The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) have published their fifth annual ranking of programming languages. A befits an association of engineers, it is a very thorough work. Their methodology includes Google search data, Google trends, Twitter, GitHub, Stack Overflow, Reddit, CareerBuilder, Dice and the IEEEs own library of conference and journal articles.
I just have one problem with it: PL/SQL isn’t there.
If I take the interactive version and select only Enterprise, I get 36 languages that IEEE considers significant enough to rate. Other venerable languages are there (COBOL at 30th place) and vendor-specific languages are also there (SAP ABAP at 29th place). But it seems PL/SQL has dropped totally off the radar.
One reason for this is that PL/SQL developers keep to themselves inside their enterprises and don’t create many PL/SQL projects on GitHub. Another is that they ask their questions on the Oracle forums, not Stack Overflow. That indicates a future for PL/SQL as an internal language used only by the dwindling number of Oracle database customers.
If you are a young programmer learning PL/SQL, you are probably doing so on company time. Insist that they cross-train you in something else as well, because PL/SQL skills see less and less demand in the marketplace.
If you are an experienced PL/SQL developer, you face the fact that if you lose your PL/SQL developer job, it will be hard to find another. At least learn Oracle APEX so you can use your PL/SQL and database skills to quickly build tactical applications, but preferably supplement with something new.
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