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> Over the years, the index has been both praised and vilified. The latter by language adherents who are unhappy over the decline of their favorite idiom. I ca

> Over the years, the index has been both praised and vilified. The latter by language adherents who are unhappy over the decline of their favorite idiom. I can't say that I trust TIOBE's methodology (looking at search result volume), and that's as an ardent Pythonista.

TomOfTTB 16y ago
I agree and think this article gives a perfect example of why it isn't accurate. Why would Javascript fall out of the top 10 last year? It makes no sense if you trust the methodology. BUT...if you think about it a system that gives a lot of weight to "mentions" falls apart when frameworks start drawing attention because it divides the number of mentions (how many times have you seen a jquery or Sproutcore article that never mentions the word Javascript?). Hence the drop
- spenrose 16y ago
  I almost sent them a critic-gram about this one, then I stopped and thought. I suspect their method is measuring the fraction of JS activity which is self-perceived as "programming" in the sense of software engineering. Rightly or wrongly, laying out pulldown menus with JQuery and the like is broadly (not universally) perceived as the practice of "design". Surely all of us know that plenty of echt programming is done in JS, and also plenty of let's-make-this-widget-dynamic work by people whose skills do not include structuring large blocks of code. The distinction is not an XOR, but it is both clear and real, and I believe the Tiobe results reflect it. My further W.A.G. is that their method under-represents the level of software engineering activity done in JS relative to, say, Ruby and Python, but that it does so because developers themselves are lagging in their perceptions.
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  Not only that, relative ranking is deceptive as a statistic even if it is measured accurately. C++ moved "up a notch" but the chart's absolute levels would lead one to deduce that this mostly through Python splitting some of PHP's thunder and actual C++ usage continued it's predictable but slow decline. And given that relative ranking is a dubious statistic, change in relative ranking brings us down to sports-announcer levels... (statistically meaningless but emotionally compelling)
davidw 16y ago
> I can't say that I trust TIOBE's methodology (looking at search result volume), and that's as an ardent Pythonista. I try and throw in more metrics in http://langpop.com http://langpop.com in order to give people more things to play with - you can tweak the weights of the results in order to generate your own charts. I also don't make pronouncements about which language dropped exactly how many places and things of that ilk. I think the results I have are good, but certainly not precise enough for that sort of hand waving. I guess that harms efforts to market my site: despite having superior methodology, TIOBE gets talked about more because of these 'reports'. On the other hand, I don't make money off it in any case, so it doesn't really matter if I get a bit more or less traffic.
- w1ntermute 16y ago
  > http://langpop.com http://langpop.com Your website design breaks for lower-width browser windows (the chart extends out of the right edge of the main content column).
  - krakensden 16y ago
    Indeed- browsing at 1024x600 is often a frustrating experience.
kgtm 16y ago
I can't say that I trust TIOBE's methodology judging from the fact that the Hall of Fame Spot for 2009 was occupied by Go.

TomOfTTB 16y ago

I agree and think this article gives a perfect example of why it isn't accurate. Why would Javascript fall out of the top 10 last year? It makes no sense if you trust the methodology. BUT...if you think about it a system that gives a lot of weight to "mentions" falls apart when frameworks start drawing attention because it divides the number of mentions (how many times have you seen a jquery or Sproutcore article that never mentions the word Javascript?). Hence the drop

spenrose 16y ago
I almost sent them a critic-gram about this one, then I stopped and thought. I suspect their method is measuring the fraction of JS activity which is self-perceived as "programming" in the sense of software engineering. Rightly or wrongly, laying out pulldown menus with JQuery and the like is broadly (not universally) perceived as the practice of "design". Surely all of us know that plenty of echt programming is done in JS, and also plenty of let's-make-this-widget-dynamic work by people whose skills do not include structuring large blocks of code. The distinction is not an XOR, but it is both clear and real, and I believe the Tiobe results reflect it. My further W.A.G. is that their method under-represents the level of software engineering activity done in JS relative to, say, Ruby and Python, but that it does so because developers themselves are lagging in their perceptions.
joe_the_user 16y ago
Not only that, relative ranking is deceptive as a statistic even if it is measured accurately. C++ moved "up a notch" but the chart's absolute levels would lead one to deduce that this mostly through Python splitting some of PHP's thunder and actual C++ usage continued it's predictable but slow decline. And given that relative ranking is a dubious statistic, change in relative ranking brings us down to sports-announcer levels... (statistically meaningless but emotionally compelling)

davidw 16y ago

> I can't say that I trust TIOBE's methodology (looking at search result volume), and that's as an ardent Pythonista. I try and throw in more metrics in http://langpop.com http://langpop.com in order to give people more things to play with - you can tweak the weights of the results in order to generate your own charts. I also don't make pronouncements about which language dropped exactly how many places and things of that ilk. I think the results I have are good, but certainly not precise enough for that sort of hand waving. I guess that harms efforts to market my site: despite having superior methodology, TIOBE gets talked about more because of these 'reports'. On the other hand, I don't make money off it in any case, so it doesn't really matter if I get a bit more or less traffic.

w1ntermute 16y ago
> http://langpop.com http://langpop.com Your website design breaks for lower-width browser windows (the chart extends out of the right edge of the main content column).
- krakensden 16y ago
  Indeed- browsing at 1024x600 is often a frustrating experience.

kgtm 16y ago

I can't say that I trust TIOBE's methodology judging from the fact that the Hall of Fame Spot for 2009 was occupied by Go.