I was bored, so I compiled a list of 77 of my favorite open-source privacy-focused software. This ranges from Android apps to desktop apps to websites to operating systems. I scraped the programming languages used for each one from their respective repositories, and created a simple scoring system to score each programming language.

Obviously there is some bias, since Kotlin is very popular for Android apps and not much else, and it’s not an exhaustive list, so some data might be off, but it was still fun to make! Just wanted to share it with all of you, in case anyone else finds it interesting.

The full ranking

Full ranking
  1. C++
  2. C
  3. Kotlin
  4. Java
  5. JavaScript
  6. TypeScript
  7. Python
  8. Shell
  9. C#
  10. Dart
  11. PHP
  12. Ruby
  13. HTML
  14. Makefile
  15. Go
  16. QML
  17. Pascal
  18. CSS
  19. Clojure
  20. Blade
  21. Crystal
  22. Batchfile
  23. Swift
  24. Emacs Lisp
  25. Svelte
  26. Rust
  27. CMake
  28. Haskell
  29. Lua
  30. Vue
  31. Roff
  32. XSLT
  33. Assembly
  34. NSIS
  35. Objective-C
  36. SCSS
  37. Less
  38. PLpgSQL
  39. Objective-C++
  40. Inno Setup
  41. Meson
  42. WebAssembly
  43. ASL
  44. PowerShell
  45. Rich Text Format
  46. GLSL
  47. Common Lisp
  48. Haml
  49. Scheme
  50. Dockerfile
  51. Perl
  52. AIDL
  53. M4
  54. Mustache
  55. D
  56. MDX
  57. SourcePawn
  58. M
  59. Pug
  60. Lex
  61. EJS

Scores for each programming language

Language scores

C++: 13070

C: 11734

Kotlin: 7195

Java: 6727

JavaScript: 5356

TypeScript: 5002

Python: 4250

Shell: 1903

C#: 1873

Dart: 1872

PHP: 1844

Ruby: 1499

HTML: 1389

Makefile: 990

Go: 975

QML: 955

Pascal: 917

CSS: 888

Clojure: 878

Blade: 832

Crystal: 738

Batchfile: 708

Swift: 577

Emacs Lisp: 556

Svelte: 366

Rust: 351

CMake: 342

Haskell: 326

Lua: 300

Vue: 288

Roff: 268

XSLT: 176

Assembly: 167

NSIS: 130

Objective-C: 128

SCSS: 90

Less: 77

PLpgSQL: 66

Objective-C++: 61

Inno Setup: 59

Meson: 41

WebAssembly: 25

ASL: 22

PowerShell: 21

Rich Text Format: 21

GLSL: 18

Common Lisp: 16

Haml: 14

Scheme: 13

Dockerfile: 12

Perl: 12

AIDL: 11

M4: 7

Mustache: 7

D: 5

MDX: 5

SourcePawn: 2

M: 2

Pug: 2

Lex: 1

EJS: 1

The original data

(NOTE: I am NOT looking for criticism on any choices made here)

Original data

HuggingChat

TypeScript 62.1%

Svelte 36.6%

Dockerfile 0.4%

JavaScript 0.4%

HTML 0.2%

Shell 0.1%

Other 0.2%

GPT4ALL

C++ 48.2%

QML 32.3%

Python 8.5%

CMake 5.4%

JavaScript 3.9%

C 1.0%

Other 0.7%

Audacity

C 37.6%

C++ 35.3%

Python 18.1%

Shell 2.8%

Common Lisp 1.6%

QML 1.3%

Other 3.3%

Duplicati

C# 87.3%

JavaScript 5.7%

HTML 3.2%

Less 1.8%

Python 1.2%

Shell 0.4%

Other 0.4%

Vorta

Python 99.2%

Other 0.8%

Filen (Desktop)

TypeScript 96.3%

JavaScript 2.1%

HTML 1.2%

NSIS 0.4%

Monero

C++ 81.7%

C 11.7%

Python 3.2%

CMake 2.0%

Makefile 0.5%

Shell 0.4%

Other 0.5%

Ivy Wallet

Kotlin 99.7%

Other 0.3%

Brasero

C 98.1%

Makefile 1.5%

Other 0.4%

VSCodium

Shell 83.8%

XSLT 16.0%

PowerShell 0.2%

GNU Emacs

Emacs Lisp 55.6%

Roff 23.8%

C 16.4%

M4 0.7%

Objective-C 0.6%

C++ 0.5%

Other 2.4%

GitLab

Ruby 69.2%

JavaScript 17.3%

Vue 6.8%

PLpgSQL 2.9%

Haml 1.4%

HTML 0.9%

Other 1.5%

Codeberg

Clojure 87.8%

Shell 3.9%

CSS 2.3%

HTML 2.2%

Batchfile 2.2%

PowerShell 1.0%

Other 0.6%

Wikipedia (MediaWiki)

PHP 82.7%

JavaScript 15.3%

Less 1.1%

CSS 0.8%

HTML 0.1%

Vue 0.0%

7-Zip

C++ 79.3%

C 17.6%

Assembly 1.6%

Makefile 1.5%

PeaZip

Pascal 91.7%

Inno Setup 5.9%

Batchfile 1.8%

C++ 0.4%

Shell 0.1%

C 0.1%

qBittorrent

C++ 71.0%

JavaScript 14.1%

HTML 11.5%

Python 1.1%

CSS 0.8%

CMake 0.7%

Other 0.8%

osu!

C# 100.0%

2048

CSS 54.9%

JavaScript 38.1%

HTML 6.5%

Ruby 0.5%

Wireshark

C 95.2%

C++ 2.4%

Python 1.1%

Perl 0.3%

CMake 0.3%

SourcePawn 0.2%

Other 0.5%

nmap

C 38.0%

Lua 29.0%

C++ 17.3%

Shell 4.6%

Python 4.3%

Makefile 1.9%

Other 4.9%

VirtualBox

C 67.2%

C++ 25.2%

Python 2.8%

Objective-C 1.7%

Assembly 1.4%

D 0.5%

Other 1.2%

Docker

Go 97.5%

Shell 1.5%

Dockerfile 0.5%

PowerShell 0.3%

Makefile 0.1%

Python 0.1%

calibre

Python 79.2%

C 17.1%

C++ 2.8%

HTML 0.3%

Shell 0.2%

XSLT 0.1%

Other 0.3%

Thunderbird

JavaScript 60.5%

C++ 21.5%

HTML 6.6%

CSS 3.8%

C 1.8%

Java 1.7%

Other 4.1%

Betterbird

Batchfile 66.5%

C 18.3%

C++ 10.1%

Shell 5.1%

draw.io (Desktop)

JavaScript 96.0%

Shell 4.0%

Joplin

TypeScript 71.4%

JavaScript 22.3%

HTML 1.9%

CSS 1.3%

Java 1.2%

Mustache 0.7%

Other 1.2%

LibreOffice

C++ 86.6%

Java 5.5%

Python 1.8%

Makefile 1.6%

XSLT 1.5%

Rich Text Format 1.4%

Other 1.6%

Proton Mail (Web)

TypeScript 92.1%

JavaScript 5.2%

SCSS 1.5%

MDX 0.5%

Swift 0.4%

CSS 0.1%

Other 0.2%

F-Droid

Java 65.3%

Kotlin 33.1%

Other 1.6%

Aurora Store

Kotlin 96.8%

Java 2.8%

AIDL 0.4%

Neo-Store

Kotlin 100.0%

Obtainium

Dart 98.7%

Other 1.3%

Droid-ify

Kotlin 99.6%

Shell 0.4%

IzzyOnDroid

PHP 97.2%

Python 2.5%

Shell 0.3%

Accrescent

Kotlin 100.0%

GNOME Software

C 97.0%

Meson 1.2%

Python 1.1%

Other 0.7%

Flathub

TypeScript 74.0%

Python 24.2%

JavaScript 1.1%

Shell 0.4%

SCSS 0.2%

Dockerfile 0.1%

SearXNG

Python 74.7%

Shell 9.9%

HTML 6.1%

Less 4.8%

JavaScript 2.7%

CSS 0.9%

Other 0.9%

GrapheneOS

Makefile 87.1%

C++ 11.3%

Shell 1.6%

GNOME

C 97.3%

Meson 2.3%

Python 0.4%

KDE Plasma

C++ 45.6%

QML 41.2%

C 5.5%

CMake 2.3%

Python 2.2%

JavaScript 1.9%

Other 1.3%

Arch Linux

C 98.4%

Assembly 0.7%

Shell 0.4%

Python 0.2%

Makefile 0.2%

Perl 0.1%

HeliBoard

Java 45.4%

C++ 34.7%

Kotlin 19.2%

Other 0.7%

Blender

C++ 76.3%

Python 14.6%

C 5.0%

GLSL 1.8%

CMake 1.2%

Objective-C++ 1.0%

Other 0.1%

FreeCAD

C++ 52.7%

Python 44.5%

C 1.5%

CMake 0.8%

NSIS 0.2%

Lex 0.1%

Other 0.2%

Krita

C++ 90.2%

Python 3.0%

C 2.3%

CMake 1.6%

HTML 0.7%

Rich Text Format 0.7%

Other 1.5%

GIMP

C 95.5%

Scheme 1.3%

Python 1.1%

C++ 0.7%

Meson 0.6%

Perl 0.4%

Other 0.4%

Flameshot

C++ 87.8%

CMake 5.8%

Shell 3.3%

Python 1.7%

Roff 1.1%

C 0.2%

Other 0.1%

Inkscape

C++ 94.1%

C 1.7%

CMake 1.5%

HTML 1.4%

Python 0.3%

Aegis

Java 96.0%

HTML 2.1%

Roff 1.9%

VeraCrypt

C 68.8%

C++ 19.0%

Assembly 10.0%

Shell 1.1%

Makefile 0.5%

Batchfile 0.3%

Other 0.3%

KeePassXC

C++ 95.1%

CMake 2.2%

Shell 1.5%

PowerShell 0.6%

Objective-C++ 0.4%

Python 0.1%

Other 0.1%

KeePassDX

Kotlin 79.0%

C 14.0%

Java 4.1%

Assembly 2.6%

C++ 0.2%

Ruby 0.1%

addy.io

Blade 83.2%

JavaScript 5.2%

Vue 4.8%

PHP 4.5%

CSS 2.3%

Mullvad VPN

Rust 35.1%

Swift 26.2%

Kotlin 19.5%

TypeScript 13.2%

C++ 2.8%

Shell 1.8%

Other 1.4%

Alovoa

Java 82.7%

HTML 9.8%

JavaScript 3.6%

CSS 2.8%

Other 1.1%

Briar

Java 98.0%

Kotlin 1.9%

Other 0.1%

SimpleX Chat

Haskell 32.6%

Kotlin 32.3%

Swift 26.9%

HTML 2.2%

TypeScript 1.4%

JavaScript 1.1%

Other 3.5%

Medito

Dart 88.5%

Kotlin 8.0%

Ruby 2.0%

Swift 0.7%

CMake 0.2%

C++ 0.2%

Other 0.4%

coreboot

C 94.4%

ASL 2.2%

Makefile 1.0%

C++ 0.7%

Assembly 0.4%

Perl 0.4%

Other 0.9%

Libreboot

Shell 51.5%

Python 25.1%

C 22.2%

Makefile 1.2%

OpenStreetMap

Ruby 78.1%

HTML 8.7%

JavaScript 6.9%

PLpgSQL 3.7%

SCSS 1.2%

C++ 0.7%

Other 0.7%

OsmAnd

Java 95.3%

Kotlin 3.9%

AIDL 0.7%

CSS 0.1%

Shell 0.0%

XSLT 0.0%

Organic Maps

C++ 71.0%

C 7.5%

Java 6.1%

Swift 3.5%

Objective-C++ 3.1%

Python 2.9%

Other 5.9%

VLC Media Player

C 62.6%

C++ 18.9%

Objective-C 8.3%

QML 3.1%

Makefile 1.6%

Lua 1.0%

Other 4.5%

Stremio (Desktop)

C++ 36.7%

QML 17.6%

NSIS 12.4%

JavaScript 10.7%

Shell 9.1%

CMake 4.1%

Other 9.4%

OBS Studio

C 54.6%

C++ 34.7%

CMake 6.1%

Objective-C 2.2%

Objective-C++ 1.6%

M 0.2%

Other 0.6%

NewPipe

Java 84.0%

Kotlin 13.5%

HTML 2.5%

FreeTube

JavaScript 68.5%

Vue 17.2%

CSS 11.2%

SCSS 3.0%

EJS 0.1%

Invidious

Crystal 73.8%

HTML 13.9%

JavaScript 8.2%

CSS 2.6%

Shell 1.1%

Makefile 0.2%

Dockerfile 0.2%

PeerTube

TypeScript 89.7%

HTML 6.5%

SCSS 3.1%

Shell 0.4%

Pug 0.2%

JavaScript 0.1%

Tubular

Java 84.6%

Kotlin 13.0%

HTML 2.4%

Mullvad Browser

JavaScript 28.1%

C++ 25.7%

HTML 22.3%

C 12.4%

Python 2.8%

Tor Browser

JavaScript 28.2%

C++ 25.6%

HTML 22.3%

C 12.4%

Python 2.9%

uBlock Origin

JavaScript 88.4%

CSS 4.9%

HTML 3.4%

WebAssembly 2.5%

Shell 0.6%

Python 0.1%

Makefile 0.1%

    • The 8232 Project@lemmy.mlOP
      48·
      3 months ago

      Rust is ranked #26 with a score of 351. The only program that used it at all was Mullvad VPN. It was used as the majority language for that program, amounting to 35.1% of the entire program.

      • My Password Is 1234@lemmy.worldEnglish
        31·
        3 months ago

        It was more of a joking question 😅 It’s a shame that such a good, lightweight and secure programming language is not used. It’s not even in the top 20 😔

        • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
          133·
          3 months ago

          If you only included projects created in the last 2 or 5 years rust would be ahead of C/C++, possibly ahead of all other strongly typed langs. Kotlin is usually chosen explicitly for modern Android and Java lib interoperability.

          I would be willing to wager that within the next 1-2 decades, LLM transpilation will be used to replace most C/C++ code, too. LLM’s can’t be trusted to write code, but they can be trusted to transpile in combination with TDD. If a codebase is already well tested then transpilation is many orders of magnitude easier.

  • graham1@lemmy.worldEnglish
    49·
    3 months ago

    I don’t think Makefile and CMake should count as programming languages in this context. There are a few weird names on the list, but these are high up the list only because they’re glue for C/C++ projects

  • hperrin@lemmy.world
    30·
    3 months ago

    Personally, I would group JavaScript and TypeScript together. TypeScript is just a JavaScript extension.

    • Pup Biru@aussie.zoneEnglish
      33·
      3 months ago

      in the context of privacy the distinction could be interesting: typescript is a microsoft project; foss as it may be… and that might (or might not) have significance

      • hperrin@lemmy.world
        10·
        3 months ago

        It doesn’t. TypeScript compiles to JavaScript. The compilation process is ostensibly just removing the types. (It also checks types, builds source maps, and outputs declaration files, but none of that is run by the end user.)

  • luciferofastora@lemmy.zip
    20·
    3 months ago

    Could this be normalised against the baseline distribution of languages for the respective platforms / software categories to see if there are any notable deviations?

  • 1984@lemmy.today
    131·
    3 months ago

    It’s funny that privacy software is written in languages with so many footguns…

  • kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de
    7·
    3 months ago

    I recognized majority of the languages on the list but couple of them I am hearing for the first time admittedly like Blade and Crystal. I am not a programmer, so I guess that might be the reason.

  • toastal@lemmy.ml
    2·
    3 months ago

    Underrated language for this space: ATS from the ML family, which has a feeling of what if C met SML/OCaml then graduated.

    You get more flexibility for memory safety with linear types over affine types like Rust for preventing double free or use after free-like errors (while be general for any use-X-times problems). Refinement types can enforce bounds. Dependent types + viewtypes can build complex, but zero-cost abstraction for your own code or as wrappers over C libraries to make them safe & pushing checks to the compile phase rather than runtme. On top of that, there are proof-level types/values you can interleave in your code instead of using an auxiliary language like Coq or Agda. Compiling/mapping to C you use a lot of the same tooling of C as well as performance charactistic of C (can opt in/out of GC, unboxed types, can layout the memory, as well as TCO); you also get the stable C ABI over Rust’s general difficult to be used in non-Rust projects.

    All this to say you have a language that can operate at the system level, type abstractions that go beyond posterchild Haskell, & a proof language to turn those white papers into proof code right in the project. If it didn’t have a special learning curve, it should be a lot more popular in this space.

    • The 8232 Project@lemmy.mlOP
      121·
      3 months ago

      Vorta is made in 99.2% Python, I wouldn’t give it such a hard time!

      Edit: calibre and SearXNG also both have Python as the majority language

      • GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml
        33·
        3 months ago

        The only program here I know is SearXNG. My experience with GUI Python apps was pretty bad but I guess it makes it easier for devs to make new apps so it has the right to exist as long as it’s not invasive or used in OS components.

        • Pup Biru@aussie.zoneEnglish
          92·
          3 months ago

          python makes solid backends - especially ones that deal with things like 3rd party APIs and data munging, which makes it a pretty good choice for a lot of web-based privacy apps like alternative front-ends

                • Pup Biru@aussie.zoneEnglish
                  21·
                  3 months ago

                  performance is basically irrelevant… when you’re a professional software engineer, ease of maintenance - adding new features, bug fixes, keeping bugs out of the code base - is paramount… you can always throw more servers at it, because they’re cheap compared to labour and mistakes

        • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          7·
          3 months ago

          To be honest, I’ve seen a lot of code in my line of work, and my experience says that if the speed of a language is your concern, you’re either in high-frequency trading or working on some real-time use case, or you’re wrong.

          Most time you perceive as lag as a user comes from either atrocious programming, or network lag, or a combination of the two. A decently, not even well, but decently written Python vs Assembly subroutine will have differences in execution time measured in nanoseconds. Network calls usually measure in milliseconds, and something like a badly written DB query that reads a ton of data from a disk will do seconds or worse.

          My point is, I’ll take a not-badly written Python program over someone claiming to have chosen C/C++ for the blazing fast speed in a user facing application, when half of CVEs ever have been submitted over memory safety problems in C/C++.