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“Favourite” Programming Languages on Hacker News - Key take-aways Rust is the most talked-about language 2 327 stories – the highest volume 57 212 total poin

by ksec 1y ago

“Favourite” Programming Languages on Hacker News - Key take-aways Rust is the most talked-about language 2 327 stories – the highest volume 57 212 total points – the highest aggregate karma Go comes a very close second in volume (2 259 stories) and total score (45 511). Python and JavaScript still dominate discussion but are edged out by Rust & Go this year. Smaller but passionate followings Lua & Erlang generate the highest average score per story, indicating highly-engaged niche audiences. Swift and Elixir also punch above their weight on a per-story basis. Classic staples (C++, Java, Ruby, PHP) remain active but draw less relative excitement. Quick ranking by story count Rust – 2 327 Go – 2 259 Python – 2 029 JavaScript – 1 927 Highest average karma per story Lua – 51.8 Erlang – 36.5 Swift – 29.3 Elixir – 25.9 Rust – 24.6 Interpretation: Rust and Go are currently the “favourite” languages on Hacker News by sheer attention and total karma, while Lua and Erlang have smaller but very enthusiastic communities - Next time any Rust supporter telling you Rust is not popular on HN or Ada gets mentioned a lot of Zig gets similar attention as Rust. You may point them to this post.

heresie-dabord 1y ago
> Rust and Go are currently the “favourite” languages on Hacker News by sheer attention and total karma Of course, the statement must be consumed with a few NaCl because frequency of discussion (especially within an obsessive subgroup) does not represent effective implementation. Even less so do "attention and karma". By actual work being done and bills paid and new, non-trivial projects begun, some ordering of Python, ECMAscript (JS), Java, C, C++, C# would be good Family Feud-style ranked bets.
- codetrotter 1y ago
  > frequency of discussion (especially within an obsessive subgroup) does not represent effective implementation I asked the chat tool to count how many times each different programming language is mentioned in different “Show HN” post titles. If the tool is accurate, it seems that the results diverge somewhat from what you are implying. language post_count Python 3117 JavaScript 2545 Go 2178 Rust 1251 TypeScript 607 Java 605 Ruby 531 PHP 514 Swift 433 Clojure 229 Elixir 173 Haskell 142 Kotlin 128 Scala 122 Lua 110 C++ 101 Erlang 61 Dart 45 Perl 35
  - heresie-dabord 1y ago
    If we were to do a careful analysis to control for the bias of one site, we would consider more sources, for example: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology
    - navalino 1y ago
      but this tool only analyzes hn.. why it need to consider other site? of course it can different
  - tmtvl 1y ago
    No Lisp? On HN!? There has to be something wrong here.
    - codetrotter 1y ago
      I think this is a result of the strategy that the AI chose for picking languages. I saw when it was planning what to do it said that it was going to use a regex against the post titles. Probably it only included the specific languages above in that regex. Leaving some languages out. Which should still mean it hopefully has accurate numbers for the languages it chose to look for, but it might be missing several other more or less widely mentioned languages. If I ask it specifically to count how many Show HN posts mention Lisp or Scheme in the title, it says there’s a total of 370 mentioning one or the other of those.
cmovq 1y ago
One thing I noticed is that projects written in Rust always mention it the title (there’s one on the front page right now), compared to other languages that don’t. That probably adds to the numbers
- encom 1y ago
  The Crossfit of programming.
- pclmulqdq 1y ago
  Go projects often do the same thing.
pcthrowaway 1y ago
I suspect something went wrong here with Typescript not being mentioned as a favourite. My own recollection is that when discussions of favourite programming languages come up, Typescript is often one of the top contenders, and it's extremely rare for people to prefer Javascript of all languages. Perhaps this is folding Javascript in with Typescript.
- baq 1y ago
  People don’t talk about typescript. They’re busy getting shit done. I say this as someone who likes Rust very much and gets paid for Typescript.
  - winrid 1y ago
    They're busy figuring out which "severe" npm warnings are actually severe :P
    - baq 1y ago
      Note I didn’t say I like typescript, only rust ;)
WhereIsTheTruth 1y ago
lowest average, yet ranks so high, wich mean it gets helped by some secret algorithm ;) if you browse HN daily, you start to notice patterns, there is a _real_ bias towards rust, even more obvious when you dig at the YC companies and what they seem to promote
saghm 1y ago
Being talked about doesn't imply it's positive though, right? If tons of people started posting stores and comments complaining about something, it sounds like it would inflate the numbers for it as well.

by ksec 1y ago

heresie-dabord 1y ago

> Rust and Go are currently the “favourite” languages on Hacker News by sheer attention and total karma Of course, the statement must be consumed with a few NaCl because frequency of discussion (especially within an obsessive subgroup) does not represent effective implementation. Even less so do "attention and karma". By actual work being done and bills paid and new, non-trivial projects begun, some ordering of Python, ECMAscript (JS), Java, C, C++, C# would be good Family Feud-style ranked bets.

codetrotter 1y ago
> frequency of discussion (especially within an obsessive subgroup) does not represent effective implementation I asked the chat tool to count how many times each different programming language is mentioned in different “Show HN” post titles. If the tool is accurate, it seems that the results diverge somewhat from what you are implying. language post_count Python 3117 JavaScript 2545 Go 2178 Rust 1251 TypeScript 607 Java 605 Ruby 531 PHP 514 Swift 433 Clojure 229 Elixir 173 Haskell 142 Kotlin 128 Scala 122 Lua 110 C++ 101 Erlang 61 Dart 45 Perl 35
- heresie-dabord 1y ago
  If we were to do a careful analysis to control for the bias of one site, we would consider more sources, for example: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology
  - navalino 1y ago
    but this tool only analyzes hn.. why it need to consider other site? of course it can different
- tmtvl 1y ago
  No Lisp? On HN!? There has to be something wrong here.
  - codetrotter 1y ago
    I think this is a result of the strategy that the AI chose for picking languages. I saw when it was planning what to do it said that it was going to use a regex against the post titles. Probably it only included the specific languages above in that regex. Leaving some languages out. Which should still mean it hopefully has accurate numbers for the languages it chose to look for, but it might be missing several other more or less widely mentioned languages. If I ask it specifically to count how many Show HN posts mention Lisp or Scheme in the title, it says there’s a total of 370 mentioning one or the other of those.

cmovq 1y ago

One thing I noticed is that projects written in Rust always mention it the title (there’s one on the front page right now), compared to other languages that don’t. That probably adds to the numbers

encom 1y ago
The Crossfit of programming.
pclmulqdq 1y ago
Go projects often do the same thing.

pcthrowaway 1y ago

I suspect something went wrong here with Typescript not being mentioned as a favourite. My own recollection is that when discussions of favourite programming languages come up, Typescript is often one of the top contenders, and it's extremely rare for people to prefer Javascript of all languages. Perhaps this is folding Javascript in with Typescript.

baq 1y ago
People don’t talk about typescript. They’re busy getting shit done. I say this as someone who likes Rust very much and gets paid for Typescript.
- winrid 1y ago
  They're busy figuring out which "severe" npm warnings are actually severe :P
  - baq 1y ago
    Note I didn’t say I like typescript, only rust ;)

WhereIsTheTruth 1y ago

lowest average, yet ranks so high, wich mean it gets helped by some secret algorithm ;) if you browse HN daily, you start to notice patterns, there is a _real_ bias towards rust, even more obvious when you dig at the YC companies and what they seem to promote

saghm 1y ago

Being talked about doesn't imply it's positive though, right? If tons of people started posting stores and comments complaining about something, it sounds like it would inflate the numbers for it as well.