SANTA CRUZ, Calif.: The debut of Google App Engine has boosted the usage of Python scripting language, said a recent report Evans Data Corp, a provider in IT industry market intelligence based on in-depth surveys of the global developer population.

A press release of the report released on Tuesday noted that use of the Python scripting language has increased by 45 per cent since Spring 2008.

Only 13 per cent of developers used Python before Google announced its App Engine platform in Spring 2008, which at the time only supported Python, but that number has increased to 20.3 per cent today. Other scripting language use remained relatively constant, with only small gains or losses in popularity among languages such as Ruby, PHP, Perl and Actionscript.

“Python has been around since 1989, but never had many users until recently,” said Janel Garvin, of Evans Data.

Garvin added that this adoption change illustrates the power of Google and the promise of Cloud Computing on which Google’s App Engine depends. As the computing landscape evolves with the Cloud, so will the adoption of surrounding technologies.

The report also highlighted that only 8.7 per cent of North American developers are currently using a cloud service as a development environment, but another 18 per cent plan to within the coming year.

Agile is the most commonly used programming model being used today in North America, with slightly less than 40 per cent more developers using it than the waterfall method. lack of corporate priority is the biggest inhibitor in the adoption and Implementation of SOA.

The survey, conducted in early October, consisted of over 500 in-depth interviews with developers in North America.

It is part of the Global series of development reports conducted twice yearly throughout the world and covers topics such as Language and Platform use, Web Services and SOA, Cloud Computing, High Performance computing, Development tools and methodologies, said the release.