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I wouldn't put too much stock in those numbers. To start with, they are not measuring actual programing language usage. If you want to know which languages peop

I wouldn't put too much stock in those numbers. To start with, they are not measuring actual programing language usage. If you want to know which languages people are using, the only way to really do it is to do a simple random survey and ask them. What these statistics do is go to specific communities and attempt to measure which languages those communities use. Using those numbers to measure language popularity in the population at large makes the assumption that those communities are representative of the population at large. That's a faulty assumption to make. Do you, for example, think that Slashdot has a large segment of the "Excel VBA Macro Developer" market posting to it? Probably not. There are other sites, like Stack Overflow, that show a 2:1 preference for C# over Java. Does that mean there are 2x as many C# programmers as Java programmers? No. It just means that more posts on Stack Overflow are about C# than about Java. Information about the number of unique books written about a language at a particular store does not imply anything about popularity. If you considered "unit sales", that might give you a measure of "popular book subjects", but not about language usage. For example, it could be possible that Java programmers buy more books on Java than C# programmers do on C#. Many of the C++ programmers I know have several books on C++. I don't think that means C++ has more users than, say, Windows batch scripts. The web site does say "these results are not scientific", but I don't think that's a strong enough statement. The "scientificness" has to do with how the data is collected, and how the results are reported. Even if they measured the same things using scientific means, the numbers still wouldn't imply what they claim them to imply. A better disclaimer might be "these results are not useful for making any decisions what so ever."

chancho 18y ago
The actual data being shown is very clearly explained. They aren't drawing any conclusions so I don't see what your problem is. There is a 'Normalized Comparison' graph but the weights are right there for anyone to adjust. The authors are very honest about what this data is and what it means. It's just interesting, nothing more. They don't claim or even imply any of the things you say they do.
- scottdw2 18y ago
  The name of the site is "lang pop". When the page loads the title bar says "Programming Language Popularity". The content of the page states: "We have attempted to collect a variety of data about the relative popularity of programming languages, mostly out of curiousity." Those are claims that what they are measuring is a proxy for language popularity. My point is that those claims are not valid.
  - chancho 18y ago
    You're inferring things based on your own bias. Nowhere on that page did I get the impression that they even believe, much less claim that those data are representative of true language popularity. They claim its impossible to measure. What is popularity anyway? Number of users? Programs? Bytes? A critical reader would want a definition of that term before drawing any conclusions, and if you read beyond the first paragraph you'll find that they define the what they are measuring precisely. Basically you're complaining that they didn't do enough to discourage lazy brains from jumping to conclusions.
    - scottdw2 18y ago
      The sections that describe the measurements say things like: "This is a fairly crude approximation of popularity, however, it's worth including, because all other things being equal, the more popular a language is, the more pages will exist mentioning it." "Popular languages are used more in industry, and consequently, people post job listings that seek individuals with experience in those languages. " "Books are also a lagging indicator, but a good way to eliminate languages that aren't "established"." Those statements indicate that the measurements are proxies for language popularity. My point is that those statements are not true, that the numbers do not serve as proxies for language popularity. They are not crude proxies, they are not lagging proxies, or any other form of proxy. Most conclusions you could draw from the numbers would be wrong.
davidw 18y ago
> Information about the number of unique books written about a language at a particular store does not imply anything about popularity. Sure it does. Java is more popular than Forth, and as a consequence, there are a lot more Java books than Forth books. Sure, there are various other factors involved, but there is very definitely some correlation. Anyone else remember how many Ruby and Rails books started being pumped out when it started getting popular? Yeah, sales numbers would be nice too, but over time, editors won't publish books on things that won't sell. Also, that "particular store" is not just some mom and pop bookstore in Podunkville, it's Amazon.com. It is, last I checked, one of the most popular book stores in the world.

chancho 18y ago

The actual data being shown is very clearly explained. They aren't drawing any conclusions so I don't see what your problem is. There is a 'Normalized Comparison' graph but the weights are right there for anyone to adjust. The authors are very honest about what this data is and what it means. It's just interesting, nothing more. They don't claim or even imply any of the things you say they do.

scottdw2 18y ago
The name of the site is "lang pop". When the page loads the title bar says "Programming Language Popularity". The content of the page states: "We have attempted to collect a variety of data about the relative popularity of programming languages, mostly out of curiousity." Those are claims that what they are measuring is a proxy for language popularity. My point is that those claims are not valid.
- chancho 18y ago
  You're inferring things based on your own bias. Nowhere on that page did I get the impression that they even believe, much less claim that those data are representative of true language popularity. They claim its impossible to measure. What is popularity anyway? Number of users? Programs? Bytes? A critical reader would want a definition of that term before drawing any conclusions, and if you read beyond the first paragraph you'll find that they define the what they are measuring precisely. Basically you're complaining that they didn't do enough to discourage lazy brains from jumping to conclusions.
  - scottdw2 18y ago
    The sections that describe the measurements say things like: "This is a fairly crude approximation of popularity, however, it's worth including, because all other things being equal, the more popular a language is, the more pages will exist mentioning it." "Popular languages are used more in industry, and consequently, people post job listings that seek individuals with experience in those languages. " "Books are also a lagging indicator, but a good way to eliminate languages that aren't "established"." Those statements indicate that the measurements are proxies for language popularity. My point is that those statements are not true, that the numbers do not serve as proxies for language popularity. They are not crude proxies, they are not lagging proxies, or any other form of proxy. Most conclusions you could draw from the numbers would be wrong.

davidw 18y ago

> Information about the number of unique books written about a language at a particular store does not imply anything about popularity. Sure it does. Java is more popular than Forth, and as a consequence, there are a lot more Java books than Forth books. Sure, there are various other factors involved, but there is very definitely some correlation. Anyone else remember how many Ruby and Rails books started being pumped out when it started getting popular? Yeah, sales numbers would be nice too, but over time, editors won't publish books on things that won't sell. Also, that "particular store" is not just some mom and pop bookstore in Podunkville, it's Amazon.com. It is, last I checked, one of the most popular book stores in the world.