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I cannot take seriously a programming language popularity index that states that Javascript has become significantly less popular in the last year. I'm no fanbo

by msy 14y ago

I cannot take seriously a programming language popularity index that states that Javascript has become significantly less popular in the last year. I'm no fanboy but given the sheer weight of evidence from language activity on sites like github to the incredible number of jobs and recruiters desperate for skilled javascript developers it just does not add up. Sometimes a metric producing an unexpected outlier means you've found something interesting but usually it means your metric is broken or meaningless. Searches for the word tutorial sounds like an increasingly meaningless metric the world of sites like stackoverflow.

wildranter 14y ago
Popularity index sounds like something only Paris Hilton would take seriously.
jayflux 14y ago
I do agree. How can Javascript go down? It doesn't sound like it peaked last year at all.
- hemancuso 14y ago
  I would argue that most people wanting to learn about javascript would be searching for "jQuery tutorial" or "nodejs tutorial" or "coffeescript tutorial" and not "javascript tutorial" Ruby and Javascript are made infinitely more popular because of projects like Rails, jQuery and node. A language like Python has no obvious framework helping drive adoption, so most information out there would be language-centric versus framework centric.
  - Jakob 14y ago
    In case you want to prove that: Coffescript and node.js change nothing in the equation but jQuery has as much searches as python and javascript respectively: http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-US#q=Python%20tutorial%2C%20Javascript%20Tutorial%2C%20coffeescript%20tutorial%2C%20nodejs%20tutorial%2C%20jquery%20tutorial&date=today%2012-m&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-US#q=Python%20tut... Not including ember, backbone, angular, … Although it seems to me that the amount of tutorials on a language/framework do not have to have much in common with their popularity but with the beginner/pro-ratio. (under the assumption that mostly beginners write (for TIOBE) or read (for PYPL) tutorials)
crusso 14y ago
I cannot take seriously Really, how seriously does one need to take a language popularity index regardless of context?
- ojr 14y ago
  Very good point, it also doesn't take into account that java and python are taught in colleges... If a student wanted more help on their python/java homework they will search python tutorial or java tutorial, the context is flawed
asimjalis 14y ago
I read through the analysis and it sounds off. It assumes that the number of people interested in JavaScript correlates with the number of searches for "javascript tutorial". This is incorrect. Many people search for "nodejs tutorial" or other variations. There might be a growth in "nodejs tutorial" searches at the expense of "javascript tutorial" searches. Similarly he does not see an increase in searches for "objective-c tutorial" and assumes the language is in decline. In reality there might be growth in terms like "ios tutorial" or "iphone sdk tutorial" which his metrics don't track.
camus 14y ago
What does popularity means anyway ? i do javascript all day, i hate it , i prefer python or C# , does that make it popular ? to me no.

by msy 14y ago

wildranter 14y ago

Popularity index sounds like something only Paris Hilton would take seriously.

jayflux 14y ago

I do agree. How can Javascript go down? It doesn't sound like it peaked last year at all.

hemancuso 14y ago
I would argue that most people wanting to learn about javascript would be searching for "jQuery tutorial" or "nodejs tutorial" or "coffeescript tutorial" and not "javascript tutorial" Ruby and Javascript are made infinitely more popular because of projects like Rails, jQuery and node. A language like Python has no obvious framework helping drive adoption, so most information out there would be language-centric versus framework centric.
- Jakob 14y ago
  In case you want to prove that: Coffescript and node.js change nothing in the equation but jQuery has as much searches as python and javascript respectively: http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-US#q=Python%20tutorial%2C%20Javascript%20Tutorial%2C%20coffeescript%20tutorial%2C%20nodejs%20tutorial%2C%20jquery%20tutorial&date=today%2012-m&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-US#q=Python%20tut... Not including ember, backbone, angular, … Although it seems to me that the amount of tutorials on a language/framework do not have to have much in common with their popularity but with the beginner/pro-ratio. (under the assumption that mostly beginners write (for TIOBE) or read (for PYPL) tutorials)

crusso 14y ago

I cannot take seriously Really, how seriously does one need to take a language popularity index regardless of context?

ojr 14y ago
Very good point, it also doesn't take into account that java and python are taught in colleges... If a student wanted more help on their python/java homework they will search python tutorial or java tutorial, the context is flawed

asimjalis 14y ago

I read through the analysis and it sounds off. It assumes that the number of people interested in JavaScript correlates with the number of searches for "javascript tutorial". This is incorrect. Many people search for "nodejs tutorial" or other variations. There might be a growth in "nodejs tutorial" searches at the expense of "javascript tutorial" searches. Similarly he does not see an increase in searches for "objective-c tutorial" and assumes the language is in decline. In reality there might be growth in terms like "ios tutorial" or "iphone sdk tutorial" which his metrics don't track.

camus 14y ago

What does popularity means anyway ? i do javascript all day, i hate it , i prefer python or C# , does that make it popular ? to me no.