What Programing Language are the Largest Website Written In?

[Xah Lee]

maybe this will be of interest.

¡´What Programing Language Are the Largest Website Written In?¡µ
http://xahlee.org/comp/website_lang_popularity.html

---------------------------------

i don't remember how, but today i suddenly got reminded that Facebook
is written in PHP. So, on the spur of the moment, i twitted:

¡°Remember folks, the world's largest sites {Facebook, Wikipedia,
¡°Yahoo!¡±, etc} are written in Pretty Home Page!¡±

and followed with:

¡°To Chinese friends, what's Baido, QQ, Taobao, Sina written in?¡±

Then, this question piqued me, even i tried to not waste my time. But
it overpowered me before i resisted, becuase i quickly spend 15 min to
write this list (with help of Google):

1 Google ¡ó Java
2 Facebook ¡ó PHP
3 YouTube ¡ó Python
4 Yahoo! ¡ó PHP
5 blogger.com ¡ó Java
6 baidu.com ¡ó C/C++. perl/python/ruby
7 Wikipedia ¡ó PHP
8 Windows Live live.com
9 Twitter.com ¡ó Scala and Ruby?
10 QQ.com ¡ó ?
11 MSN.com ¡ó ?
13 LinkedIn ¡ó PHP?
15 TaoBao.com ¡ó ?
16 sina.com.cn ¡ó ?
17 Amazon.com ¡ó ?
18 WordPress.com ¡ó PHP
22 eBay.com ¡ó ?
23 yandex.ru (Russian) ¡ó ?
24 Bing ¡ó ?
27 Microsoft.com ¡ó ?
28 ÍøÒ× 163.com ¡ó ?
29 PayPal.com ¡ó Java?
31 ÐÂÀË΢²© weibo.com ¡ó ?
32 Flickr.com ¡ó ?
34 mail.ru ¡ó ?
35 Craiglist.org ¡ó perl
36 FC2.com ¡ó ?
38 Apple.com ¡ó Objective J?
39 imdb.com ¡ó ?
41 VKontakte.ru ¡ó ?
43 ËѺüÍø sohu.com ¡ó ?
44 Ask.com ¡ó ?
45 BBC.co.uk ¡ó ?
46 tumblr.com ¡ó PHP
47 LiveJasmin.com (porn) ¡ó ?
48 xvideos.com (porn) ¡ó ?
¡­
56 ÍÁ¶¹Íø Todou.com ¡ó ?
81 YouPorn.com ¡ó ?
StumbleUpon.com ¡ó PHP, Perl, C++
¡­

the numbers is site ranking, from alexa.com. (missing ones are mostly
duplicates, such as google japan, google india, etc.)

i think notable interest is that twitter stands out, with Scala and
Ruby.

Those with perl are probably going back to the first dot com era (aka
Web 1.0, ~1995 to ~2002). At that time, perl was basically the only
game in town (secondarily: Java). (i don't recall what amazon and ebay
were in... was it perl or php? how about imdb.com?)

most php follows starting in early 2000s, that's when PHP quietly
surpassed perl in all battle fronts.

it'd be interesting to know what some of the chinese sites uses, and
porn sites (e.g. livejasmin, xvideos, youporn)

as for Microsoft sites... are they in C/C++ and or dotnet?

Xah

 

[ccc31807]

maybe this will be of interest.

¡´What Programing Language Are the Largest Website Written In?¡µhttp://xahlee.org/comp/website_lang_popularity.html

About five years ago, I did some pretty extensive research, and
concluded that the biggest sites were written serverside with JSP.
Obviously, this wouldn't include The Biggest site, but if you were a
big, multinational corporation, or listed on the NYSE, you used JSP
for your web programming.

I doubt very seriously PHP is used for the biggest sites -- I'd still
guess JSP, or maybe a MS technology (not VB), but it's only a guess.

CC.

 

[Anton Fonarev]

23 yandex.ru (Russian) ¡ó ?

As far as I know, the site is written in Perl. However, they are using
lots of python in their products and for internal use.

Anton.

 

[igotmumps]

About five years ago, I did some pretty extensive research, and
concluded that the biggest sites were written serverside with JSP.
Obviously, this wouldn't include The Biggest site, but if you were a
big, multinational corporation, or listed on the NYSE, you used JSP
for your web programming.

I doubt very seriously PHP is used for the biggest sites -- I'd still
guess JSP, or maybe a MS technology (not VB), but it's only a guess.

CC.

I believe Facebook uses a PHP/C compiler. i.e. the site is written in
PHP, but compiled down to C/C++...

MZ

 

[Michael Steinfeld]

I believe Facebook uses a PHP/C compiler. i.e. the site is written in
PHP, but compiled down to C/C++...

MZ

not all sites use one language exclusively. For example, facebook
status updates use their python non blocking web server "Tornado". Not
sure if that means the interface code is python but just putting that
out there.

Where I work, the majority of the site is ruby, about 70% and 30%
python. Many ad-hoc parts of the site use different languages
(primarily python) to provide data for reports.

 

[John Nagle]

Then, this question piqued me, even i tried to not waste my time. But
it overpowered me before i resisted, becuase i quickly spend 15 min to
write this list (with help of Google):

1 Google ¡ó Java
2 Facebook ¡ó PHP
3 YouTube ¡ó Python
4 Yahoo! ¡ó PHP
5 blogger.com ¡ó Java
6 baidu.com ¡ó C/C++. perl/python/ruby
7 Wikipedia ¡ó PHP

Aargh. Much misinformation.

First, most of the heavy machinery of Google is written in C++.
Some user-facing stuff is written in Java, and some scripting is done
in Python. Google is starting to use Go internally, but they're
not saying much about where.

Facebook is PHP on the user-facing side, but there's heavy
inter-server communication and caching, mostly in C++.

The original user interface for YouTube, before Google bought it,
was in Python. But it's since been rewritten. All the stuff that
actually handles video is, of course in C/C++. The load of handling
the video dwarfs the user interface load.

Wikipedia is indeed written in PHP.

John Nagle

 

[gavino]

About five years ago, I did some pretty extensive research, and
concluded that the biggest sites were written serverside with JSP.
Obviously, this wouldn't include The Biggest site, but if you were a
big, multinational corporation, or listed on the NYSE, you used JSP
for your web programming.

I doubt very seriously PHP is used for the biggest sites -- I'd still
guess JSP, or maybe a MS technology (not VB), but it's only a guess.

CC.

facebook is php

myspace is microsoft

aol was tcl and aolserver c embedding tcl interp

priceline is lisp

reddit is python was lisp orig

amazon was perl

livejournal was perl

 

[ccc31807]

facebook is php

myspace is microsoft

aol was tcl and aolserver c embedding tcl interp

priceline is lisp

reddit is python was lisp orig

amazon was perl

livejournal was perl

Most of these are tech companies. Tech companies are very important,
but so are other kinds of companies. What do manufacturing companies
use, like Ford and Toyota, energy companies like BP and Exxon,
pharmaceutical companies, consumer product companies, and so on? What
about the big retailers, Sears, WalMart, Target, etc.?

CC.

 

[Xah Lee]

facebook is php

myspace is microsoft

aol was tcl and aolserver c embedding tcl interp

priceline is lisp

reddit is python was lisp orig

amazon was perl

livejournal was perl

thanks Kevin. Rarely seen you useful.

Xah

 

[Michael Vilain]

Most of these are tech companies. Tech companies are very important,
but so are other kinds of companies. What do manufacturing companies
use, like Ford and Toyota, energy companies like BP and Exxon,
pharmaceutical companies, consumer product companies, and so on? What
about the big retailers, Sears, WalMart, Target, etc.?

CC.

My guess is they hire tech people or outsource the site to an external
company or developer. Then it's whatever that developer or company
uses. I wouldn't be shocked if it was NET or ASP or some other
proprietary solution. Maybe that's why there's so many sites that still
need IE6.

 

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

DeeDee, don't press that button! DeeDee! NO! Dee...
[I filter all Goggle Groups posts, so any reply may be automatically ignored]

Might be more effective to filter Google Groups, no? <G>

 

[Tim Bradshaw]

Most of these are tech companies. Tech companies are very important,
but so are other kinds of companies. What do manufacturing companies
use, like Ford and Toyota, energy companies like BP and Exxon,
pharmaceutical companies, consumer product companies, and so on? What
about the big retailers, Sears, WalMart, Target, etc.?

A more important metric is how critical the web presence is to the
company. For Amazon, say, it's pretty critical, so what they do is
likely to be interesting: if their site is broken they're not making
any money. For Toyota, say, well, an outage would probably be
embarrassing, but it's not anything like as critical to them.

Unfortunatly I suspect that with web stuff as with other stuff, the
answer is that it entirely depends. I am endlessly horrified by the
poor state of software that is really critical to large companies.

 

[Alec Taylor]

C++ (Wt xor CppCMS)

WOOT!

A more important metric is how critical the web presence is to the company.
 For Amazon, say, it's pretty critical, so what they do is likely to be
interesting: if their site is broken they're not making any money.  For
Toyota, say, well, an outage would probably be embarrassing, but it's not
anything like as critical to them.

Unfortunatly I suspect that with web stuff as with other stuff, the answer
is that it entirely depends.  I am endlessly horrified by the poor state of
software that is really critical to large companies.