What's amazing is that on IRC the most talked about language is Python. Next is Haskell. Go figure!
On Feb 17, 12:08 am, Robert Bradshaw <rober...@math.washington.edu> wrote: > On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 3:41 PM, Dr. David Kirkby > > > > > > > > > > <david.kir...@onetel.net> wrote: > > On 02/16/11 03:16 PM, William Stein wrote: > > >> On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 4:55 AM, Dr. David Kirkby > >> <david.kir...@onetel.net> wrote: > > >>> On 02/16/11 03:31 AM, Eviatar wrote: > > >>>> Hello, > > >>>> I have been monitoring TIOBE, a programming language popularity index. > >>>> Python has been experiencing extremely fast growth in the last few > >>>> months, rising to fourth place from seventh in a year, just behind > >>>> Java, C, and C++. It has also experienced the most increase in > >>>> popularity of any language in 2010. TIOBE uses search engines for > >>>> data, by the way, so the results are indicative of popularity in > >>>> numbers of searches, not necessarily usage. > > >>>> I think this is an extraordinary success for Python, and can only be > >>>> good for Sage. > > >>> I'm somewhat suspicious of that data. For example, Lisp is #14, MATLAB > >>> #29 > >>> and LabVIEW #47. > > >>> Do a job search on monstir.com or similar and see how many jobs want Lisp > >>> programmers compared to MATLAB and Labview. > > >> They define what they are actually measuring here: > > >>http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/tpci_definition... > > >> They claim all they are doing is a weighted count of the number of > >> hits for +"<language> programming" on > >> Google/YouTube/Blogger/Wikipedia/etc. > > >> I just tried a few searches of the form +"<language> programming" on > >> just Google, and indeed Python is way ahead of many other languages, > >> but java/C/C++/.NET are way ahead of Python. Lisp returns less than > >> 10% the number of results as Python. > > > .NET is one that surprised me. Visual Basic .NET comes in at #22 on the > > TIOBE list. That's the first mention of .NET. Again, well behind Lisp. > > > There are over 1000 jobs on monstir.com mentioning .NET, compared to 2 with > > Lisp. > > > So can anyone seriously believe that TIOBE's cliam: > > > "can be used to check whether your programming skills are > > still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what > > programming language should be adopted when starting to build a new > > software system." > > > According to TIOBE's stats I'd be better learning Lisp than .NET, yet there > > are more than 500 times as many jobs on Monstir mentioning .NET compared to > > Lisp. > > > Note Mathematica is nowhere to be found. I have seen the odd jobs on Monstir > > where Mathematica skills were desirable or needed, but they have been very > > few. There are none at the minute. This is why I have some difficulty in > > believing the claims from Wolfram Research about the number of users in > > industry. The web site gives the impression Mathematica is used a lot in > > industry, but that does not seem to be backed up by the number of job > > adverts mentioning the tool. > > >http://www.wolfram.com/solutions/ > > > Perhaps monstir.com is not the best source of information, but I think that > > reflects current usage in industry more accurately than blog posts, > > Wikipedia or Google can be. Lots of the information on these sites is very > > old. > > Of course monster.com has a bias towards entry-level, high-turnover, > and hard-to-fill positions. Perhaps Lisp is not high on that list > because programming in Lisp doesn't burn you out as fast as > programming with .NET, and it's easy to find people who want to code > with Lisp? (People don't resort to monster.com until word-of-mouth > advertising and internal referrals have dried up.) > > > I'm not disputing the claims about Python - I have no evidence to suggest > > they are right or wrong. But I don't trust TIOBE's stats myself. I'm not > > disputing they are an accurate from their data collection methods, but I > > suggest their methods of collecting data are not very good. > > I think they're doing a very good job at describing precisely what > they're measuring and then collecting/plotting that data. It seems > that what you're disputing is whether the data they're collecting is > *relevant* to "check whether your programming skills are still up to > date or to make a strategic decision about what programming language > should be adopted when starting to build a new software system." which > could be a big topic of discussion, but I'd say it's certainly an > interesting metric to look at (as are job posting statistics), and > perhaps the trends even more so than the absolute numbers or rankings. > > - Robert -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
