

Python grew fastest in web searches for 'tutorial' over the last 5 years - robert-zaremba
https://sites.google.com/site/pydatalog/pypl/PyPL-PopularitY-of-Programming-Language
Python is the language whose popularity is growing the fastest; it is already the second most popular in the US over decade.
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msy
I cannot take seriously a programming language popularity index that states
that Javascript has become significantly less popular in the last year. I'm no
fanboy but given the sheer weight of evidence from language activity on sites
like github to the incredible number of jobs and recruiters desperate for
skilled javascript developers it just does not add up. Sometimes a metric
producing an unexpected outlier means you've found something interesting but
usually it means your metric is broken or meaningless. Searches for the word
tutorial sounds like an increasingly meaningless metric the world of sites
like stackoverflow.

~~~
crusso
_I cannot take seriously_

Really, how seriously does one need to take a language popularity index
regardless of context?

~~~
ojr
Very good point, it also doesn't take into account that java and python are
taught in colleges... If a student wanted more help on their python/java
homework they will search python tutorial or java tutorial, the context is
flawed

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xSwag
According to Google Trends the search term "jquery" will soon overtake
"javascript" in terms of popularity[1][2]

[1]<http://i.imgur.com/yqQ95.png>

[2]<http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=jquery,javascript>

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
That worries me. Some people can write "jQuery" but not proper JS code.

~~~
mrj
Uh, there's nothing improper about writing jQuery code.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
I know. I'm just concerned about people that learn jQuery but not really
JavaScript itself, just the bare minimum needed to use jQuery.

~~~
bryanh
I don't really think that is something to be worried about. Most of these
people aren't coders by profession, they just want some little customizations
to whatever form or theme they happen to be using.

A good parallel for your comment would be: "I'm just concerned about people
that learn VBA but not really Visual Basic itself, just the bare minimum
needed to use Excel macros."

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kator
This is based on search engine results!?

"The ratings are calculated by counting hits of the most popular search
engines.... The number of hits determines the ratings of a language" \--
[http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/tpci_d...](http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/tpci_definition.htm)

How could that indicate anything other then more pages found by the search
engines. How do you know the bias of the engine over time isn't giving better
results and the "search trend" ranking is causing the results to skew in one
direction or another.

I doubt search engine trends are a really accurate way to understand how much
code is out there and what people are actually doing on a daily basis.

Worse the search term is: +"<language> programming"

More sites have "python programming" in them then "perl programming" and way
more have "java programming" in them?

This tells me nothing really. I could argue it tells me Java is hard as hell
and you have to have lots of references to figure out how to do anything.. Or
it tells me that Java has lots of "java programming" sites. Heck maybe it
tells us that lots of people host javadocs and every single page says "Java
Programming" <reference, docs etc.>.

All that said I am actually enjoying python a lot and find myself writing more
of my "you choose the language" projects in it. It feels like it will be more
maintainable over time and I have the general feeling I can turn it over to
others easier then a pile of Perl. I have to really write careful in Perl to
make it readable by non-Perl heads. Python sort of forces that on you up-
front. I'm still not a fan of having to use SPACES (COBOL anyone!!) to
maintain blocks of code but I'm slowly getting used to it and using vim
settings to make it easier etc.

~~~
chromatic
_I have to really write careful in Perl to make it readable by non-Perl
heads._

This is an honest question: why would you care about that? What does it matter
if someone who doesn't know a language (or isn't bothering to learn it) can
read code written in that language?

 _Python sort of forces that on you up-front._

How? Indentation doesn't really matter and, for example, list comprehensions
aren't all that obvious to someone who's never seen them before. I can
understand "I think sigils might be confusing", but that's such a superficial
aspect of programming I'm inclined to dismiss it as such.

~~~
kator
> This is an honest question: why would you care about that?

My goal is to write stuff so I can DIE. In 30 years can you imagine how much
I've written. I don't want all that code following me around the planet. I
want to move forward and leave for others something they can maintain and
understand and use.

> Python sort of forces that on you up-front.

Again I'm not done with my processing on this but I am a bit unimpressed with
using spaces to identify code blocks. Ask me again in a year it might grow on
me.. :)

~~~
chromatic
_I want to move forward and leave for others something they can maintain and
understand and use._

Yes, but why do you care if people who don't understand a language can or
cannot read code written in that language?

~~~
kator
yes because I can write Perl that will make your eyes burn. So can Larry
Wall.. So What..

How does that work towards the longer term goal of writing code that I can DIE
and it still lives on?

If nobody understands it then it will die... If they understand it they can
maintain it, give it loving care and feeding and it will live for a long time.

No kidding, I have code that has been in production for 27 years.. still..
think about that..

Chances are I will leave this planet and my code will still be running
somewhere...

Can you say that? And if not, why isn't that your goal?

We write code to solve problems for people, not to prove how smart we are. I
would argue code that lasts decades is much smarter then 10 lines of something
nobody understands and gets whacked on the next refactor.. But then again
that's just my style.. :)

~~~
chromatic
_We write code to solve problems for people, not to prove how smart we are._

That reads like a false dilemma to me. Surely there's some wonderful excluded
middle between "I write code that someone who doesn't know the language can
read it" and "I write code so opaque that you need a language specification, a
flashlight, and both hands to begin to comprehend it."

I, for example, try to write code, tests, and documentation that a decent
developer with a working knowledge of the language and an understanding of the
problem domain can figure out what's going on and why. I don't care if
someone's nephew or niece who's never programmed before can make heads or
tails of the code because I think that's a tremendously silly goal
counterproductive to any good business sense.

(Also I've never seen a language which can enforce things like effective
factoring, intelligible naming, coherent coupling and decoupling, intelligent
encapsulation, and the like. Certainly Python doesn't enforce those.)

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PommeDeTerre
These kind of popularity metrics really leave a sour taste in my mouth,
regardless of the results. They're just so lacking in rigor of even the
mildest degree that it's not even worth considering what they "discover".

If any language is to be the "language of the decade", it ought to be C, and
possibly C++. C or C++ still power basically every piece of truly important
software, even today in 2013. The major operating system kernels, userlands,
compilers, interpreters (including Python's main implementation!), network
servers, and web browsers, are all written in one or both of them, for
example. And that's not including the many embedded and industrial uses of C
that aren't very visible at all.

Until some other languages offer the same full-stack experience, and are
actually used for writing critical, widely-used software, I don't think we can
label any languages but C and C++ as the "language of the year", or "language
of the decade", or even "language of the century" and beyond.

~~~
reinhardt
While I agree that such metrics don't mean much, if anything at all, the
notion that C/C++ should be "languages of the decade" because they "still
power basically every piece of truly important software" doesn't make much
sense. You might as well declare James Maxwell scientist of the decade because
electricity still powers basically every piece of truly important equipment.

~~~
jacquesm
> You might as well declare James Maxwell scientist of the decade because
> electricity still powers basically every piece of truly important equipment.

I'm all for it.

Proponents of 'x' label 'x' the best thing in this decade is a lot less
objective than your astute observation that electricity indeed still powers
basically every piece of truly important equipment.

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mitchi
Guido van Rosseum left Google a while ago because he was annoyed they weren't
using Python enough! Python is a nice language but I don't think it's the
language of the decade. The langage of the decade is something that has been
used from 2000 to 2012 a lot in entreprise and by individuals. Give that price
to PHP for all it's worth. PHP was the language for the web for a very long
time.... It was used to create facebook. It was a lot more influential than
Python. Ask 50 persons in the street if they know what PHP is, then ask them
if they know what Python is. I guarantee you that more people know of PHP.

Predicting what will be the next language of the decade is more interesting.
My bet is on Javascript for now.

~~~
slurry
I like Python (and Ruby) a ton, but they may find themselves legacy-stamped if
they don't develop a good concurrency story quite soon.

No big deal to be ~50 times slower than native code in a single-thread,
single-processor use case, but for a well-parallelizable problem on a
multicore machine you end up being several multiples of ~50 times slower.

Google just gave up on trying to optimize Python (see Unladen Swallow project)
and told the engineers to move on to something useful. I am not sure if the
interanls are just to messed up too make it work or if resistance and denial
on the part of "B"DFLs and the community is too strong.

But when javascript - JAVASCRIPT! - has a better server-side concurrecy pitch
than your language, it is in big trouble

~~~
mitchi
Interesting story. Do you know they moved on to what? Java?

~~~
slurry
Python is still used alongside C++ and Java (and some Go) but primarily for
prototyping and small utility scripts. A Google engineer explains:

"Well, simple common sense is going to limit Python's applicability when
operating at Google's scale: it's not as fast as Java or C++, threading sucks,
memory usage is higher, etc. One of the design constraints we face when
designing any new system is, "what happens when the load goes up by 10x or
100x? What happens if the whole planet thinks your new service is awesome?"
Any technology that makes satisfying that constraint harder -- and I think
Python falls into this category -- _should_ be discouraged if it doesn't have
a very strong case made in its favor on other merits."

And note this was before the failure of Unladen Swallow, before van Rossum's
departure.

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mrtbld
The symmetric, "curious dance" between C and C# in 2009-2011 could be due to
the fact that "#" is not a alphanumerical character. Some searches for "C#"
may have been miscounted as searches for "C" in that period. (But that's just
an hypothesis.)

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eliben
At first I was about to dismiss this as TIOBE-like crap. But giving it a
second thought, there is a _deep_ difference in methodology.

TIOBE - language is popular if "<language> tutorial" brings up lots of results
on Google This page - language is popular if many people searched "<language>
tutorial".

It's not hard to see that the second one is a much more interesting metric.
That said, it's still far from being enough to evaluate a language's
popularity. On the other hand, it can be at least mildly correlated with the
amount of people wanting to learn said language over the measured period of
time.

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asimjalis
The analysis assumes that more searches for tutorials means the language is
more popular where as it might just mean the language requires more tutorials
to understand.

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wubbfindel
After reading the FAQ I agree that using the term "<lang> tutorial" is better
than "<lang> programming" - but couldn't the results for "<lang> tutorial"
possible represent languages that are harder to grasp, rather than languages
in popular use.

Then again, if that was purely the case we'd be seeing "brainf __k" all over
the place.

Just a thought.

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revskill
In our country, there are 80% developers are using .net/C#. They know how to
use svn, cut CSS from Photoshop, code a website, do webform, but they don't
know what JSON is, what GIT is, what Linux is, what a Message Queue, or Redis
is. Hm, i don't know why .net is so popular. What .net can do, the Linux-based
technologies can do.

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eli
Extrapolating "popularity" for google search volume is a huge pet peeve. I see
no reason to believe this data means anything.

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TommyDANGerous
If you look at USA and look at which state is the darkest for all of the
search terms, California is the darkest for each.

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trimbo
> which language is taking advantage of PHP's decline

Until you notice that Y-axis is logarithmic...

