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> If you consider that, statistically, the vast majority of programmers have yet to experience a dynamic language of any kind – much less Ruby – the absurdity h

> If you consider that, statistically, the vast majority of programmers have yet to experience a dynamic language of any kind – much less Ruby – the absurdity here is sublime. Was that really anywhere close to true in 2008? I would have thought that most developers would have known at least one of Perl, Python, Javascript, or Ruby (or Bash; not sure if he'd count that one). Am I mistaken about the history there?

taneq 6y ago
Back then Perl and JS were only really used in web dev, Ruby wasn't really used at all, and Python was still fairly niche (although gaining ground). There were a LOT of C, C++, Java developers back then, especially in the enterprise space, who'd never touched any of the above.
- codesections 6y ago
  > Back then Perl and JS were only really used in web dev Wasn't Perl used pretty extensively for sysadmin tasks, too? It's a dependency of a lot of Unix tools (e.g., git) and I thought that dated to around that time or a bit before. For what it's worth, this video[0] gives the following percentages for some dynamic languages in 2008: JavaScript....21% PHP...........21% Python.........8% Ruby...........4% Perl...........4% Matlab.........3% ================= TOTAL.........60% (I totally forgot about PHP earlier. Oops!) So I stand my my initial claim that it wasn't the case that the _vast_ majority of programmers had yet to experience a dynamic language. Though I can understand it seeming that way to Atwood; didn't he mostly do application development? [0]: Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og847HVwRSI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og847HVwRSI
  - taneq 6y ago
    Fair call on Perl and sysadmin tasks. As for the others I just went from memory so clearly others had more exposure than I was aware of. (Whether interpreted languages were "real" programming languages is another debate to be had between the quiche-eaters and the hairy-chested stereotypes.)

taneq 6y ago

Back then Perl and JS were only really used in web dev, Ruby wasn't really used at all, and Python was still fairly niche (although gaining ground). There were a LOT of C, C++, Java developers back then, especially in the enterprise space, who'd never touched any of the above.

codesections 6y ago
> Back then Perl and JS were only really used in web dev Wasn't Perl used pretty extensively for sysadmin tasks, too? It's a dependency of a lot of Unix tools (e.g., git) and I thought that dated to around that time or a bit before. For what it's worth, this video[0] gives the following percentages for some dynamic languages in 2008: JavaScript....21% PHP...........21% Python.........8% Ruby...........4% Perl...........4% Matlab.........3% ================= TOTAL.........60% (I totally forgot about PHP earlier. Oops!) So I stand my my initial claim that it wasn't the case that the _vast_ majority of programmers had yet to experience a dynamic language. Though I can understand it seeming that way to Atwood; didn't he mostly do application development? [0]: Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og847HVwRSI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og847HVwRSI
- taneq 6y ago
  Fair call on Perl and sysadmin tasks. As for the others I just went from memory so clearly others had more exposure than I was aware of. (Whether interpreted languages were "real" programming languages is another debate to be had between the quiche-eaters and the hairy-chested stereotypes.)