4 ms·

Can you mention any specific problem with TIOBE or a better alternative?

kibwen 4y ago
TIOBE's methodology is opaque, and even their own description of their methodology is completely nuts. Their historic trend lines suffer such massive random swings that it's obvious that they go in and manually fudge the numbers whenever it doesn't look "correct" (or are we to believe that C truly became half as popular between 2015-2016, and then gained it all back from 2016-2017? Remember that time that half of all C programmers were laid off, and then rehired eighteen months later? No? Remember that time that half of all C software stopped being used, and then started being used again eighteen months later? No? Then what in blazes is it supposed to have been measuring?). The prose summaries that they attempt to produce each month are technological gobbledygook, too poor to even publish in the sort of magazine that gives free subscriptions to middle managers. The "language of the year" ranking fails to even measure growth! Instead, it just measures the increase in ranking from the previous December, which means that a language whose popularity crashes through the floor for exactly one month out of the year due to their batshit methodology can be awarded "language of the year" for absolutely no reason, and this has happened! Rather than asking for a better alternative for gauging "popularity", stop looking to aggregators and instead look at actual numbers. For example, if you want to know which languages have the most job openings available, don't trust a measure of popularity, go to a job board and search by language.
tgv 4y ago
They rely on easily accessible sources. In a previous job, I've written copious amounts of C# and Java, which will never ever show up in their search. Everybody knows there's a huge bias when you want to conduct a survey and only ask people in the square in front of your house. But when it comes to estimating tech-related things, all caution is thrown out of the window, because "there's so much data."

TIOBE's methodology is opaque, and even their own description of their methodology is completely nuts. Their historic trend lines suffer such massive random swings that it's obvious that they go in and manually fudge the numbers whenever it doesn't look "correct" (or are we to believe that C truly became half as popular between 2015-2016, and then gained it all back from 2016-2017? Remember that time that half of all C programmers were laid off, and then rehired eighteen months later? No? Remember that time that half of all C software stopped being used, and then started being used again eighteen months later? No? Then what in blazes is it supposed to have been measuring?). The prose summaries that they attempt to produce each month are technological gobbledygook, too poor to even publish in the sort of magazine that gives free subscriptions to middle managers. The "language of the year" ranking fails to even measure growth! Instead, it just measures the increase in ranking from the previous December, which means that a language whose popularity crashes through the floor for exactly one month out of the year due to their batshit methodology can be awarded "language of the year" for absolutely no reason, and this has happened! Rather than asking for a better alternative for gauging "popularity", stop looking to aggregators and instead look at actual numbers. For example, if you want to know which languages have the most job openings available, don't trust a measure of popularity, go to a job board and search by language.

tgv 4y ago

They rely on easily accessible sources. In a previous job, I've written copious amounts of C# and Java, which will never ever show up in their search. Everybody knows there's a huge bias when you want to conduct a survey and only ask people in the square in front of your house. But when it comes to estimating tech-related things, all caution is thrown out of the window, because "there's so much data."