4 ms·

Ranking Programming Languages by Size of Community and Number of Projects

47 points by ghurlman 16y ago

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
dotBen 16y ago
It makes for a pretty graph but has two serious flaws. Measuring GitHub projects to measure the size of a language creates a heavy bias towards open-source friendly languages [1]. C#, VisualBasic, ColdFusion and ObjectiveC all exist way above the trend line because OSS projects on GitHub are less likely to use non-OSS languages. ObjC might be OSS (not sure) but iOS projects tend not to be OSS. Likewise, measuring the number of posts on StackOverflow doesn't correlate at all well to the size of the programmer base (even if used as a sample). [1] not that I'm against open-source projects, but I'm sure most HN'ers would agree that you want the data itself to be free of bias and leave the bias to occur only in people's conclusion of the data.
timtadh 16y ago
Original blog post here: http://www.dataists.com/2010/12/ranking-the-popularity-of-programming-langauges/ http://www.dataists.com/2010/12/ranking-the-popularity-of-pr... RWW pretty much just repackaged the original post with a small amount of commentary.
berntb 16y ago
Just out of curiosity, as I've not started with Github (yet). How many environments for languages/operating systems have most of their stuff in pre-github systems (CPAN and Perlmonks for Perl, kernels, etc)?
- fleitz 16y ago
  Pretty much everything except that which is rails related. In more seriousness, what do you mean by stuff? Many gems have their source in github, but really if github imploded tomorrow gem install rails would still work. Do you mean, who doesn't host their source on github / have a clone of it on github, or do you mean what pieces of infrastructure would fail if github went down tomorrow.
  - Seth_Kriticos 16y ago
    "or do you mean what pieces of infrastructure would fail if github went down tomorrow." The answer to that being: not many. The basic architecture of git (and other DVCS's) is, that everyone has a copy of the full revision history, so if github really went down, you'd see most of the projects there (at least most of the active ones someone cares about) on gitorious or some other git hosting service within a very short period of time, and things would go on with only a minor interruption.
- chrisaycock 16y ago
  You could also make the argument that older languages are discussed on sites other than StackOverflow (ie, Google Groups, direct forums, etc). I get the impression it all washes out in the end.
  - berntb 16y ago
    Perlmonks which I mentioned, is a StackOverflow variant since a decade, or so.
augustl 16y ago
The title should really include "on Github". If you included GNU projects and BSD and so on, you'd get a lot more C, for example.
- aeurielesn 16y ago
  I think that even just adding sourceforge may have pumped C a lot more.
mynameishere 16y ago
Not going to squint at that. But really, ranking languages by money involved: COBOL 1.0 JAVA 0.1 C++ 0.1 .NET 0.05 OTHER 0.0000001
- Keyframe 16y ago
  ADA must be at 0.75 at least then!
aeurielesn 16y ago
I wonder whether using unanswered questions from SO was a good idea. Shouldn't it mean that the community is lacking cohesion?
astrofinch 16y ago
Programming languages, databases, and browsers ranked based on a variety of characteristics: http://hammerprinciple.com/ http://hammerprinciple.com/
Havoc 16y ago
I'm surprised to see so many assembly projects on github. Also, Delphi is missing from the tiers.
noelwelsh 16y ago
There are obvious holes in the methodology, so I wouldn't take the content of the post too seriously. What I do think is great about this post is how the authors generated a bunch of hits from an hour or so of work. Pick a topic with wide interest, do some simple (but non-trivial, if you aren't used to the tools) analysis, watch the traffic roll in! It's a good model for anyone trying to drive traffic to their site.
- noglorp 16y ago
  Being successful on the internet is easy! Just create interesting content, and then generate viewers!
stcredzero 16y ago
I'd be interested in the trends! What communities are growing, which ones are shrinking, and which ones are stable?

47 points by ghurlman 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

It makes for a pretty graph but has two serious flaws. Measuring GitHub projects to measure the size of a language creates a heavy bias towards open-source friendly languages [1]. C#, VisualBasic, ColdFusion and ObjectiveC all exist way above the trend line because OSS projects on GitHub are less likely to use non-OSS languages. ObjC might be OSS (not sure) but iOS projects tend not to be OSS. Likewise, measuring the number of posts on StackOverflow doesn't correlate at all well to the size of the programmer base (even if used as a sample). [1] not that I'm against open-source projects, but I'm sure most HN'ers would agree that you want the data itself to be free of bias and leave the bias to occur only in people's conclusion of the data.

timtadh 16y ago

Original blog post here: http://www.dataists.com/2010/12/ranking-the-popularity-of-programming-langauges/ http://www.dataists.com/2010/12/ranking-the-popularity-of-pr... RWW pretty much just repackaged the original post with a small amount of commentary.

berntb 16y ago

Just out of curiosity, as I've not started with Github (yet). How many environments for languages/operating systems have most of their stuff in pre-github systems (CPAN and Perlmonks for Perl, kernels, etc)?

fleitz 16y ago
Pretty much everything except that which is rails related. In more seriousness, what do you mean by stuff? Many gems have their source in github, but really if github imploded tomorrow gem install rails would still work. Do you mean, who doesn't host their source on github / have a clone of it on github, or do you mean what pieces of infrastructure would fail if github went down tomorrow.
- Seth_Kriticos 16y ago
  "or do you mean what pieces of infrastructure would fail if github went down tomorrow." The answer to that being: not many. The basic architecture of git (and other DVCS's) is, that everyone has a copy of the full revision history, so if github really went down, you'd see most of the projects there (at least most of the active ones someone cares about) on gitorious or some other git hosting service within a very short period of time, and things would go on with only a minor interruption.
chrisaycock 16y ago
You could also make the argument that older languages are discussed on sites other than StackOverflow (ie, Google Groups, direct forums, etc). I get the impression it all washes out in the end.
- berntb 16y ago
  Perlmonks which I mentioned, is a StackOverflow variant since a decade, or so.

augustl 16y ago

The title should really include "on Github". If you included GNU projects and BSD and so on, you'd get a lot more C, for example.

aeurielesn 16y ago
I think that even just adding sourceforge may have pumped C a lot more.

mynameishere 16y ago

Not going to squint at that. But really, ranking languages by money involved: COBOL 1.0 JAVA 0.1 C++ 0.1 .NET 0.05 OTHER 0.0000001

Keyframe 16y ago
ADA must be at 0.75 at least then!

aeurielesn 16y ago

I wonder whether using unanswered questions from SO was a good idea. Shouldn't it mean that the community is lacking cohesion?

astrofinch 16y ago

Programming languages, databases, and browsers ranked based on a variety of characteristics: http://hammerprinciple.com/ http://hammerprinciple.com/

Havoc 16y ago

I'm surprised to see so many assembly projects on github. Also, Delphi is missing from the tiers.

noelwelsh 16y ago

There are obvious holes in the methodology, so I wouldn't take the content of the post too seriously. What I do think is great about this post is how the authors generated a bunch of hits from an hour or so of work. Pick a topic with wide interest, do some simple (but non-trivial, if you aren't used to the tools) analysis, watch the traffic roll in! It's a good model for anyone trying to drive traffic to their site.

noglorp 16y ago
Being successful on the internet is easy! Just create interesting content, and then generate viewers!

stcredzero 16y ago

I'd be interested in the trends! What communities are growing, which ones are shrinking, and which ones are stable?