Re: Choice of programming language

Keep in mind that when considering the "numerical-heavy projects" (on
this list and elsewhere): many of these rely on C and Fortran algorithms
to do their dirty work (whether or not they are actually classified as C
or Fortran here). So, you might have to scale some of those numbers a bit.

Agree. The main benefit of knowing what programmers use in the real
world is like a Consumers Report guide: popular languages
tend to be supported by more compilers, libraries and GUIs.
So for new projects (I am not talking about maintaining legacy
Cobol here) there are more choices out there as well as extra
open-source vs commercial tradeoffs.

Investments (time, resources) usually follow ratings.
The bandwagon effect. Even "Numerical Recipes" now has a
C++ edition (!)

.