Behind every developer is a beloved programming language. In heated debates over which language is the best, the security card will come into play in support of one language or discredit another.

We decided to address this debate and put it to the test by researching WhiteSource’s comprehensive database. We focused on open source security vulnerabilities in C, Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, PHP, and C++, to find out which programming languages are most secure, which vulnerability types (CWEs) are most common in each language, and why.