Submission + - Python's On the Rise... While PHP Falls (dice.com) 1
Nerval's Lobster writes: While this month’s lists of the top programming languages uniformly list Java in the top spot, that’s not the only detail of interest to developers. Which language has gained the most users over the past five years? And which are tottering on the edge of obsolescence? According to PYPL, which pulls its raw data for analysis from Google Trends, Python has grown the most over the past five years—up 5 percent since roughly 2010. Over the same period, PHP also declined by 5 percent. Since PYPL looks at how often language tutorials are searched on Google, its data is a good indicator of how many developers are (or aren’t) learning a language, presumably because they see it as valuable to their careers. Just because PYPL shows PHP losing market-share over the long term doesn’t mean that language is in danger of imminent collapse; over the past year or so, the PHP community has concentrated on making the language more pleasant to use, whether by improving features such as package management, or boosting overall performance. Plus, PHP is still used on hundreds of millions of Websites, according to data from Netcraft. Indeed, if there’s any language on these analysts’ lists that risks doom, it’s Objective-C, Apple’s longtime language for programming iOS and Mac OS X apps, and its growing obsolescence is by design.
In a biz that says "Viral" and "Exponential" a lot (Score:2)
...5% growth over 5 years is barely detectable. Ditto 5% shrinkage. I'm not saying it isn't statistically relevant, just that it implies PHP would still be a solid career choice for a programmer in their mid-20s, at that rate...by the time the market has shrunk 25% and jobs were getting tight, you'd be the guy with 20 years experience.