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What is going on with measures of programming language popularity?

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Re: What is going on with measures of programming language popularity?

#51

Post by ArchTypical »

jcranmer wrote: post #18
CryoLogic wrote: post #6

I have absolutely no doubts that the most used language is JavaScript - considering nearly every website in existence relies on it. So it's really just a question of methodology. When TIOBE says popularity they must not be talking about usage rates, or if they are perhaps they are specifically sampling some subset of enterprise?

> I have absolutely no doubts that the most used language is JavaScript - considering nearly every website in existence relies on it. If you count by total lines of code running in production, then the most likely winner is probably C or COBOL (decent chance your paycheck relies on large COBOL applications working correctly). If you count it by lines of code times number of running instances, then I'm really hard-pre…

> If you count by total lines of code running in production, then the most likely winner is probably C or COBOL

By lines of production, it's definitely Javascript. COBOL doesn't come close. What was a lot of developer time in the 80s is dwarfed by the number of people around the world working on websites alone (much less this Node.js silliness).

More Javascript is written every day than is produced in C, all year due to lower barriers to entry, lower cost to fail, easier to debug, less (possible) side effects, and number of developers.

> it has very little presence outside of user-facing applications.

That's where most code ends up getting written. SMH

Re: What is going on with measures of programming language popularity?

#52

Post by 13415 »

Instead of popularity indices, I'd like to see the percentage that a language+framework takes in applications of a certain type, such as desktop applications, client-side web applications, server applications, data crunching, embedded, etc. That way you can spot trends or find alternative languages for a certain task.

Another interesting metric would be the number of open source libraries for the language that have had commits within the last 3 months and whose major semantic version is 1.0 or higher (or some other way to weed out unfinished libraries), sortable by license.

Re: What is going on with measures of programming language popularity?

#53

Post by 13415 »

CryoLogic wrote: post #6

I have absolutely no doubts that the most used language is JavaScript - considering nearly every website in existence relies on it. So it's really just a question of methodology. When TIOBE says popularity they must not be talking about usage rates, or if they are perhaps they are specifically sampling some subset of enterprise?

Depends on what you mean by "most used". Would you include copy&paste duplicates? I doubt that JavaScript remains #1 when you filter these out.

Re: What is going on with measures of programming language popularity?

#56

Post by vorg »

Tiobe's faulty ranking method isn't even reliable. Three years ago Apache Groovy was in the top 20, but six months ago it wasn't even in the top 50. Now it's supposedly rising rapidly again. And this isn't the first time this has happened with Groovy -- it was also in the top 20 in Oct 2013 but three months later out of the top 50. I suspect Tiobe's rankings are being gamed somehow.

Re: What is going on with measures of programming language popularity?

#57

Post by davidw »

I used to do a language popularity thing, langpop.

One of the takeaways is that there are different metrics and none of them is perfect.

So I grabbed what I could, combined them, and even had a JS thing where you could weight them differently.

Stuff I looked at: raw search, source code, books, job advertisements.

Re: What is going on with measures of programming language popularity?

#58

Post by DoreenMichele »

There is an excellent book on such things that I highly recommend: How to lie with statistics

Problems like this are part of why we have sayings like:

Measure twice, cut once.

GIGO (Garbage in, garbage out)

Some saying about measuring to extreme precision, then "cutting with an axe."

Re: What is going on with measures of programming language popularity?

#59

Post by Jach »

tabtab wrote: post #4
yen223 wrote: post #2

What's going on is that there are many equally-valid definitions of "popularity". Do you mean number of developers who's heard of a language? Who uses a language? Who likes a language? Or do you mean a language that's most widely deployed, for some definition of deployed? The question you need to ask is what decision is going to be impacted as the result of knowing the "popularity" of some language. The answer to tha…

Indeed! Keep-up-with-the-Jonesism sends people into circles of craziness and self-fulfilling prophecies.

From https://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/3141310154691952@naggum... "if you aren't using today's fad language in the very latest version of the IDE, you'll be left behind. aaaugh! but it's good that some people run like they are scared out of their wits. if they suddenly disappear over the edge of a cliff, a good number of people will notice in time and _not_ follow them. those are the ones that matter."

Re: What is going on with measures of programming language popularity?

#60

Post by maxxxxx »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #35
baxtr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s similar to asking: which species is the most successful one? By which measure? Bio-mass? Space occupied?

Ooh, that's an interesting question. I'd have to go with highest total energy consumed through their metabolism and activities. Those with the highest chemical impact on the planet.

I would go with the highest biomass :-). Whoever weights most in total wins.

EDIT: According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_(ecology)#Ocean_biomas... it's earthworms.

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