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Because the StackOverflow survey which Rust keeps winning defines "Most Loved" as: > % of developers who are developing with the language or technology and hav
by psv1 7y ago
Because the StackOverflow survey which Rust keeps winning defines "Most Loved" as:
> % of developers who are developing with the language or technology and have expressed interest in continuing to develop with it
Because there aren't that many Rust jobs, almost no one has to use it. Which means people either try it and leave, they like the language and stick around, or they never use it (the overwhelming majority of developers). This leads to the Rust being the most loved language by the above definition, which is completely different from "popular" (as in the title of the OP).
If I make up my own language that I plan to never stop using, even if no one else ever touches it, I'll get 100% "Most Loved" on StackOverflow's survey.
- shepmaster 7y agoYup, which is what I alluded to with "However, the roughly 97% of survey respondents who haven’t used Rust" :-)
- marcosdumay 7y agoWell, yes. There are plenty of popularity metrics there already, this one is about something else. As you said, mainstream languages won't win this one. But it is a valid metric anyway, and there is plenty of merit on winning it.
- psv1 7y agoThink about this - if a bunch of people hate a language and stop using it, the following year that language's "most loved" score will increase. I wouldn't call that merit, it's just a bad metric.
- marcosdumay 7y agoYes, if people can simply stop using a language, it will not be hated. That's how it works on real life too. But most of the time, people can't stop using languages.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]