1. Forum
  2. Newsgroups
  3. comp.lang.misc

  • Most Popular Programming Languages

    From Lawrence D'Oliveiro@ldo@nz.invalid to comp.lang.misc on Fri May 9 22:05:18 2025
    From Newsgroup: comp.lang.misc

    Two competing measures of language popularity, based on entirely
    different methodologies, both agree that Python is at the top, by a
    massive lead <https://www.infoworld.com/article/3981643/python-popularity-climbs-to-highest-ever-tiobe.html>.

    Both are in rough concord about what goes in the rest of the top 5 or
    so, even if they put them in a different order. As to what comes after
    that, they are in complete disagreement.

    I guess the difference can be summed up concisely as, Tiobe goes by
    popularity of a mix of higher-quality learning resources, while Pypl
    goes by a lower-quality one.

    (Is that harsh? I am not disappointed to see PHP absent from the Tiobe
    top 10, but I am mystified by the absence of Rust, and the presence of
    Visual Basic and Delphi, in same.)
    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Alexis@flexibeast@gmail.com to comp.lang.misc on Sun May 18 19:08:52 2025
    From Newsgroup: comp.lang.misc

    Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

    (Is that harsh? I am not disappointed to see PHP absent from the Tiobe
    top 10, but I am mystified by the absence of Rust, and the presence of
    Visual Basic and Delphi, in same.)

    i've only done some basic reading about, and playing around with, Rust (including submitting a simple PR for a Rust-based project), and
    although there are various things i like about it, Rust:

    * has only recently got some sort of formal spec:

    https://thenewstack.io/rust-gets-its-missing-piece-official-spec-finally-arrives/

    * at least in October last year, was still moving quickly enough that
    various Rust-based applications were relying on nightly builds, as
    experienced by one of the Gentoo devs:

    https://lwn.net/Articles/992559/

    * has only a relatively limited number of platforms with tier 1
    ("guaranteed to work") support when compared to e.g. C++:

    https://doc.rust-lang.org/rustc/platform-support.html

    and although the list of tier 2 targets is noticeably larger, tier 2
    targets are only "guaranteed to _build_".

    Then, too, there's things like this game dev's experience with giving
    Rust a red-hot go:

    https://loglog.games/blog/leaving-rust-gamedev/

    So i'm not surprised it's not yet in the top 10, although i'm almost
    certain it will continue to head in that direction.


    Alexis.
    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Lawrence D'Oliveiro@ldo@nz.invalid to comp.lang.misc on Sun May 18 22:47:44 2025
    From Newsgroup: comp.lang.misc

    On Sun, 18 May 2025 19:08:52 +1000, Alexis wrote:

    Then, too, there's things like this game dev's experience with giving
    Rust a red-hot go:

    https://loglog.games/blog/leaving-rust-gamedev/

    It had me at this line in the tl;dr section:

    Making a fun & interesting games is about rapid prototyping and
    iteration, Rust's values are everything but that

    This is exactly what Python is good at.
    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Mikko@mikko.levanto@iki.fi to comp.lang.misc on Sun Jun 29 14:00:55 2025
    From Newsgroup: comp.lang.misc

    On 2025-05-09 22:05:18 +0000, Lawrence D'Oliveiro said:

    Two competing measures of language popularity, based on entirely
    different methodologies, both agree that Python is at the top, by a
    massive lead <https://www.infoworld.com/article/3981643/python-popularity-climbs-to-highest-ever-tiobe.html>.


    Both are in rough concord about what goes in the rest of the top 5 or
    so, even if they put them in a different order. As to what comes after
    that, they are in complete disagreement.

    I guess the difference can be summed up concisely as, Tiobe goes by popularity of a mix of higher-quality learning resources, while Pypl
    goes by a lower-quality one.

    When I saw the subject line the first measure of popularity I could
    think was how much a language is used. On the second thought that
    is problematic: much of the use is secret. And shall a piece of code
    used in 1 000 000 000 devices have one or 1 000 000 000 popularity
    points?
    --
    Mikko

    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Lawrence D'Oliveiro@ldo@nz.invalid to comp.lang.misc on Sun Jun 29 23:49:02 2025
    From Newsgroup: comp.lang.misc

    On Sun, 29 Jun 2025 14:00:55 +0300, Mikko wrote:

    And shall a piece of code used in 1 000 000 000 devices have one or
    1 000 000 000 popularity points?

    I think number of copies in production use should count for something. For example, there are billions of Android devices out there, running billions
    of copies of (roughly the same) Java code, C code, Kotlin code ... and of course copies of SQLite. Sheer popularity can be seen as one sign of
    success.
    --- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2