Both Python and Java have gained on Perl since January 2000. I might consider switching to another language if this trend persists.

           Jan  2000    Jan  2001    Jan  2002    Jan  2003    Jan  20
+04
   Ruby    1720 (100)   2670 (155)   5440 (316)  16500 (959)  20900 (1
+215)
    PHP   15400 (100)  20100 (130)  37400 (242)  66200 (429) 130000 ( 
+844)
 Python    3850 (100)   6870 (178)   8760 (227)  11400 (296)  25400 ( 
+659)
   .NET   64600 (100)  86200 (133) 107000 (165) 142000 (219) 230000 ( 
+356)
   Java   33300 (100)  37500 (112)  45100 (135)  56700 (170) 103000 ( 
+309)
   Perl   10700 (100)  13700 (128)  14900 (139)  18500 (172)  31700 ( 
+296)
    C++   17500 (100)  19200 (109)  22200 (126)  30700 (175)  35700 ( 
+204)
   UNIX   20500 (100)  23500 (114)  24500 (119)  29000 (141)  36800 ( 
+179)
      C  120000 (100) 137000 (114) 153000 (127) 172000 (143) 187000 ( 
+155)
   Lisp    2330 (100)   2450 (105)   2420 (103)   2980 (127)   3600 ( 
+154)
  shell    8510 (100)   8580 (100)   8870 (104)  10500 (123)  12300 ( 
+144)
  BASIC   78200 (100)  84900 (108)  93600 (119) 101000 (129) 111000 ( 
+141)
  Forth   13500 (100)  14700 (108)  14900 (110)  16400 (121)  18100 ( 
+134)
Haskell     713 (100)    634 ( 88)    787 (110)    937 (131)    917 ( 
+128)
 Eiffel     529 (100)   1700 (321)   1680 (317)   1740 (328)    656 ( 
+124)
    Ada    4680 (100)   4660 ( 99)   4640 ( 99)   5430 (116)   5000 ( 
+106)
 Scheme   19900 (100)  22500 (113)  22400 (112)  22200 (111)  20200 ( 
+101)
  Cobol    2530 (100)   2270 ( 89)   2340 ( 92)   2310 ( 91)   2420 ( 
+ 95)
 Pascal    5480 (100)   4260 ( 77)   4590 ( 83)   5220 ( 95)   5140 ( 
+ 93)
FORTRAN    5080 (100)   3770 ( 74)   4130 ( 81)   3830 ( 75)   3740 ( 
+ 73)
[download]

Abigail

From the department of useless statistics I bring you the same data, normalized by year. Mostly it shows C taking a nose dive, .NET in ascendency, BASIC going south as well, PHP and Java getting more hits and then (after removing that skewing data from the table) there's the rest of the bunch which C++ and Unix mostly stable, Scheme going south, Perl and Python going up, a big jump in Ruby. Removing that further skewing data from the table I see Forth followed by Shell. Removing those I now see Ada, Pascal, Fortran, Lisp, Cobol, Eiffel, and Haskell.

    Jan-00    Jan-01    Jan-02    Jan-03    Jan-04
Ruby    0.009968946    0.014930408    0.030569005    0.090978178    0.
+08826915
PHP    0.124473722    0.142748192    0.24053793    0.381514413    0.56
+3973769
Python    0.027797541    0.045729874    0.052380546    0.0611646    0.
+107890331
.NET    0.536289141    0.627473124    0.69779191    0.824626015    1
Java    0.274300876    0.270345981    0.291124937    0.325979318    0.
+446246686
Perl    0.085133631    0.095815673    0.092718756    0.102669777    0.
+135359983
C++    0.142051209    0.136148307    0.140677866    0.173988531    0.1
+52801033
UNIX    0.167161905    0.167681094    0.15578827    0.164050671    0.1
+57597321
C    1    1    1    1    0.812508721
Lisp    0.015074788    0.013317103    0.010728387    0.011942968    0.
+012836612
shell    0.066802822    0.058269657    0.053103217    0.055903381    0
+.050770894
BASIC    0.650124298    0.617939956    0.609757379    0.584948235    0
+.481128785
Forth    0.108570281    0.103148879    0.092718756    0.090393598    0
+.076060416
Haskell    0.001540123    0    0    0    0.001138028
Eiffel    0    0.007817198    0.005866779    0.004694177    0
Ada    0.034744833    0.029523488    0.025313212    0.026265177    0.0
+18940979
Scheme    0.162139766    0.160347887    0.141991814    0.124299235    
+0.085216967
Cobol    0.016748834    0.011997125    0.010202808    0.008026283    0
+.007691503
Pascal    0.041441019    0.026590206    0.024984725    0.025037559    
+0.019551416
FORTRAN    0.038092926    0.022996935    0.021962644    0.016911898   
+ 0.013447049
[download]

Why go to all the work of querying Google when my $use_factor = int rand 20000; would get you just as valid an answer?

----
send money to your kernel via the boot loader.. This and more wisdom available from Markov Hardburn.

Here is some well reasoned opinion on the subject of programming languagues. The links at the end are rather nice.

All you seen to have proven with your stats (if anything given their dubious validity) is that Perl and Java have remained static for popularity whilst Python has made inroads. You might reflect that Python is the core language at Google. Does this give Google a Python bias? Do would be Googlers learn Python just in case they get that call? Do I care?

def language(perl,python):
    try:
        return perl/python
    except ZeroDivisionError:
        return perl
[download]

that was cool :")....

1. Expand the list of languages you are looking at. As the investigation will most likely use programs for some of the data gathering, using the list Abigail-II provides shouldn't be too hard.
2. Compare Google to other search engines. I'm sure that Yahoo, Lycos, and Netscape may have different numbers, so it may be good to do some sort of weighted average between search engines.
3. I'd be interested in seeing if there was some sort of monthly cyclicaly variation between the various languages and the pages referencing them. For example, the variance between Perl and Java stays relatively constant at 1:3, but that's for January. Maybe it's 1:2 in Aprils of every year?
4. You'll need to expand how you do the date calculation. There's a few issues I see here:
   • "january 2000" is a very restrictive search, and it only deals with pages that have that phrase in them. If I created a page now with those words, then it would be in the wrong place.
   • Do you use the creation date of the page or the last-modified date of the page? Where would you get this information?
5. How many of those pages are overlaps? For example, if your OP was indexed, it would show up in every single one of your searches, because you describing the searches.
6. Remember - you're investigating the amount of times people write about a given language. When writing up your investigation, I would definitely make that very clear.

Populariy of a language is a useful measure of a number of things:

• How likely you are to get a job working in that language
• How likely is the language supported by the Internet community
• How likely is there prior art to work from
• How likely is there innovation in the language

In essence, you are researching the living-ness of the language. I suspect that if you look at languages like Ada, Forth, and CL/I, you'll find their living-ness to be at a very low ebb. New languages, like Ruby, Python, PHP, and Ponie are going to be on the rise in terms of living-ness.

This is very different from the useful-ness of the language. Brainf**k isn't a very useful language, but it was certainly talked about for a while. :-)

New languages, like Ruby, Python, PHP, and Ponie are going to be on the rise in terms of living-ness.

What makes you classify Python as "new"? Perl dates from December 1987. Python was conceived in December 1989. I'd say Perl and Python are of similar age.

Abigail

I might consider switching to another language if this trend persists.

That's like saying that if more and more people are eating fecal matter that it's a good idea to give up on steak and eat fecal matter along with the rest of the crowd.

Sorry, my dogs and I herd sheep. We ain't sheep.

I have always been a proponent of using the right tool to do a job. When I find a better tool to do a particular job then I adopt that tool in my rather complete tool bag. I don't throw the old tools away just because I have a new tool. For instance, I buy a router I don't throw my power screwdriver away since the router makes a very poor screwdriver. OTOH putting a coving bit in my power screwdriver won't help me much rounding off edges of boards.

In my practice as a Unix Professional I use a variety of tools. I use Open Source tools as much as I can to hold down the line on costs since at my level being cost concious is part of the profession. I use off the shelf products (in other words commercial) where the situation warrants it. That doesn't mean that if a client that I support buys Sun's web server that I'm going back to the rest of my clients and telling them to ditch Apache. The requirements and political sensitivity of the client buying Sun's product may be such that they cannot go Open Source. (yeah.. it happens..)

Tools that I use personally range from running Linux on my company owned laptop to Lotus Notes running under Wine to emacs as my preforred editor to running Visio® under cxoffice (a version of Wine) and on it goes. I program in a plethora of languages ranging from Perl and Bash to C, C++ and yes even Java. I've even been known to dabble in PHP and python on occasion.

A well rounded programmer IMHO should be able to program in any language a job requirement asks them to. It is only a matter of learning a new syntax. Programming is programming, the algorithms stay the same regardless of the language you are programming it. Why are there so many languages?

Every language brings to the programming world its own strengths and weaknesses, advantages and disadvantages. I would be hard pressed to figure out a way to write an operating system in pure Perl for an embedded system but OTOH doing associative arrays while not impossible are a bitch in assembler.

I might consider switching to another language if this trend persists.

The Perl community, and this forum in particular, would greatly benefit from such course of action.

I feel sorry for those poor Java lads who will have to bear you, though.

"But you're trying to bash a nail into a piece of wood. A hammer is perfectly suited to do that. Using a pair of scissors will just make the job longer and more difficult."

"Yeah, but LOOK AT THESE NUMBERS! Scissors, here I come!"

Python I would expect to be sharper as it is still a bit younger than perl. As for java, there are a lot of various backers in java. IBM, Sun, Apache (jakarta), Apple and so on. It's considered more of a biz language. Also, the upgrades are faster. So you may have found links for java 1.1 1.2 1.3.1 1.4 and 1.4.1. I'm sure I missed a version # in there somewhere. You also have achedemia which is switching to java, a good enough portion of it, to teach algorithms in it.

perl ist simply a solution that's been around for a long time, and as perl6 comes out, we'll prolly see a sharper jump then.

Quite frankly, I think wassercrats isn't going to be an uber-perl hacker or team leader in the next few months. He still has a lot to learn in his attitudes on programming. And I've told him before, you should at least consider what people say, but if he doesn't want to do certain things, that's his will. The only outcome is possibly bad code. So to you who have begged him to leave, what makes you any better that you should stay here yourselves? Are you too good to teach others the errors in their ways? Do you not know how to properly refute an argument? Do you not know how to interact with the community? At least wassercrats has the due dilligence to try and makes some sense of things. It's not always right, but he tries. And that's certainly worth a lot more than your unneeded flames.

-s

For those of you who consider mr wasser automatic for flames, think of the time when you were "young and foolish".

I don't like what you are implying here. You are suggesting that we all once behaved like Wassercrats. Could you either backup your claim with references (the Internet has a good memory) or retract your words?

I know the young part is a compliment Wassercrats.

"compliment"? Do you mean "competent"? I don't know Wassercrats age, nor do I think that matters. I don't discriminate, and I don't think "older" people should be judged differently than "younger" people. As for Wassercrats being competent - perhaps he is. However, I don't recall any post of him suggesting he is. All I remember are posts of him attracking a lot downvotes. I haven't decided yet whether he's a troll or just a sad case.

But he brought up a valid point using some statistics.

He did? He brought up a point? What point did he bring up?

His analysis is shallow to say the least, and I'd consider it not-read-into-enough. Too simplistic. But that gives NONE of you the right to treat him less than a human being.

Who did? Did anyone call him names? Please don't accuse people without being specific. Give us names and quotes. I reread the thread, and I don't see anyone treating him as "less than a human being".

And I've told him before, you should at least consider what people say, but if he doesn't want to do certain things, that's his will.

Yes, but if he doesn't like how people react on what he's saying, he shouldn't voice his opinion. Freedom of speech works both ways.

The only outcome is possibly bad code.

The only Perl code posted in this thread was mine. Could you elaborate on why you consider that "bad code"?

So to you who have begged him to leave, what makes you any better that you should stay here yourselves?

I can think of a couple of reasons. Perhaps the most important reason is that those who begged him to leave don't post articles with sentences like I might consider switching to another language if this trend persists.

Are you too good to teach others the errors in their ways?

Now I am confused. First you critize us from writing replies to the "young and foolish" Wassercrats - yet you expect us to teach him his errors. Do you expect us to visit him in person?

Do you not know how to properly refute an argument?

I think that before anyone can refute an argument, there should be an argument in the first place. I think the thread was like this:
1. Wassercrats composes some statistics.
2. Wassercrats might consider switching to a different language because of the statistics.
3. People said "fine with us".
What do you expect people to say? No, please, don't do that? Didn't you say about him if he doesn't want to do certain things, that's his will? If he doesn't want to program in Perl, isn't it your own idea that it's his will he shouldn't?

Do you not know how to interact with the community?

Have you stopped beating your wife?

At least wassercrats has the due dilligence to try and makes some sense of things. It's not always right, but he tries.

He can try to make all the sense he wants. But anyone who posts here, or elsewhere on a more or less public forum should expect people react to their postings. If they can't stand that, then don't post publicly.

And that's certainly worth a lot more than your unneeded flames.

Djee, what a good last sentence of a post that's mostly a flame.

Abigail

I don't like what you are implying here. You are suggesting that we all once behaved like Wassercrats. Could you either backup your claim with references (the Internet has a good memory) or retract your words?

I doubt that anyone here has never made a false statement and not retracted it. No, I won't retract.

"compliment"? Do you mean "competent"? I don't know Wassercrats age, nor do I think that matters. I don't discriminate, and I don't think "older" people should be judged differently than "younger" people. As for Wassercrats being competent - perhaps he is. However, I don't recall any post of him suggesting he is. All I remember are posts of him attracking a lot downvotes. I haven't decided yet whether he's a troll or just a sad case.

I meant what I said, and said what I meant. I know that he's no youngin'

He did? He brought up a point? What point did he bring up?

That there's smaller growth in perl. I dont' agree with it. end of story.

Who did? Did anyone call him names? Please don't accuse people without being specific. Give us names and quotes. I reread the thread, and I don't see anyone treating him as "less than a human being".

Then you haven't read the entire thread. Re-read it.

Yes, but if he doesn't like how people react on what he's saying, he shouldn't voice his opinion. Freedom of speech works both ways.

Yes it does. And it doesn't stop me from trying to get people to be a bit less inflamatory themselves in hopes that maybe with a little kindness, Wassercrats changes his ways. He's not a complete troll. He has some value in him I believe. And as it goes both ways as you so nicely put, I won't retract my words as you've asked earlier.

The only Perl code posted in this thread was mine. Could you elaborate on why you consider that "bad code"?

Not in this thread. his past posts.

Now I am confused. First you critize us from writing replies to the "young and foolish" Wassercrats - yet you expect us to teach him his errors. Do you expect us to visit him in person?

It's called due diligence. Otherwise, we should just give everyone attitude problems and reject them based on first impressions. And worse yet, give the impression we are elitist. Even though Wasser has had a history of bad ideas, being immature about it just makes the community, our community, look worse... immature.

What do you expect people to say? No, please, don't do that? Didn't you say about him if he doesn't want to do certain things, that's his will? If he doesn't want to program in Perl, isn't it your own idea that it's his will he shouldn't?

Yes, "Haven't you left yet" is a fine argument. It totally disagrees with the information he posted.

Have you stopped beating your wife?

Yes, 'cause it's her turn to beat me. Wtf?

Djee, what a good last sentence of a post that's mostly a flame.

Reread my post. First half was not a flame.
Humma la beeba la seeba la booba la
Humma la beeba la seeba la bop

think of the time when you were "young and foolish".

When I was "young and foolish", and boy did I have my moments, I got my "young and foolish" butt smacked around when I said stupid things. You are not going to learn how foolish you are unless "older and wiser" (or at least more experienced) folks sort you out.

That's not to say anybody is "smacking" Wassercrats around. Although.. I think he likes it when he is.

Youth or inexperience is not an excuse for stupidity. Just one of many explainations.

At least wassercrats has the due dilligence to try and makes some sense of things. It's not always right, but he tries.

And for that I give him a half point of credit. But in this thread he takes the data and draws a conclusion from left field. More and more people drive down the Garden State Parkway at 100MPH on bald tires so it's an upward trend so I should do it too....

Nahh... I don't think so.

I guess what really gets me going on this topic is I've worked with senior management places where that was how IT decisions were made. They looked at someone's wonderful charts and graphs and bought technology to fit what the "trends" were without bothering to check the source or do any critical analysis of the technology needs of the company.

I watched on helplessly as a complany I worked for spent easily 7 figures rolling out Exchange to replace a Sendmail based infrastructure. They had to retrain all of the nonIT staff, migrate the email data, the accounts and discovered that the load the original 4 mail servers running sendmail handled now had to be done with 18 machines. Maintenance costs rose, new staff was hired to deal with the Exchange servers (we need MSCEs to do this... right?) and on it went. In the end there was a massive layoff of IT staff (mostly programmers) and then later on after I departed for a new job (I wasn't hanging around) the outsourced the entire IT/IS department.

That all started with a Senior Vice President looking at a Microsoft sponsored presentation and saying: " HEY! Exchange is gaining market share! We better get on the bandwagon!"

You can't make stuff like that up... life is stranger than fiction.

Exactly. He made an invalid analysis and it's simple to refute. You've done a better job than I have proving, just 'cause it's "popular" doesn't mean it's "good".

Smacked..well.. I hope my prof's and mentor's never would do that when I was wrong. I've had people tell me I'm wrong, which is fine. I don't recount anyone calling me an idiot IRL just because I said something that was incorrect. Probably the lack of being able to smack back online beyond crafting a reply.

Humma la beeba la seeba la booba la
Humma la beeba la seeba la bop

Wassercrats has stated at various times in the past that he aims to get the worst XP on this site. Refuting arguments have proven useless on him (see VarStructor 1.0). One can only conclude that he is either a troll or has an excessively inflated ego. In either case, the best solution is to ignore.

----
send money to your kernel via the boot loader.. This and more wisdom available from Markov Hardburn.

        Jan-00  Jan-01  Jan-02  Jan-03  Jan-04
Total Hits                    
Perl    10,800  13,800  15,000  18,500  32,000 
Python   3,900   6,920   8,820  10,700  25,500 
Java    33,600  37,800  45,200  55,300 102,000 
                    
Hits with the word "Suck"
Perl      90     320     396     466     665
Python    49     146     313     331     604
Java     198     339     702     847    2250
                    
Suck %                    
Perl    0.83    2.32    2.64    2.52    2.08
Python  1.26    2.11    3.55    3.09    2.37
Java    0.59    0.90    1.55    1.53    2.21
[download]

Perl will never die, even though there are alot of ignorant corporate executives who are trying to kill it. They try to kill and discredit what makes them look ignorant. If they passed some "law against Perl", there would be a whole underground which would keep it going.

Going completely off topic (not that we really have a topic here..)



They say the same thing about C. The C++ people say "C is obsolete, don't bother with it", but you can see that C++ is more likely to die before C will. I doubt that they will ever write an good OS in C++.

Could you explain this please? I keep saying statements like this, or expressing similar sentiments regarding C vs C++, and I never understand them. To my mind, C++ is just C with a few additions (new/delete, class, templates), so what makes C better then C++? Since, as far as I know, any C program is a valid C++ program (with the exception, of course, of C programs that use C++ keywords, which is a stupid "exception"), so what makes C so much better?

I personally see C++ as better, firstly because I prefer new/delete vs malloc/free, just semantically. Secondly because I like OO programming, so I tend to use it in most of my "larger" projects, and having to deal with lots of "OO" code written in C has made me bitter.

C++ is C with a few additions, but they are huge additions. Objects are a big change with all kinds of complexity. Templates are big and complicated.

Sure, C++ can be used a better C. But the OO is the big benefit and that is a big change.

Objective-C is a much better example of small extensions to C.

I doubt that they will ever write an good OS in C++.

Yes they will, and they already have, considering all C code is C++ legal :-p.

Okay, I know what you actually meant, and I think I agree. I haven't done extensive testing myself, but from what I've heard, the overhead of objects would prohibit something as performance-oriented as an OS.

I also agree about the whole 'dilution' thing...I took a VB class in high school, and the teacher made me comment the function for the 'quit' button, which was as follows:



sub buttonQuit_Click()
    frmForm.Close()
end sub
[download]

She told me I had to comment it so 'future maintainers of my code would know what the function did.' My jaw dropped, arguments ensued, and I stopped taking computer courses at my high school.

And do you have to follow a trend? See what the "trend" was in Germany in the 1930's and where it lead to.

Finally, your figures shouw a tripling of "Perl"-references over the time period investigated. not much of a "demise", I'd say.

----
Fn 1. Most likely due to Larry mentioning it in the State of the Onion, methinks. Ah, Larry is the best powerpoint slide creator in the world!