TIOBE Adjusts Programming Language Popularity Calculations. Python, C, and Java Still Popular (techrepublic.com) 31
"As of the 1st of May, the Alexa web traffic ranking engine is going to stop its services," the TIOBE Index reminds us. So for the first time, TIOBE has switched to Similarweb this month to choose which search engines' results to use for its ranking of the popularity of programming languages.
Fortunately, there are no big changes in the index due to this swap. The only striking difference is that the top 3 languages, Python, C, and Java, all gained more than 1 percent in the rankings.
We are still fine-tuning the integration with Similarweb, which is combined with a shift to HtmlUnit in the back-end. Some websites are not onboarded yet, but will follow soon. Now that HtmlUnit is applied for web crawling, it will become possible to add more sites to the index, such as Stackoverflow and Github. This will hopefully happen in the next few months.
TechRepublic reports: Python continues to sit atop the index, with C and Java directly behind it. In Feb. 2021, those three also occupied the top spot, but with Python in the number three position, C at top, and Java in second place.
Beyond the top three, there hasn't been much movement in the index, with positions four through eight unchanged from the same time last year. Those slots are occupied, respectively, by C++, C#, Visual Basic, JavaScript and PHP. Positions nine and 10 swapped from Feb. 21 to now, with Assembly Language and SQL now occupying each other's positions.
The one big move of note between Feb. 2021 and Feb. 2022 was with the Groovy programming language, an object-oriented language for Java. Over the course of the year, Groovy fell from 12th position all the way to 20th, putting it perilously close to the "other programming languages" list.
Thanks to Amigan (Slashdot reader #25,469) for sharing the story.
We are still fine-tuning the integration with Similarweb, which is combined with a shift to HtmlUnit in the back-end. Some websites are not onboarded yet, but will follow soon. Now that HtmlUnit is applied for web crawling, it will become possible to add more sites to the index, such as Stackoverflow and Github. This will hopefully happen in the next few months.
TechRepublic reports: Python continues to sit atop the index, with C and Java directly behind it. In Feb. 2021, those three also occupied the top spot, but with Python in the number three position, C at top, and Java in second place.
Beyond the top three, there hasn't been much movement in the index, with positions four through eight unchanged from the same time last year. Those slots are occupied, respectively, by C++, C#, Visual Basic, JavaScript and PHP. Positions nine and 10 swapped from Feb. 21 to now, with Assembly Language and SQL now occupying each other's positions.
The one big move of note between Feb. 2021 and Feb. 2022 was with the Groovy programming language, an object-oriented language for Java. Over the course of the year, Groovy fell from 12th position all the way to 20th, putting it perilously close to the "other programming languages" list.
Thanks to Amigan (Slashdot reader #25,469) for sharing the story.
I'm surprised Visual Basic is still high (Score:3)
What's the use case for Visual Basic?
Re:I'm surprised Visual Basic is still high (Score:4, Informative)
Software developed in the 90's and early 2000's.
Though I guess it's possible it's also people searching for help with VBA who aren't using "VBA" in the search.
A better question is what's the use case for Python?
Re: I'm surprised Visual Basic is still high (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There are better options and just about everything is faster. It's popularity is a complete mystery to me.
Re: (Score:2)
Python is very easy to learn - you can quickly get to the point where you can hack together something useful. Many of the students and faculty in our engineering department understandably love it and rely on it.
However, I keep running into more and more situations where it becomes obvious these people are severely lacking in what I consider basic computing knowledge - it appears they've mostly learned python (and the rest of their computer skillset) via google searches and stack overflow in a strictly "as n
Re: (Score:2)
Some people like the syntax.
It supports traditional modular/procedural programming and oop.
The libraries are just awesome. And some frameworks are awesome, too.
It has plenty of cool language features.
And it is a nice alternative to static typed languages.
Lack of speed is simply wrong: basically everything you do in Python is done by an underlying C/C++ library.
You should dig into Python. Fooling around with it is fun.
Re: (Score:3)
Some people like the syntax.
You mean like how invisible characters actually determine how the program works, and not just how it looks ? That 'feature' ?!?
Re: (Score:2)
You mean like how invisible characters actually determine how the program works, and not just how it looks ? That 'feature' ?!?
Yes, for many people it is. Or what do you think why they are all full with aA's and oO's about it?
Re: I'm surprised Visual Basic is still high (Score:2)
> I think Python works well as a scripting language for processing an input stream. It wouldn't be me first choice for a user facing application.
Yeah it's handy to bang out a quick script to process some data. The type of application where you don't even bother with input validation. So you can use a language that doesn't know the difference between an integer and a string. Of course, there's a family of languages that built ONLY for processing streams of data. The most recent and powerful incarnation i
Re: I'm surprised Visual Basic is still high (Score:2)
Re: I'm surprised Visual Basic is still high (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I second the question of what's up with Visual Basic?
Because if you look at the graph, VB usage saw a notable jump between March and April in 2020.
For better reference: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-in... [tiobe.com]
What happened there in 2020?
Re: (Score:2)
There's something wrong with the stats for VB. It jumped up in 2020 apparently. Working in the MS ecosystem, I struggle to believe this.
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If it's not just an artifact caused by a change TIOBE made to their methodology, which seems likely, my best guess would be groups using PPP funds to update or replace old applications.
Re:I'm surprised Visual Basic is still high (Score:4, Insightful)
What's the use case for Visual Basic?
I used to work in VB back in the 90's. A powerful platform for application development. It just so happen that many people who go to Basic sort of sucked back in the day, and the platform has suffered a bad reputation as a result.
For context: I've worked in C++, C, Java, Python, Basic, FoxPro/Visual FoxPro, Pascal/Delphi and C# among other tools, in the applications and systems programming spaces. I have no beef with Visual Basic. It is a tool, and a good tool in the hands of good developers.
Picking a language based on popularity... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Billions and billions served (Score:3)
Whenever I hear about what's popular, I remember that McDonald's is by far the most popular burger, and probably the most popular food brand. It's nowhere close to the best.
Recently I was in a meeting and I mentioned we'd need to look at some security considerations regarding some new software the company wanted to deploy. A VP said "Acme is a very well-known brand, it's probably the most popular software for this. I'm sure it's safe." I replied:
Tony, every month you're in the meeting where I go over the 60
Re: Billions and billions served (Score:2)
Re:Picking a language ... it's complexity (Score:2)
It's not a measure of popularity, it's a measure of how often people have to ask "how do I ... ?"and that's a measure of complexity.
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The vast majority of business applications could be developed in just about any modern programming language. When it comes time to hire developers, then popularity is a pretty significant attribute. If you could build an application in less code with Haskell, but you would struggle to find developers who know and enjoy Haskell, then that probably isn't a good tradeoff for the company.
Does anyone care about this arbitrary rating? (Score:2)
n/t
Python's lack of of typing (Score:3)
From the article: "The only drawbacks of Python are performance and lack of typing."
I think that the lack of typing is Python's biggest strength, because of all the flexibility the language is able to provide.
Back then when C++ was new, and OOP was all the rage, inheritance was supposed to take care of all programmer's needs, and never again would we need to duplicate code.
Python is much more pragmatic. You still can inherit all the classes you want, but the preferred way is to just emulate the proper protocol, and let the libraries do their magic. They call it duck typing. You make your data structures behave like the duck you want, and suddenly you don't need them to be laid by a real duck.
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From the article: "The only drawbacks of Python are performance and lack of typing."
It is incorrect anyway. Python is a strong but dynamic typed language. Not a typeless or weak typed language.
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Back then when C++ was new, and OOP was all the rage, inheritance was supposed to take care of all programmer's needs, and never again would we need to duplicate code.
I have used C++ a fair bit, and I never found its advanced OOP features particularly useful. I find templates and generic programming far more useful. I like the idea of data encapsulation, where you construct objects that have some internal mechanism and private data, and a public interface, because the object is then like a module or a component in an electronic system. I am coming to this as an electronics engineer. It is rather interesting that Rust provides this kind of modularisation, but does not cla
Assembly above SQL (Score:2)
Really, that many people are still coding in Assembly?
Doesn't compute for me
The usual nonsense (Score:1)