5 ms·

TIOBE has always been a joke, and only even attempt to manage language chatter, not usage. It is based off job boards and internet search trends, and is highly

by akldfgj 14y ago

TIOBE has always been a joke, and only even attempt to manage language chatter, not usage. It is based off job boards and internet search trends, and is highly susceptible to homonym confusion, which is especially harmul in the case of "go".

davidw 14y ago
A better index is http://LangPop.com http://LangPop.com, which I recently sold on to a new owner, who hopefully will be working hard to spruce it up some, and add some new languages like Go, although Go is always going to be problematic in search engines.
- siodine 14y ago
  Why is it a better index?
  - davidw 14y ago
    1. It has more data sources. 2. It lets you fiddle with the 'normalized comparison' to weight the sources differently. If you play right, you can make your favorite language win!
- PilateDeGuerre 14y ago
  http://LangPop.com http://LangPop.com does not track Go
  - davidw 14y ago
    Err... I said that, didn't I?
- yahelc 14y ago
  Another option is Github, which ranks Go as the 27th most popular language. https://github.com/languages/Go https://github.com/languages/Go
  - davidw 14y ago
    That's a data source I considered adding for LangPop, but back in the day, was too much of a Ruby hangout. I think these days it's probably suitable.
    - libria 14y ago
      Any reason you wouldn't use StackOverflow tag volume/activity as a signal?
      - jason87 14y ago
        If more questions are asked about a particular language I don't think it would mean that language is being used more in the real world. Just more people are confused about it. Not sure if stackoverflow tags are a great indicator. TIOBE tries to use job listings and google trends. Searching job listings/search engines for 'go' probably wouldn't return much results (because of the ambiguous name) which is why its a lot lower than it should be.
        libria 14y ago
        > I don't think it would mean that language is being used more in the real world. Just more people are confused about it. The two are not mutually exclusive. Rather, I'd think they're directly proportional. A very straightforward and simple yet popular language should have very few questions, which doesn't seem to be the case; conversely, brainfuck is particularly cryptic and should have many questions, yet it does not. StackOverflow is admittedly .NET heavy, but since SV is somewhat anti-Microsoft, perhaps this will balance things out.
nandemo 14y ago
I find it amusing that people working at Google came up with an ungoogleable name for their programming language.
- objclxt 14y ago
  Unofficially, most people writing articles about Go would try to tag them with "golang" for search-ability ("golang" is also used for all the Go e-mail lists).
- batista 14y ago
  At least it's better than C. And Java is also a place, Python is an serpent. The key to Googlability for everything is to put the right context keywords. Nobody just google's "go" (or "java" for that matter). They google stuff like "go string type", "go programming", "go install", etc. That said, the bare "go" search term gives the go website as the fourth result in Google when I try it.
  - danieldk 14y ago
    Generally, using 'golang' rather than 'go' gives really good search results.
  - nandemo 14y ago
    Of course you can work around it if you know how to google, but Java and Python are much easier to search. If you look up "java books" or "python books" you get links about programming language books, not about coffee/Indonesia/serpents.
    - batista 14y ago
      That's because of adoption and less sites linking and discussing go topics at the moment. I think if you could Google when Python was in it's infancy, you would get 100s results for pythons (the snakes) before you saw Python pages... Google search algorithm is not so naive as to understand "go" as a generic token only. It can tell from context which pages are related to "go" the language and which merely use the verb "go". The reverse is how old engines used to work, Altavista and co, where you had tons of irrelevant exact matches.
ternaryoperator 14y ago
The greatest value of Tiobe is the trending it captures over years, not the actual data point at a given moment in time. Except for spikes when they changed methodologies, the trends, especially for the most popular languages tend to be reliable. Who's in the top 50 or top 100 languages, I agree is not a useful or reliable data point.

by akldfgj 14y ago

davidw 14y ago

A better index is http://LangPop.com http://LangPop.com, which I recently sold on to a new owner, who hopefully will be working hard to spruce it up some, and add some new languages like Go, although Go is always going to be problematic in search engines.

siodine 14y ago
Why is it a better index?
- davidw 14y ago
  1. It has more data sources. 2. It lets you fiddle with the 'normalized comparison' to weight the sources differently. If you play right, you can make your favorite language win!
PilateDeGuerre 14y ago
http://LangPop.com http://LangPop.com does not track Go
- davidw 14y ago
  Err... I said that, didn't I?
yahelc 14y ago
Another option is Github, which ranks Go as the 27th most popular language. https://github.com/languages/Go https://github.com/languages/Go
- davidw 14y ago
  That's a data source I considered adding for LangPop, but back in the day, was too much of a Ruby hangout. I think these days it's probably suitable.
  - libria 14y ago
    Any reason you wouldn't use StackOverflow tag volume/activity as a signal?
    - jason87 14y ago
      If more questions are asked about a particular language I don't think it would mean that language is being used more in the real world. Just more people are confused about it. Not sure if stackoverflow tags are a great indicator. TIOBE tries to use job listings and google trends. Searching job listings/search engines for 'go' probably wouldn't return much results (because of the ambiguous name) which is why its a lot lower than it should be.
      - libria 14y ago
        > I don't think it would mean that language is being used more in the real world. Just more people are confused about it. The two are not mutually exclusive. Rather, I'd think they're directly proportional. A very straightforward and simple yet popular language should have very few questions, which doesn't seem to be the case; conversely, brainfuck is particularly cryptic and should have many questions, yet it does not. StackOverflow is admittedly .NET heavy, but since SV is somewhat anti-Microsoft, perhaps this will balance things out.

nandemo 14y ago

I find it amusing that people working at Google came up with an ungoogleable name for their programming language.

objclxt 14y ago
Unofficially, most people writing articles about Go would try to tag them with "golang" for search-ability ("golang" is also used for all the Go e-mail lists).
batista 14y ago
At least it's better than C. And Java is also a place, Python is an serpent. The key to Googlability for everything is to put the right context keywords. Nobody just google's "go" (or "java" for that matter). They google stuff like "go string type", "go programming", "go install", etc. That said, the bare "go" search term gives the go website as the fourth result in Google when I try it.
- danieldk 14y ago
  Generally, using 'golang' rather than 'go' gives really good search results.
- nandemo 14y ago
  Of course you can work around it if you know how to google, but Java and Python are much easier to search. If you look up "java books" or "python books" you get links about programming language books, not about coffee/Indonesia/serpents.
  - batista 14y ago
    That's because of adoption and less sites linking and discussing go topics at the moment. I think if you could Google when Python was in it's infancy, you would get 100s results for pythons (the snakes) before you saw Python pages... Google search algorithm is not so naive as to understand "go" as a generic token only. It can tell from context which pages are related to "go" the language and which merely use the verb "go". The reverse is how old engines used to work, Altavista and co, where you had tons of irrelevant exact matches.

ternaryoperator 14y ago

The greatest value of Tiobe is the trending it captures over years, not the actual data point at a given moment in time. Except for spikes when they changed methodologies, the trends, especially for the most popular languages tend to be reliable. Who's in the top 50 or top 100 languages, I agree is not a useful or reliable data point.