5 ms·

Yes, its verbosity is skewing the results. Same with PHP, C++, and Java. We can see that Ruby is the most popular language on Github here http://github.com/lang

by evdawg 17y ago

Yes, its verbosity is skewing the results. Same with PHP, C++, and Java. We can see that Ruby is the most popular language on Github here http://github.com/languages http://github.com/languages, with 28% of all projects being in Ruby. C, PHP, Java, and C++ rank 6%, 5%, 4%, and 4% respectively.

WilliamLP 17y ago
How do you know it's verbosity skewing results, and not a preference for certain languages depending on the size of the project?
- lallysingh 17y ago
  The only way to account for that is to compensate for verbosity between languages. I'm not sure anyone wants to go there, it's not pretty.
  - dangoldin 17y ago
    You can potentially have a sample of programs implemented in many different languages and compare the length of each program across languages. With enough programs you should be able to get a good enough sample as long as they are diverse enough.
- silentbicycle 17y ago
  Good point. Also, I wonder how those would be weighted if you counted projects that consist of >90% identical code as the same project (for example, how many of those Ruby projects are thinly veiled forks of Rails?), filtered out projects that are less than (say) 10k of source, etc. Maybe more Python projects are on bitbucket because of Merucial. The 90% and 10k there are pretty arbitrary; just, those language stats need a lot more clarification before their meaning is clear.
  - wizard_2 17y ago
    I wonder if you could pull all the projects into one repo, repack and figure out it's unique objects using git. I always wondered if a global object store was possible or even a good idea for a site like github. I guess that's a different project though.
    - silentbicycle 17y ago
      FWIW, finding duplicated code (particularly in a language-independent manner!) is a surprisingly difficult problem. You need to scan not just for large copy-and-pasted blobs, but code chunks that have just had constants changed, variable names adjusted, indentation style changes, etc. I've been working on a tool for this in my spare time, and I hope to have it out sometime this summer.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
ryanwaggoner 17y ago
Or perhaps since Rails/Ruby is trendy, a lot of projects get started in Ruby, but never finished. I'd like to see some language stats broken down by activity on the project.
- defunkt 17y ago
  That's the direction we want to take it.
- csbartus 17y ago
  "a lot of projects get started in Ruby, but never finished." how do you know that?
  - ryanwaggoner 17y ago
    I don't, hence the word perhaps.
  - mpk 17y ago
    Time to invoke Sturgeon's law and mangle it a bit. 90% of all projects are junk.
uggedal 17y ago
The C projects could also be more complete and mature. Everyone and their mother has a 50 line Ruby twitter-client/blog/wiki implementation up on Github. I would also argue that the presence of a Linux kernel mirror, Perl mirror, Android (including the Linux kernel, again), and large projects like them skews the byte vs projects percentages a great deal.
- teej 17y ago
  The top languages calculation on GitHub is done by lines of code per language. By that calculation, there are 4.5x more Ruby LOC than C LOC on Github, yet C is still has the most bytes. http://github.com/blog/99-popular-languages http://github.com/blog/99-popular-languages
  - silentbicycle 17y ago
    I'm pretty sure that lines of Ruby code tend to be shorter than lines of C. Static typing annotations tend to add to line length more directly than line count.
  - defunkt 17y ago
    That blog post is no longer accurate. We don't count LOC for language popularity, we count the number of non-fork projects that include a language. If your project includes both Ruby and Perl, Ruby and Perl each get a +1.
cosmo7 17y ago
That doesn't mean they're the most popular. It might be people all sharing stuff to say "look how retarded this code is." (just saying)

by evdawg 17y ago

WilliamLP 17y ago

How do you know it's verbosity skewing results, and not a preference for certain languages depending on the size of the project?

lallysingh 17y ago
The only way to account for that is to compensate for verbosity between languages. I'm not sure anyone wants to go there, it's not pretty.
- dangoldin 17y ago
  You can potentially have a sample of programs implemented in many different languages and compare the length of each program across languages. With enough programs you should be able to get a good enough sample as long as they are diverse enough.
silentbicycle 17y ago
Good point. Also, I wonder how those would be weighted if you counted projects that consist of >90% identical code as the same project (for example, how many of those Ruby projects are thinly veiled forks of Rails?), filtered out projects that are less than (say) 10k of source, etc. Maybe more Python projects are on bitbucket because of Merucial. The 90% and 10k there are pretty arbitrary; just, those language stats need a lot more clarification before their meaning is clear.
- wizard_2 17y ago
  I wonder if you could pull all the projects into one repo, repack and figure out it's unique objects using git. I always wondered if a global object store was possible or even a good idea for a site like github. I guess that's a different project though.
  - silentbicycle 17y ago
    FWIW, finding duplicated code (particularly in a language-independent manner!) is a surprisingly difficult problem. You need to scan not just for large copy-and-pasted blobs, but code chunks that have just had constants changed, variable names adjusted, indentation style changes, etc. I've been working on a tool for this in my spare time, and I hope to have it out sometime this summer.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]

ryanwaggoner 17y ago

Or perhaps since Rails/Ruby is trendy, a lot of projects get started in Ruby, but never finished. I'd like to see some language stats broken down by activity on the project.

defunkt 17y ago
That's the direction we want to take it.
csbartus 17y ago
"a lot of projects get started in Ruby, but never finished." how do you know that?
- ryanwaggoner 17y ago
  I don't, hence the word perhaps.
- mpk 17y ago
  Time to invoke Sturgeon's law and mangle it a bit. 90% of all projects are junk.

uggedal 17y ago

The C projects could also be more complete and mature. Everyone and their mother has a 50 line Ruby twitter-client/blog/wiki implementation up on Github. I would also argue that the presence of a Linux kernel mirror, Perl mirror, Android (including the Linux kernel, again), and large projects like them skews the byte vs projects percentages a great deal.

teej 17y ago
The top languages calculation on GitHub is done by lines of code per language. By that calculation, there are 4.5x more Ruby LOC than C LOC on Github, yet C is still has the most bytes. http://github.com/blog/99-popular-languages http://github.com/blog/99-popular-languages
- silentbicycle 17y ago
  I'm pretty sure that lines of Ruby code tend to be shorter than lines of C. Static typing annotations tend to add to line length more directly than line count.
- defunkt 17y ago
  That blog post is no longer accurate. We don't count LOC for language popularity, we count the number of non-fork projects that include a language. If your project includes both Ruby and Perl, Ruby and Perl each get a +1.

cosmo7 17y ago

That doesn't mean they're the most popular. It might be people all sharing stuff to say "look how retarded this code is." (just saying)