language discourse becomes useless.

Clojure, Elixir, Erlang, and Haskell are not mainstream hiring monsters. Stack Overflow’s 2025 numbers put Elixir and Scala around the low single digits, Erlang lower, and Haskell small enough that most recruiters will never accidentally find you.

But these languages are often chosen by experienced teams for specific reasons.

Clojure is excellent when you want a small language, immutable data, REPL-driven development, and a very different mental model from mainstream object-oriented backend work. Nubank using Clojure is not random. It is a company-level bet on leverage and simplicity at scale.

Elixir and Erlang live on the BEAM, which remains one of the best runtime stories for fault tolerance, concurrency, and long-running distributed systems. Discord’s Elixir usage is a real signal, not a toy case study.

Haskell is not “hard because academics.” Haskell is hard because it forces you to be explicit about things many codebases prefer to leave as runtime surprises. In finance, compilers, and correctness-heavy systems, that can be worth it.

Would I recommend these languages to a random startup as default choices?

No.

Would I dismiss them because they are niche?

Also no.

Some niches are where the adults are.

Zig, Mojo, and Gleam: interesting, but bring a microscope

New entrants are where hype is most dangerous.

Zig is the most interesting of the current systems-language challengers. It is pragmatic, C-interoperable, simpler than Rust in important ways, and already visible in real tooling conversations. RedMonk noted Zig’s deliberate climb in its 2026 ranking, with stronger GitHub signal than Stack Overflow signal. That is exactly the kind of mismatch worth watching.

Mojo is the spicy one because it attaches itself to the AI/Python performance story. The pitch is strong: Python-like ergonomics with systems-level performance potential for AI workloads. But Stack Overflow 2025 still showed Mojo at only 0.4% among all respondents and 0.3% among professional developers. That is not “ignore it.” That is “do not bet your hiring plan on it yet.”

Gleam is tiny but tasteful: typed, friendly, BEAM-based, and refreshingly pragmatic. I would not call it mainstream. I would call it one of the few small languages where the design taste seems better than the hype machine.

My rule for emerging languages: experiment freely, adopt carefully.

A side project can be brave. Payroll systems should be boring.

the languages I think are overhyped in 2026

Here is the spicy part.

Rust, when used as a personality test

Rust is excellent. Rust as a default answer to every backend problem is not excellent.

If your problem is memory safety, performance, secure infrastructure, or replacing C/C++, Rust deserves serious consideration.

If your problem is “we need a CRUD API by next quarter,” maybe stop trying to impress Hacker News.

Mojo, relative to adoption

Mojo might become important. I hope it does, because AI infrastructure needs better performance ergonomics.

But right now the ratio of promise to production adoption is very high. That is literally what hype is.

Anything marketed as “the language for AI agents”

No.

Agents mostly need boring integration surfaces: HTTP, files, queues, logs, auth, sandboxing, tests, traceability. They do not need a magical new syntax for vibes.

If a language claims it is special because agents will write it better, I want receipts.

the languages I think are underrated

Go

Because boring operational wins compound.

Elixir

Because most web engineers underestimate how good the BEAM is for realtime and distributed systems.

Clojure

Because small teams with high leverage can do ridiculous things with it, if they can hire and maintain the discipline.

Java

Yes, Java. I know.

But the modern JVM ecosystem is far better than the 2008 trauma many engineers still carry around. If your opinion of Java is based on old enterprise XML nightmares, update the dependency in your head.

Gleam

Not because it is big. Because it is small in an interesting direction.

the languages I would be very careful starting new projects with

This does not mean “bad.” It means “the burden of proof is high.”

Scala

I would only choose Scala today if the team already had strong Scala expertise and a specific reason. Otherwise Kotlin, Java, Go, or TypeScript will usually create less organizational friction.

Ruby

Rails is still productive, but I would want a team and product reason, not nostalgia.

PHP

Laravel can be good. WordPress is massive. But for a general-purpose new backend platform, I would need a strong ecosystem-specific argument.

Perl

No.

I respect Perl historically. I also respect asbestos historically as a material with useful properties. That does not mean I want more of it in the building.

COBOL

Learn COBOL if you want a specific legacy/mainframe career niche. Do not pick it for a new product unless your product is a museum with uptime requirements.

my practical advice

If I were advising a team in 2026, my default recommendations would be boring:

• Web product: TypeScript.
• AI/data/glue work: Python, with production discipline.
• Cloud backend / infrastructure service: Go, Java, Kotlin, or C# depending on team context.
• Performance/security-sensitive systems: Rust, C++, C, or Zig experiments depending on maturity and risk.
• Realtime distributed systems: Elixir/Erlang if the team can support it.
• High-leverage small expert team: Clojure is still worth considering.
• Statistical research: R is fine. Stop forcing statisticians to cosplay backend engineers.

The language is not the architecture. But it shapes hiring, libraries, failure modes, deployment, debugging, and how much cleverness your team can afford before production starts charging interest.

That is the part hype usually hides.

A programming language is not just syntax.

It is a labor market, a package ecosystem, a runtime, a set of defaults, a debugging culture, a deployment story, and a thousand small decisions already made for you.

Choose the language where those defaults match the system you are actually building.

Not the language with the best conference talk.
Not the language with the biggest logo slide.
Not the language that makes your team feel briefly smarter.

The right language is usually the one that lets you ship, hire, operate, and sleep.

Everything else is merchandise.

references

• GitHub Octoverse 2025: The state of open source
• Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025: Technology
• RedMonk Programming Language Rankings: January 2026
• TIOBE Index
• PYPL PopularitY of Programming Language index