There are many in-demand programming languages, but which one pays the most? If you are looking for learning a new programming language in 2020 then you may want to know the median salary of developers in the respective language. Here we list the top 25 highest paying programming languages globally, that were reported by Stack Overflow developer survey.
If you are looking for jobs in a specific technology or programming language then our list of best job board sites might help.
Global: Highest Paying Programming Languages 2020
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Here is the list of global top paying programming languages based on the survey result:
- Perl – $76K
- Scala – $76K
- Go – $74K
- Rust – $74K
- Ruby – $71K
- Bash/Shell/PowerShell – $65K
- Objective-C – $64K
- Haskell – $60K
- Julia – $59K
- Python – $59K
- Swift – $58K
- C# – $57K
- R – $57K
- TypeScript – $57K
- Kotlin – $54K
- SQL – $54K
- Assembly – $53K
- C++ – $53K
- JavaScript – $53K
- HTML/CSS – $52K
- VBA – $51K
- C – $50K
- Java – $50K
- PHP – $39K
- Dart- $37K
Perl, Scala, and Go have the highest paying salaries globally. They have a median salary of around $75k annually. Interestingly, popular programming languages such as JavaScript and Python are in lower rankings.
If these salaries appear less, then do remember that these are global numbers and salaries in developing countries are far lesser than those in US or UK. You can refer to the salary of programmers in US below:
US: Top Paying Programming Languages 2020
In US, Scala, Go, Objective-C and Kotlin are the highest paying programming languages and tend to pay around $140K annually. Even in US, salaries of JavaScript and Python developers are lower than those working with mobile application development languages such as Objective-C and Kotlin.
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One should note that a high paying programming language doesn’t necessarily mean that there is high number of jobs available for the same. Moreover, taking career decisions purely on salary is not recommended. Nonetheless, having an idea of the median salary one can expect with a particular skillset, in this case: programming language is definitely a plus when you are negotiating your salary in a new role.
If you are a freelance programmer, then you would want to base your hourly rate based on these numbers. However, based on your location, these rates may be different. Here is a handy hourly rate calculator that can help you with determining the fee you should be charging.
A programmer’s salary is also dependent on his/her position and experience. You can refer to your local job listing or online listing on LinkedIn or look for salaries on Glassdoor to get an idea of expected salary for your skillset and position.