What is going on with measures of programming language popularity?

#1

Post by trapatsas » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 6:20 PM UTC

What is going on with measures of programming language popularity?
techcrunch.com

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

#2

Post by yen223 » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 2:55 AM UTC

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 that question will guide you towards the right metric you should be looking at.

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

#3

Post by dzdt » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 3:52 AM UTC

The article omits the Redmonk ranking [1], which is imho much better than TIOBE. The Redmonk approach uses github and stackexchange as complementary data sources, and shows a two dimensional main result.

The top 20 in the Redmonk ranking are

  1 JavaScript
  2 Java
  3 Python
  4 PHP
  5 C#
  6 C++
  7 CSS
  8 Ruby
  9 C
  9 Objective-C
  11 Swift
  12 Scala
  12 Shell
  14 Go
  14 R
  16 TypeScript
  17 PowerShell
  18 Perl
  19 Haskell
  20 Lua

Considering how different languages occupy different niches, the relative ranking withing niches seems reasonable. And ranking across niches scales according to size of the niche.

Client-side web scripting is a huge niche, hence javascript is in the top spot. General purpose desktop/server applications are another huge niche, served by Java, C#, C++, C, Scala, Go (in that order). And so on.

It seems pretty sane, and the results have been stable enough to interpret the rise of upcoming languages and see the resilience of top contenders.

[1] https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2018/08/10/language-rankings-6-1...

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

#4

Post by tabtab » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 3:19 PM UTC

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.

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

#5

Post by hellofunk » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 6:53 PM UTC

dzdt wrote: post #3

The article omits the Redmonk ranking [1], which is imho much better than TIOBE. The Redmonk approach uses github and stackexchange as complementary data sources, and shows a two dimensional main result. The top 20 in the Redmonk ranking are 1 JavaScript 2 Java 3 Python 4 PHP 5 C# 6 C++ 7 CSS 8 Ruby 9 C 9 Objective-C 11 Swift 12 Scala 12 Shell 14 Go 14 R 16 TypeScript 17 PowerShell 18 Perl 19 Haskell 20 Lua Consideri…

What??! No Nim?!

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

#6

Post by CryoLogic » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 6:53 PM UTC

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?

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

#7

Post by hirundo » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 7:02 PM UTC

As a Rubyist I'm pleased with the Github ranking, but how much of that is tilted by Github being a Ruby platform initially colonized by Rubyists?

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

#8

Post by jake-low » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 7:04 PM UTC

hellofunk wrote: post #5

dzdt wrote: post #3

The article omits the Redmonk ranking [1], which is imho much better than TIOBE. The Redmonk approach uses github and stackexchange as complementary data sources, and shows a two dimensional main result. The top 20 in the Redmonk ranking are 1 JavaScript 2 Java 3 Python 4 PHP 5 C# 6 C++ 7 CSS 8 Ruby 9 C 9 Objective-C 11 Swift 12 Scala 12 Shell 14 Go 14 R 16 TypeScript 17 PowerShell 18 Perl 19 Haskell 20 Lua Consideri…

What??! No Nim?!

Nim is shown in the graph on the bottom left, at approximately X = 5, Y = 13.

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

#9

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

dzdt wrote: post #3

The article omits the Redmonk ranking [1], which is imho much better than TIOBE. The Redmonk approach uses github and stackexchange as complementary data sources, and shows a two dimensional main result. The top 20 in the Redmonk ranking are 1 JavaScript 2 Java 3 Python 4 PHP 5 C# 6 C++ 7 CSS 8 Ruby 9 C 9 Objective-C 11 Swift 12 Scala 12 Shell 14 Go 14 R 16 TypeScript 17 PowerShell 18 Perl 19 Haskell 20 Lua Consideri…

[deleted]

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

#10

Post by thebooglebooski » Mon, Oct 01, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

I don't really understand how you can measure popularity without doing a census-like survey, reaching out to every developer possible in a coordinated effort.

Awhile back, I took a statistics class that explained how polling everyone by calling everyone with a phone landline resulted in a misrepresented sample.

The reason: not everyone has a phone landline. And those with phone landlines had a tendency to belong to specific demographics.

So...if you survey everyone using Github, and not every developer uses Github, are you not prone to the same fallacy?