TIOBE Declares Python the Programming Language of 2007

The TIOBE Programming Community Index has declared Python as the Programming Language of 2007 due to a 58% surge in its popularity rating during the year, making it now the sixth most popular programming language and finally surpassing Perl. They also assert that Python has become the "defacto glue language," being "especially beloved by system administrators and build managers."

Re:Bout Time

[StevisF]

People don't hate Python. People hate the people who go around trolling discussion of every other programming language saying how much better Python is than the language being discussed.

Re:Hmmm

[AmaDaden]

What's up with all the [your favorite programing language] haters on Slashdot?

*sigh* Welcome to Slashdot....

Lies, damned lies, and statistics

[Haeleth]

It all depends how you count it. For example, here [indeed.com] is a comparison based on available jobs that shows Perl still vastly in the lead, followed by PHP, with Python and Ruby both trailing by a long way. I'm sure there are other figures that prove that PHP is the biggest language, and yet others that show Ruby is growing fastest, etc. etc. etc.

TIOBE's methodology is distinctly suspect, too. Looking at search engine result counts - which are estimates, and in the case of Google are well documented to be inaccurate - is hardly scientific. And they're using YouTube as one of their search engines?! How is that going to produce meaningful figures?

(Yeah, I'm still bitter that ML is so unpopular. But you can't call me a Perl fanboy, because I dislike all "dynamic" programming languages equally, and program largely in C++ and OCaml.)

Re:Hmmm

[XorNand]

I can't quite figure out if you're a subtle troll or not? However, one of the biggest complaints about PHP programmers is that they're oblivious to a lot of important aspects of programing. Security being one of the biggies. Not being aware of the general criticisms of their chosen tools is another. (Which, if you're not a troll, you've proven my point.) I happen love Python, but I'm also aware of why many people don't like it.

Re:Lies, damned lies, and statistics

[DragonWriter]

TIOBE's methodology is distinctly suspect, too. Looking at search engine result counts - which are estimates, and in the case of Google are well documented to be inaccurate - is hardly scientific. And they're using YouTube as one of their search engines?! How is that going to produce meaningful figures?

Their measuring the popularity of language foo by "Programming foo" hits, with some special case modifications to deal with particular languages where that kind of query would be problematic. Its not at all a reliable metric, but among the quick-and-dirty language-comparison metrics, it doesn't seem to be notably bad (not, again, that its any good, just that whole pack is really bad and this seems no worse than average.)

Using YouTube makes some sense given the kind of measure they are doing, since "Programming foo" screencasts that might be distributed via YouTube are as meaningful as the average "Programming foo" webpage.

(I hate screencasts, personally, but that's a different issue.)

Re:Reasons to love PYTHON!

[vrmlguy]

Indentation preferences vary among programmers, are arbitrary, and some people feel strongly about 4-space, 2 space, tabs, etc. Python uses this as a syntax element and forces everyone working on a particular file to share the same indentation scheme or risk breaking the code.

Some of use view this as a good thing. ;-)

Personally, I hate tabs. Every editor I use seems to have the tab-stops set differently, and looking at 4-space tab code in an 8-space tab editor is not my idea of fun.

Re:Questionable methodology

[rjames13]

I never put "language programming" into a search engine I find "language library tutorial" is better. Of course that means I am learning "language" and "library". If I'm already programming in a specific language and know where the libraries documentation is then I have it bookmarked.

Re:Reasons to love PYTHON!

[SanityInAnarchy]

You can't just send somebody some Python code in a medium that isn't whitespace-safe.

What medium?

Indentation preferences vary among programmers, are arbitrary, and some people feel strongly about 4-space, 2 space, tabs, etc. Python uses this as a syntax element and forces everyone working on a particular file to share the same indentation scheme or risk breaking the code. In free-form languages, one guy who forgets to change his 4-space tab into actual spaces isn't going to break things.

That's actually a feature -- it forces everyone to agree on a standard there, and use it.

If, for example, one guy uses tabs and one guy uses spaces, and the tab guy has his tabstop set to 2 or 4, while the spaces guy has left it at 8... well, stuff is going to look weird. Forcing everyone to the same convention is something you should be doing anyway, and I'd rather it happen automatically (by breaking stuff).

All languages are bashed on /.

[Qbertino]

Sure there is PHP bashing, as is bashing of many other PLs. Just watch a Lisp or C guy go after Java to see what I mean.

The truth is, the people that really are programming and solving problems rarely rant about a PL without having tried it. PHP is an extremely n00by-friendly programming language - also because of it's wide availability - and thus lots of code in PHP is quite wacky actually. This falls back on to the PL itself. Flash/ActionScript has simular problems (aside from having a strong prorpietary touch to it).

In the end PHP, with its neighbourhood to markup, is the web-eras basic. With way more succesfull and impacting open-source web applications than any other solution - Python included.

I *am* a Python fan, but it just didn't have that critical mass of an install base back then when mod_php gained traction. And that the true King and ruler of all webkits, Zope, has had a backend that looks like shit for 7 years now didn't help it either. Nowadays nobody gives a hoot if Zope is lightyears ahead of Rails and a few years older - it's just a niche webkit for people who've bumped into it

There are a lot of factors that make a language successfull, and PHP meets very many of those. Just because people rant about it doesn't mean it really is bad. Nobody I know would say that programming in C is really fun and modern and hip. And many people rant about it. Yet look how many mission critical work still is done with it - because the untested alternatives aren't any better.

On the server-side I've been mostly doing PHP for last 3 years now and am now going totally OOP with the CakePHP Framework and a large international project. It works, is extremely neat and quick to develop with. So be it that PHP has a few bizarly named core functions and arrow->syntax. So *fucking* what? My friend who has a business aswell and is a Sun partner and Java fanboy just moved his webproject from Java to PHP so they could finish it faster.
"Java Fanboy speeds up project by switching to PHP" - enough said.

Slashdotters rant a lot, but reality is allways a tad different.