TL;DR: TIOBE is a horrible way to decide if something is important. TIOBE is a fun conversation generator, but hardly anything to be taken seriously. In 2004,

TL;DR: TIOBE is a horrible way to decide if something is important. TIOBE is a fun conversation generator, but hardly anything to be taken seriously. In 2004, when Google swapped an algorithm, a bunch of TIOBE "rankings" swung massively. Back then they only used Google (the rankings are generated from search engine results, more results == better). Now they use multiple engines, but the list of issues that make it crap persist. - Older languages like perl, have years of postings and pages to draw from ... even if many of them are wrong with current perl. - Better documented languages generate less noise in terms of pages - Languages with a higher base engineer level (lisp) tend to generate less pages of noise - The system is very easily gamed by anyone with the motivation (not sure if anyone cares) - Communities that rally around good answers rather than repeat themselves generate less noise Noise == Google Results == Rank