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Java Programming

C Programming Language Back At Number 1 535

derrida writes "After more than 4 years C is back at position number 1 in the TIOBE index. The scores for C have been pretty constant through the years, varying between the 15% and 20% market share for almost 10 years. So the main reason for C's number 1 position is not C's uprise, but the decline of its competitor Java. Java has a long-term downward trend. It is losing ground to other languages running on the JVM. An example of such a language is JavaFX, which is now approaching the top 20."
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C Programming Language Back At Number 1

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  • by Thorrablot ( 590170 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2010 @10:20PM (#31757430)
    but shouldn't it really be at number 0?
    • Nah, that's the NULL position. That's where programming languages go to die.

  • by shutdown -p now ( 807394 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2010 @10:23PM (#31757448) Journal

    Go ahead, read it for yourself [tiobe.com], and tell me how this is supposed to give any meaningful results. They aggregate together things of all kind, to the point where an aggregate doesn't make any sense at all (I mean, hits such as "programming in PHP sucks" or "you must be an idiot to write production code in VB" would count as +1 for PHP and VB, correspondingly!). You can have one language having many job postings, another having many books, and yet another having many basic "how to?" questions and dumbed-down tutorials, and they'd all get the same rating.

    In any case, most certainly, at these numbers (Java 18.051%, C 18.058%), speaking of one overtaking another is completely pointless, given the margin of error.

    Anyway, if you want to know how popular a particular language/technology is, the simplest - and much more accurate! - way of doing so is to check any popular job search web site. Just keep in mind that preferences vary in different regions, so if you are making career choices, stick to local/national postings, and if you want to see an overall worldwide trend, you have to aggregate data from enough sources.

  • by Raul Acevedo ( 15878 ) <raulNO@SPAMcantara.com> on Tuesday April 06, 2010 @10:27PM (#31757470) Homepage

    "Java has a long term downward trend". Wrong. For one, C and Java share the same "downward trend" from 2002 (earliest year on the chart) and 2007. From 2007 to late last year, both C and Java basically stay about the same. Only in the last 6 months or so can you say Java has been doing down and C rising.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    There is no way these numbers are anywhere near an approximation of reality.

    How many people have real jobs where they get paid to program in Go full-time? Ten guys in the whole world maybe? But it's ranked 15. But when you look at Groovy (the JVM dynamic language) it's ranked at #44, and I personally know at least 20 developers who've used it at a variety of companies (and get paid to do so).

    I don't trust these stats at all.

    • by sys.stdout.write ( 1551563 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2010 @10:30PM (#31757500)
      Your anecdotal evidence it irrefutable.
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      Damn if you know 20 developers, Groovy must be like 2-3 at least!

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by X0563511 ( 793323 )

      I'm also curious as to what the point is.

      Assuming the numbers are accurate (a big assumption here) all this turns out to be is a big popularity contest. Those have their uses, but none of them are to identify which of something is better. Confounding this further is the very idea of one language being better than another. ( ok, except VB :P ) The simple truth is that programming languages normally come about to fill a niche. Naturally, they are better in that niche.

      In the context of the "web" would you argu

      • There's no such thing as 'better'. Given an specific task or application, one language may be better suited to it than another, but 'better' or 'best' language has no meaning when looking at all possible applications.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          I think it's fair to say that, regardless of application or task, PHP is always the worst, unless the task is "programming language that dangerous retards can use". At least with languages like C, Java and even Python, there's a sufficient learning curve at the start that it scares precisely the kind of people who shouldn't be writing code.

  • Java (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Andy Smith ( 55346 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2010 @10:32PM (#31757516)

    I expect Java to gain ground again as developers create apps for Android phones.

    Although the bare-bones Nexus One hasn't sold in huge numbers, HTC have already produced several superb Android-based alternatives, such as the Legend and the Desire. If/when Android becomes the commonplace operating system in the smartphone market, this will lead to a rise in Java development.

    In fact, to join in with the recent Apple-bashing (which I whole-heartedly agree with), I'd suggest that mobile app development will move away from the iPhone, in favour of Android phones. When you are investing time and money in app development, there is simply more certainty in developing apps that will live or die on their merits, as opposed to Apple's 'approval' process.

    It is now over 2 weeks since Opera Mini was submitted to Apple for approval:
    http://my.opera.com/community/countup/ [opera.com]

    • Oracle is also putting a lot of resources into desktop Java. So if they don't screw up, it's possible a resurgence (well, a reboot) is on it's way there as well.

      And server side Java is king.

  • 0.007% (Score:5, Insightful)

    by westlake ( 615356 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2010 @10:34PM (#31757532)

    The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, Yahoo!, Wikipedia and YouTube are used to calculate the ratings

    I feel so much confidence in these numbers.
     

    • Re:0.007% (Score:5, Funny)

      by corbettw ( 214229 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2010 @10:51PM (#31757636) Journal

      Why not? Hell, I know when I want to check out the goings on in programming the first and last place I turn is YouTube.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )

        Because with Java - I generally do not need to search the web for the answer. However, take C# for instance, and depending on which OS I'm running on, I may have to run 20 or 30 searches for every single answer, because I thought I might have it - but won't know until I try it whether it works for 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, or 3.51....etc.

  • by wandazulu ( 265281 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2010 @10:36PM (#31757558)

    Seems about as relevant as ranking programming languages to their popularity. Does the fact that C is #1 mean I should start writing my websites with it (I've done it, actually...and it was extremely fast and extremely painful)?

    I don't see how this metric has any use at all, especially given their criteria for determining popularity.

    • by glwtta ( 532858 )
      I don't see how this metric has any use at all, especially given their criteria for determining popularity.

      Oh, I don't know, might give you a hint as to where the jobs are, for one thing?

      Can't speak to their methodology (it does sound pretty sketchy, though).
    • You shouldn't use C to write web pages any more than I should use PHP and HTML to write my 3D OpenGL programs.

      Use the right tool for the job. There is no one fits all.

  • Check out the graph for Perl! I might start using it again just because I feel like I owe it to the old friend...
  • C is the new COBOL.

    Back in the Bush I recession, COBOL was the hip language to learn.

  • Is naturally, LOGO!

  • No... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Killer Eye ( 3711 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2010 @11:06PM (#31757726)

    Job listings don't mean very much.

    Employees that are very happy with a language, and productive in it, might keep their jobs for years; you may never even know that their companies were using that language. One productive employee might do the job of 10 people in some other language, and maybe that's why they aren't hiring.

    Some job postings only made me cringe when I saw them, and many make me think to myself: "all-Microsoft shop, never heard of what X, Y or Z can do". Just because there's a job available, doesn't mean the language is popular; it might even mean the opposite, i.e. all the sane people jumped ship months ago, instead of trying to maintain a steaming pile of code, that a company is now desperately trying to hire people to support.

    Don't ever learn one of the stupid programming languages just to get a job. Do something you enjoy...make money without programming if you have to, for awhile, until you find a job that requires languages and platforms that you actually like and can be productive in. Nothing else is worthwhile.

  • by thoughtsatthemoment ( 1687848 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2010 @11:12PM (#31757756) Journal
    As a long time C++ programmer who recently went back to C, I can tell you that C feels like a different language if you use it with all the skills you acquired from other languages. As a language C is almost perfect. It's the libraries that makes all the difference.
  • C-whatever (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NicknamesAreStupid ( 1040118 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2010 @11:18PM (#31757808)
    C has become the English of computer languages. There are so many derivatives - C++, C#, 'Objective-C', Java, and all those other web scripting languages like Actionscript and PHP -- that I can't even keep track of them all. Their syntax are so similar, yet their libraries are from different planets. As for K&R's C, it is probably like the Queen's English - rarely spoken well and often slurred.

    Remember when languages really looked different - COBOL, PL/1, Fortran, Lisp? I date myself.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      I have heard C++ compared to English, both are the best language for everything, but neither are especially good languages for anything. You can almost always find a better language for any particular task, but it is at least tolerable to use for almost anything, so people use it. C is like one of the more formal varieties of English, like what Sir Ernest Gowers calls Madarin Prose: elegant when used properly, terrible and incomprehensible when used badly (which it often is), somewhat antiquated, and often

  • Robots only use C (Score:4, Interesting)

    by societyofrobots ( 1396043 ) on Wednesday April 07, 2010 @12:15AM (#31758126)

    Robot programming has become very big lately, and the overwhelming number of microcontrollers out there only use C/C++ (well, and Assembly, but that doesn't count).

It is contrary to reasoning to say that there is a vacuum or space in which there is absolutely nothing. -- Descartes

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