What is the Best Programming Language to Learn in 2014 ?

It’s been a year since I revealed the best languages to learn in 2013. Once again, I’ve examined the data produced by Jobs Tractor who analyzed more than 45,000 developer jobs advertised on Twitter during the past twelve months. The results:

Java	8,731
PHP	8,238
Objective-C	5,859
Java for Android	4,312
SQL	3,553
JavaScript	3,154
Ruby	2,937
C#	2,549
Python	1,587
C++	1,273
C	685
ActionScript	674
ASP.net	492
Perl	224
Scala	143
Visual Basic	92

The main changes since last year…

• PHP and Java have switched places but both remain in high demand.
• Java for Android has overtaken SQL and is closing in on Objective-C.
• JavaScript has overtaken Ruby.
• Python has risen two places.
• ActionScript has dropped two places.

Take this survey with a large pinch of salt. Then add pepper, ketchup and numerous other condiments. I’m not convinced Twitter is a reliable source of job-related data and regional differences can skew results.
A recent survey by the online course provider Lynda.com for Mashable produced the following list of languages in order of popularity:

1. Java
2. C
3. C++
4. C#
5. Objective-C
6. PHP
7. Python
8. Ruby
9. JavaScript
10. SQL

The usual suspects are there but, again, results will be biased by the topics offered and the site’s target audience (primarily newer developers).
Industry analyst RedMonk has taken a different approach and determined language popularity by examining the frequency of projects on GitHub and questions on StackOverflow:

1. JavaScript
2. Java
3. PHP
4. C#
5. Python
6. C++
7. Ruby
8. C
9. Objective-C
10. CSS

Don’t take this too literally; a language could score higher if it’s more problematic than others. I’m also surprised to find CSS on the list — although due to pre-processors like Sass, LESS and Stylus, CSS tends to be viewed more as a programming language nowadays. That said, if CSS is considered a programming language, where are HTML and SQL?

Source : http://www.sitepoint.com/best-programming-language-learn-2014/