TL;DR - TIOBE is crap, bad information is worse than no information. I agree with your first point, people will take any information over no information (for b

TL;DR - TIOBE is crap, bad information is worse than no information. I agree with your first point, people will take any information over no information (for better or worse). I highly doubt most HN readers are aware of the limitations, else they wouldn't put so high a value on it, so I don't concur with your second point. Your final point I vehemently disagree with, bad information is worse than no information. A lie is worse than silence. Misinformation is more harmful that no information. TIOBE is 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 level developers (lisp, haskell) 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 == Search Results == Rank