Also worth noting is that the downward trend in Java's market share is mirrored by downward trends in the share of other "highly popular" languages. This possibly indicates the market is becoming more diverse. TIOBE's chart goes back to June 2001, which, according to their numbers, is the high water mark for Java at 26.5%. In that month the shares for C and C++ were 20.2% and 14.2% respectively. In August 2014 Java had declined to 15.0%. C and C++ declined to 16.4% and 4.7% respectively. Woe is C++. In fact, of the top ten languages in 2014 the only ones to gain market share over the past year are Javascript and Objective-C. Javascript has been more or less flat; Objective-C spiked earlier this year but has since dropped back to 2013 levels.

Python? Peaked in February 2011 when it reached 7.0% in TIOBE's index. It's currently sitting at 3.1% in August 2014.

Ruby? Peaked at 4.0% in December 2008. Currently at 1.2% in August 2014.

I can't get info on Scala, Go, Haskell, Scheme, Erlang, Groovy, et. al. because they aren't used widely enough for TIOBE to even report stats.

Possibly related to Microsoft's failure to gain a foothold in the mobile / app space? Since we're talking about "market share", if a new market materializes and C# isn't used at all in that market then its relative share should appear to decline.

You should run some benchmarks with and without Proguard. I'm curious to know what performance benefits it provides (if any). I was actually thinking more of running things like the web containers themselves through ProGuard. Tomcat vs. Tomcat+Proguard. JBoss vs. JBoss+Proguard. Or Eclipse, for that matter.

You could meaningfully refer to "2+ sigma" developers without assuming a normal distribution, though. So his criticism is "sort of" valid given you never explicitly stated you were talking about a normal distribution. Maybe the distribution of of ability among developers is skewed right, in which case more than half of them are "below average".

If you've used a credit card or done any banking in the past 10 years you've probably made use of Java. Or if you've used an Android phone. If you're speaking narrowly in terms of desktop apps then sure, I'll buy the 10 years stat.

Since moving to Android development (from the back-end Java world) I'm a little surprised that ProGuard doesn't get used more in the non-app space. That gives you another round of optimization before your byte code even hits the JVM.

Java is moving into archaic irrelevance faster than ever.

This seems like it should be quantifiable. That is, you seem to be saying that the rate of decrease in Java's popularity is at an all time high. The slope of its decline is steeper than its ever been, so to speak. Do the popularity metrics bear out that claim? After some cursory googling, the TIOBE rankings are the only one I could find online that has historical data. If you look at their chart it looks like Java's rate of decline in market share is approximately linear, with a fair amount of fluctuation. If you focus only on the period from April 2014 to August 2014 then the decline is indeed rather steep, but it's no steeper than, say, the period from February 2013 to July 2013. So while Java may indeed be waning (gradually) I'm calling B.S. on the claim that it's "moving into archaic irrelevance faster than ever".

He may have assumed the normal distribution.

I have only a dim recollection of Ada from a programming languages "survey" course in college, but I remember being bothered by the fact that everything was a word. Some of them could have been symbols. It seemed really...verbose.

It bugs me that we're using words like "hip" and "cool" to describe programming languages. That anyone would choose to learn (or use) a language on the basis of it being "hip" is dumb. I'm looking at you, Ruby.

Know what else is irritating? Posting on the wrong thread. Doh.

It bugs me that we're using words like "hip" and "cool" to describe programming languages. That anyone would choose to learn (or use) a language on the basis of it being "hip" is dumb. I'm looking at you, Ruby.

Students always had the option of buying books online through Amazon.

Not when I was in school we didn't. That said, yes, it's been an option for some time now. On the other hand, there's no guarantee every textbook will be available. Perhaps this agreement guarantees that any textbook assigned to a Purdue student will be carried. The university may also have negotiated a group discount.

My exposure to Java is in the context of Android development, so I haven't even touched anything newer than 1.6.

Agreed. Open question as to whether that's a net positive. My point is that the pace of language modifications should slow down as a language matures and all the low-hanging fruit has been picked. It's unrealistic to expect a constant rate of change.