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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 y

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)

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)