GeckoFood's Journal: Rating the Popularity of Programming Languages

TIOBE Software maintains an index of what programming languages are popular and has been tracking the trends for some time. They release their list monthly provide line graphs for each language that show the popularity trend for each. January's list has been posted. Unsurprisingly, Java is at the top of the list right now.

There is some fine print, though, about how they calculate the rating. The rating is a function of how many search hits each language got in popular search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!. Does this really indicate that there are more people using the languages higher on the TIOBE index, or just that there are more questions being asked for these languages?

Most Popular Programming Languages

[wildcatherder]

I find a "popularity" rating based on searches for a programming language name hilariously useless. I think it would be the way to discover the "most poorly documented" programming language. Java could be at the top of the list just because people are wondering why Java keeps updating on their computer, or why they have something called Java Console in their system tray (or even trying to find the best cup of coffee). Is the phrase "programming" or "programming language" even included in the searches cou

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[FortKnox]

I agree... while a better search would be for job openings, that still doesn't tell us much (there could be tons of job openings for mainframe languages because they are so unpopular no one knows them). Looking at what jobs are filled is also a good idea, but it'd disclude things like ruby and groovy, which are popular at home, but not as much in the workplace.

In essence, there really is no good way to get good metrics on this.

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[Shadow Wrought]

Not to mention that Java also has other connotations which could find its way into a search engine. Maybe we should create the Parsed Once, Ran Numerously language and see how popular we can make it in a short amount of time;-)

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[GeckoFood]

Not to mention that Java also has other connotations which could find its way into a search engine. Maybe we should create the Parsed Once, Ran Numerously language and see how popular we can make it in a short amount of time;-)

Actually, I have used that one... The number of actual keywords in the language is very limited, but the graphics and audio capabilities are AMAZING!

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[Shadow Wrought]

Yes, I hear it can be quite stimulating;-)

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[Short Circuit]

I don't think counting job openings is the right approach, either. A better approach would be a weighted combination of lines of code and published applications.

Of course, that means doing, you know, actual work, to get the numbers. That means surveying companies and crawling public source repositories rather than running a few Google searches.

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[FortKnox]

Even then, it depends on the language and how good someone codes in the language, right? Perl one-liners vs lisp million liners...
And not even the language... some Java can be written in a 100 line class file, but if written super abstractly, it can be written in 10 lines over 100 class files...

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[Short Circuit]

It's certainly tricky. Exploring language differences is one of the fun things about Rosetta Code.

Perhaps it would be best to just count applications. But then you'd have to find a way to account for things like Novell Zen, which combines shell scripts and tools written in various languages.

Most popular programming language

[wildcatherder]

The idea of rating the "most popular" programming language based on searches for its name is hilarious and ridiculous. I think this would be a the way to find the "worst documented" programming language. As far Java being at the top of the list, this could be people wondering why Java keeps updating on their computer, why there is a "Java Console" in their system tray, or even looking for a good cup of coffee (most search engines make no distinction between "java" and "Java"). Are the words "programming"