Re: Programming language popularity

Am 02.04.2010, 19:36 Uhr, schrieb Anton Ertl
<anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>:

> About once per year I post some data on programming language
> popularity, based on the number of postings in the comp.lang.* groups.
> I just took another sample, and below you can find the results, as
> well as some older results. For more results and the data, on which
> they are based, see
> <http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/comp.lang-statistics/>.

Am 03.04.2010, 11:06 Uhr, schrieb Rod Pemberton <do_not_have@havenone.cmm>:

> Look how far Python for Mar 2010 is down that list compared to Ertl's for
> Apr 2010. Forth doesn't even make the top 20 in Tiobe rank. It comes
> in as
> number 37, after LOGO... Yes, you read that correctly, after LOGO. I
> suspect both of these sampling methods are flawed, although Tiobe results
> appear far more realistic to me.

Tiobe sells services for curly braced languages. So I am not all that
convinced about Tiobe - especialy after they removed usenet in favour of
youtube. I can understand adding an addition source - but removing an
existing source for which all the scripts are already written. That sounds
like fine tuning the statistic so the right result is reported.

At comp.lang.ada we recently did our own stat which too comes to different
result: http://lang-index.sourceforge.net using similar tests as Tiobe.

Martin
--
Martin Krischik

On Apr 3, 10:46*am, "Martin Krischik" <krisc...@users.sourceforge.net>
wrote:
> Am 02.04.2010, 19:36 Uhr, schrieb Anton Ertl *
> <an...@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>:
>
> > About once per year I post some data on programming language
> > popularity, based on the number of postings in the comp.lang.* groups.
> > I just took another sample, and below you can find the results, as
> > well as some older results. *For more results and the data, on which
> > they are based, see
> > <http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/comp.lang-statistics/>.
>
> Am 03.04.2010, 11:06 Uhr, schrieb Rod Pemberton <do_not_h...@havenone.cmm>:
>
> > Look how far Python for Mar 2010 is down that list compared to Ertl's for
> > Apr 2010. *Forth doesn't even make the top 20 in Tiobe rank. *It comes *
> > in as
> > number 37, after LOGO... *Yes, you read that correctly, after LOGO. *I
> > suspect both of these sampling methods are flawed, although Tiobe results
> > appear far more realistic to me.
>
> Tiobe sells services for curly braced languages. *So I am not all that *
> convinced about Tiobe - especialy after they removed usenet in favour of *
> youtube. I can understand adding an addition source - but removing an *
> existing source for which all the scripts are already written. That sounds *
> like fine tuning the statistic so the right result is reported.
>
> At comp.lang.ada we recently did our own stat which too comes to different *
> result:http://lang-index.sourceforge.netusing similar tests as Tiobe.
>
> Martin
> --
> Martin Krischik

Perhaps someone could write a 'random question' generator (in Ada of
course!) and have it send post to c.l.a. once an hour or so...it could
gradually increase the frequency of posts over the months, so giving
the impression that Ada is getting more popular over time.

-- Martin

Martin <martin.dowie@btopenworld.com> writes:
>On Apr 3, 10:46=A0am, "Martin Krischik" <krisc...@users.sourceforge.net>
>wrote:
>> Am 02.04.2010, 19:36 Uhr, schrieb Anton Ertl =A0
>> <an...@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>:
>>
>> > About once per year I post some data on programming language
>> > popularity, based on the number of postings in the comp.lang.* groups.
>> > I just took another sample, and below you can find the results, as
>> > well as some older results. =A0For more results and the data, on which
>> > they are based, see
>> > <http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/comp.lang-statistics/>.
....
>Perhaps someone could write a 'random question' generator (in Ada of
>course!) and have it send post to c.l.a. once an hour or so...it could
>gradually increase the frequency of posts over the months, so giving
>the impression that Ada is getting more popular over time.

That is addressed in the web page linked-to above:

|Please don't use this page as an excuse to post noise to the groups
|for your favourite programming language. That would damage the group,
|and therefore eventually reduce the number of postings in the group.

Of course, for, e.g., comp.lang.dylan there is not much left to
damage, but c.l.ada and c.l.forth are in a much better position. And
even comp.lang.beta and comp.lang.asm370 seem to have a minor revival.

Of course you could plan to spam so much that you make up for or even
exceed the loss, but I doubt that looking good at these statistics is
so valuable that someone would want to destroy a working community
communication medium. Also, you might not even have success with such
a plan; my news server employs Cleanfeed to filter out spam, and is
quite effective at that, so your spam might not even show up in my
statistics (ok, maybe your spam generator will outwit Cleanfeed (after
all, the spam generator is written in Ada and Cleanfeed in Perl:-)).

- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
comp.lang.forth FAQs: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/toc.html
New standard: http://www.forth200x.org/forth200x.html
EuroForth 2009: http://www.euroforth.org/ef09/

On Apr 3, 2:21*pm, an...@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl)
wrote:
> Martin <martin.do...@btopenworld.com> writes:
> >On Apr 3, 10:46=A0am, "Martin Krischik" <krisc...@users.sourceforge.net>
> >wrote:
> >> Am 02.04.2010, 19:36 Uhr, schrieb Anton Ertl =A0
> >> <an...@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>:
>
> >> > About once per year I post some data on programming language
> >> > popularity, based on the number of postings in the comp.lang.* groups.
> >> > I just took another sample, and below you can find the results, as
> >> > well as some older results. =A0For more results and the data, on which
> >> > they are based, see
> >> > <http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/comp.lang-statistics/>.
> ...
> >Perhaps someone could write a 'random question' generator (in Ada of
> >course!) and have it send post to c.l.a. once an hour or so...it could
> >gradually increase the frequency of posts over the months, so giving
> >the impression that Ada is getting more popular over time.
>
> That is addressed in the web page linked-to above:
>
> |Please don't use this page as an excuse to post noise to the groups
> |for your favourite programming language. That would damage the group,
> |and therefore eventually reduce the number of postings in the group.
>
> Of course, for, e.g., comp.lang.dylan there is not much left to
> damage, but c.l.ada and c.l.forth are in a much better position. *And
> even comp.lang.beta and comp.lang.asm370 seem to have a minor revival.
>
> Of course you could plan to spam so much that you make up for or even
> exceed the loss, but I doubt that looking good at these statistics is
> so valuable that someone would want to destroy a working community
> communication medium. *Also, you might not even have success with such
> a plan; my news server employs Cleanfeed to filter out spam, and is
> quite effective at that, so your spam might not even show up in my
> statistics (ok, maybe your spam generator will outwit Cleanfeed (after
> all, the spam generator is written in Ada and Cleanfeed in Perl:-)).
>
> - anton
> --
> M. Anton Ertl *http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
> comp.lang.forth FAQs:http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/toc.html
> * * *New standard:http://www.forth200x.org/forth200x.html
> * *EuroForth 2009:http://www.euroforth.org/ef09/


lolz :-)

On Apr 3, 11:46*am, "Martin Krischik" <krisc...@users.sourceforge.net>
wrote:

> Tiobe sells services for curly braced languages. *So I am not all that *
> convinced about Tiobe - especialy after they removed usenet in favour of *
> youtube. I can understand adding an addition source - but removing an *
> existing source for which all the scripts are already written. That sounds *
> like fine tuning the statistic so the right result is reported.

It doesn't explain everything - as you notice later...
For instance usenet is partially mirrored by sites which in their turn
appear in standard web searches. Nevertheless I plan to introduce
groups.google.com into the LPI as it reflects not only the whole
usenet but also many popular alternative forums.

> At comp.lang.ada we recently did our own stat which too comes to different *
> result: http://lang-index.sourceforge.net using similar tests as Tiobe.

I need to stress there that the LPI's results can be verified and
reproduced, and that all intermediary results are published.
Now where the differences comes from, since currently the methods are
very close ?
Apart from slight changes in confidence factors, perhaps the main
reason relies in the way tiobe's data are collected, which seems to be
very time-consuming (cf the FAQ). Perhaps there are typos: for
instance, Fortran made a jump from some 0.35% to 0.563% in March (with
a nice headline about good old Fortran being back in the top 20 !) and
the moved back to 0.35%. Although such movement may well be caused by
some issue in one search engine or the other... There seem also to be
a accumulation of biases. Perhaps something else...
Anyway, I would not buy the data without a full disclosure or an
audit.

My 0.02 CHF

G.

On 3 avr, 11:46, "Martin Krischik" <krisc...@users.sourceforge.net>
wrote:

> Tiobe sells services for curly braced languages.

Mostly, but not only - they have Ada and GNAT tools here:
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/conte...FactSheet.html
(Under Supported Programming Languages and Tools)
__________________________________________________ ____________
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