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Viability of Unpopular Programming Languages (2018)
- MrK93 7y agoWith PHP and SQL in the top 10, I'd say that the TIOBE index is just plain bad. That is all folks. Also, Rust is not in the top 20? Get out of here, TIOBE index!
- Icathian 7y agoSQL is in heavy use in almost every business and government agency. I'm not sure what your objection there is...
- vlunkr 7y ago> The TIOBE Programming Community index is an indicator of the popularity of programming languages. This is ranking of popularity only, not any measure of quality. Obviously PHP and SQL are more popular than Rust.
- fortran77 7y agoAnd higher quality. They have official specs, so there can be multiple suppliers. Competition leads to quality.
- quelltext 7y agoPHP has a spec?
- mappu 7y agoThe official one is here: https://github.com/php/php-langspec https://github.com/php/php-langspec It was pushed quite strongly around the time when HHVM was striving for high compatibility with PHP (they've since dropped that goal).
- quelltext 7y agoThat's cool. I had to learn some intricacies of PHP for a job once quite a while ago and the docs weren't quite sufficient. Could have used that. Language specs are typically harder to digest then other material but ultimately you can get all the details out of them you need and they're typically worth reading.
- DonHopkins 7y agoNo, just a hammer. https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-php-singularity/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-php-singularity/
- tcbasche 7y agoWithout getting too philosophical, I would say the best quality language is the one you can most confidently write in that can solve your problem.
- kube-system 7y agoLanguages that are in popular use often take decades to get there. Much of the software in the world has been there a while. The only thing surprising to me on this list is about how popular Go is after only a decade.
- tcbasche 7y agoYeah! "insert niche language that I use" isn't even number 1? That ranking system is just plain wrong!
- tylerchilds 7y agoMe: Everyone I know uses _language_, this is trash! Also me: First programming job.
- tcbasche 7y agoI'd love to see a study done on developers - how their first job has influenced their zealotry for programming languages / technologies
- GnarfGnarf 7y agoMy first job involved RPG (Report Program Generator), one of the most loathsome and repulsive languages. Compared to RPG, COBOL is Python. I'm surprised to see RPG is still a thing, not surprised its ranking is so low.
- epx 7y agoYou live in a bubble. Most of us do, but you didn't know ;)
- ChrisSD 7y agoI think what's missing from this post is who is using a language. For Haskell it's academics/researchers. For Ada it's the US government and associated industries. That's what makes niche languages viable, not overall popularity. Of course if a language does not have a niche nor popular support then it's going to struggle more.
- the_af 7y ago> For Haskell it's academics/researchers Some real businesses use Haskell too. Other than that, you have a point.
- ChrisSD 7y agoSure I don't want to diminish its use in business but my point was that its continued use by academics is what made it viable for some businesses. It likely would have died out if it relied on business (and other non-academic) users.
- jfkebwjsbx 7y agoMost known languages have a few businesses that use them. That does not mean is enough to be commercially viable, though.
- dang 7y agoDiscussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16865506 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16865506
- Cybiote 7y agoIt was interesting to observe that since this was written, both F# (from 67 to 32) and Lisp (63 to 29) have risen dramatically on the TIOBE index. Haskell has also risen from 42 to 39, though not as big a gain as the other two. Haskell now ranks above Apex while PL/I has fallen below the top 50, where Erlang has remained. I must live in a bubble since I was surprised to see TypeScript and Julia rank so low. It's amusing from a trivia point of view but I don't think such a ranking should figure in any serious decision on what language to use.
- Scarbutt 7y agoTypescript ranking so low compared to other languages just shows how flawed that index is.
- tylerchilds 7y agoIs there a different index? Where are you getting your data?
- GolDDranks 7y agoThere is both the Redmonk index (updated biannually, uses data from GitHub and StackOverflow): https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2020/02/28/language-rankings-1-20/ https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2020/02/28/language-rankings-1-2... And the PYPL index (updated monthly, uses data from Google Trends, which counts search queries): http://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html http://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html I regard both of these more accurate indicators of popularity than the TIOBE index. (As for PYPL vs. TIOBE, I find that search queries reflect popularity more accurately than search results)
- ddragon 7y agoThere was a post last year [1] pondering about the tiobe methodology of "x programming" in the context of Julia, since the most common way to search for it is "julia language" instead. Adding that option makes both Julia and Typescript rise apparently. [1] https://juliacomputing.com/blog/2019/09/16/tiobe-blog.html https://juliacomputing.com/blog/2019/09/16/tiobe-blog.html
- cousin_it 7y agoTIOBE index methodology: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/programming-languages-definition/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/programming-languages-defi... Basically they only look at number of search engine hits for "<language> programming". That's surprisingly meager. I think a better index of programming language popularity would use more signals: job listings, open source activity, stackoverflow questions, surveys of programmers and companies, etc. Also it would be good to specify what's meant by "popularity". I'd be mostly interested in each language's share of paid programmer time, so the signals above should be weighted to get the best approximation to that truth.
- ACow_Adonis 7y agoI agree about specifying what's meant by "popularity". Thing is I'm actually interested in the complete opposite of what you say you're interested in. Couldn't care less about paid programmer time and the job market. What do people use when they aren't getting paid by someone else to program? What do they write about? What would they like/want to use? Who's got the greatest grass-roots/continuing community not focused around apps, corporations and business sponsorship?
- hnick 7y agoThere are also many languages that I would consider "supplementary", and Perl would be a good example. There are a few jobs where it's the main language but most listings I see have it as a nice-to-have or side skill language for things like a Devops hire that wants some kind of scripting but doesn't really care what (listed as an option alongside Python, Ruby, etc). So in particular I'd say Perl is pervasive, but not a hiring differential. At least that's my experience looking at jobs.
- nyankosensei 7y agohttps://redmonk.com/sogrady/2020/02/28/language-rankings-1-20/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=language-rankings-1-20 https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2020/02/28/language-rankings-1-2...
- labster 7y ago> Advocates consider Perl 6 to be a separate language but outside observers, like TIOBE, may not. Now TIOBE says: > Some time ago Mantvydas Lopeta suggested to rename Perl 6 to its official name Raku. This has been done. Raku is now at position #115 of the TIOBE index.
- TurboHaskal 7y agoWhat makes it viable for me in a professional setting isn't popularity, but rather any of the following: - Is it a first class citizen for the given platform? (What C# is to Windows, or Objective-C/Swift to macOS, or C to UNIX, or JS to the browser) Really can't go wrong with this one - Does it have a commercial vendor? (VFX Forth, SwiftForth, LispWorks, Allegro CL, MATLAB...) - Does it have a standard? (Probably less relevant these days but still a big plus to me) Things like libraries and all that I can do without. They're mostly terrible / too generic anyway. Note that some languages I use such as Go, Rust and OCaml don't really check any of the above, unless you nitpick. But it's not like I'm writing software with those for the long run (I'm old enough in the industry to think in terms of decades, and I've been burned by hype trains before).