

TIOBE Is (Unintentionally) Misleading; in Truth, Interest in Java Is Surging - ExpiredLink
https://weblogs.java.net/blog/editor/archive/2014/04/23/tiobe-unintentionally-misleading-truth-interest-java-surging

======
seacious
There's a lot to dislike about java, but the platform independence story of
the JVM really is the best of anything out there that I've experienced. That
doesn't necessarily mean Java anymore, Clojure, Scala, etc. all benefit from
the work done to make the JVM truly platform independent. But when I compare
it to my experiences with Node.js, ruby, or haskell, (dependencies not working
because library maintainers forgetting (or don't care) that not every one uses
their preferred development operating system), I am really grateful for all
the boring, finicky work that contributors have put into making a truly cross
platform development target.

~~~
dsl
> the platform independence story of the JVM really is the best of anything
> out there

Serious question: Is this still true, and does it even matter anymore?

If you are building web apps you can run whatever platform you want. 40%+ of
smart phones don't do Java. Arduino doesn't have a fully functional JVM. Java
in the browser is non-existent due to security issues.

~~~
toddan
I think it matters, try developing ruby on rails on windows and you will have
bad time. For me only php and java are the two platforms that i have been able
to develop with, no matter what os i am currently using.

~~~
Nullabillity
Getting *AMP running is a pain no matter where you are. On the other hand, I
was merrily chugging along with Python stuff on Windows for a long time with
only one problem (in order to install native libraries you either need an
obscure version of Visual Studio or hunt down obscure downloads from the
itnernet).

------
jfaucett
This article might have some truthyness but the arguments would never lead me
to that conclusion.

1\. "wouldnt it be reasonable for searches for a mature language to decrease
since devs are already very familiar with that language" \- No, only if the
language is also dead. Any actively developed language is going to always be
expanding its libraries, frameworks, feature set, etc. and as a developer you
constantly have to keep up.

2\. Also saying total "java programming" searches quadrupled sounds good, but
all other searches had a 5 times increase using his own data.

3\. When I use his same method for "python programming"
([http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=python%20programming&...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=python%20programming&cmpt=q)),
I get an increase to 86 (2013) from 54 (January 2007) for python. This would
mean compared to java, python has had an 8 times increase!

4\. Basically unless you know exactly how google is normalizing the data, you
are not going to have anything worth reporting on using actual numbers anyway.

~~~
sanderjd
While you're right that people pretty much always have to keep up and refresh
their memories, the keeping up searches look very different than the learning
ones do. Developers already well-versed in a language are more likely to
search for specific APIs or go directly to documentation they have already
bookmarked.

------
kiallmacinnes
Surely the same logic can be applied to the other languages?

Yes... the absolute number of Google searches for "Java Programming" is
growing.. but the relative number of "Java Programming" to "* Programming" is
shrinking.

Measurements of this kind without anything to compare against are just
misleading IMO.

~~~
rbanffy
Something is off.
[http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=java%20programming&cm...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=java%20programming&cmpt=q)
shows Ethiopia, Uganda and Philippines more interested in Java programming
than India.

[http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=java%20programming%20...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=java%20programming%20example&cmpt=q)
OTOH, shows India behind only of Philippines.

------
vorg
A flaw that makes the Tiobe index easy to game is it uses the maximum results
from querying several search engines to calculate the ranking, not the sum.

That's how in Oct 2013 Groovy rose to #18 in the index from outside the top 50
only 5 months earlier (May 2013). 3 months later (Jan 2014), Groovy had
dropped back out of the top 50 (#32 in Nov, #46 in Dec). According to Tiobe's
Janssen [1]: "It turned out that the data that is produced by one of the
Chinese sites that we track is interpreted incorrectly by our algorithms.
After we had fixed this bug, Groovy lost much of its ratings."

Someone is also using a Chinese proxy to exploit Maven, boosting the apparent
download figures for Groovy to target rankings like Redmonk [2]. Click on
"country" and see where 85% of those downloads come from.

[1] [http://www.infoworld.com/t/application-
development/c-pulls-a...](http://www.infoworld.com/t/application-
development/c-pulls-away-java-among-top-programming-languages-230603)

[2]
[https://bintray.com/groovy/maven/groovy/view/statistics](https://bintray.com/groovy/maven/groovy/view/statistics)

------
joblessjunkie
Ohloh shows Java holding steady for the last several years at about 10% of all
commit activity in the open source world.

[http://www.ohloh.net/languages/java](http://www.ohloh.net/languages/java)

------
tim_m_locke
I think there are a number of better ways to determine which programming
languages are popular than what Tiobe uses. If they were only counting pages
generated within a specific timeframe, perhaps a month or year, then their
results might have some validity. Every month they are including all of the
web pages that exist. I believe this skews their results.

I'm also not convinced that language popularity is an important metric. I
think knowing which languages are strongly sought after by employers is more
important and relevant. I think it is also important to know which languages
are suitable for particular tasks, for people looking to create new code
bases.

It would also be interesting to know how much code exists in various
languages, and how many people are currently employed maintaining code bases
in various languages.

~~~
thinkersilver
Agree that job market demand is better a metric to gauge a languages
longevity. Which language skills are employers throwing their money at?

Added a few links below for programming language job trends for Java and
couple others. The source is itjobswatch.co.uk . Haven't got an equivalent for
US yet but Java is doing just fine

Job Demand and Salary Trends:

Java
[[http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/java.do#demand_trend](http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/java.do#demand_trend)]

C# Sharp
[[http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/csharp.do#demand_trend](http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/csharp.do#demand_trend)

python
[http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/python.do#demand_trend](http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/python.do#demand_trend)]

------
donutello
[https://www.facebook.com/notes/mike-develin/debunking-
prince...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/mike-develin/debunking-
princeton/10151947421191849)

------
chazu
The author supports his thesis by taking statistics which are adjusted for
overall volume of google traffic, then de-adjusting them. That right there
invalidates the results.

~~~
bencoder
I think one could argue that earlier users of google were more likely to be
programmers and that the overall proportion of "* programming" related
searches has declined, and therefore the normalisation isn't accurate.

In fact this can be somewhat confirmed by checking google trends for
"programming" [1]

For a more accurate evaluation, the relative measure should be compared
against all "* programming" searches. And if you overlay "programming" and
"java programming" charts, you can see that java programming curve has
declined less than the programming curve. [2]

[1]
[http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=programming](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=programming)

[2] [http://i.imgur.com/KbIm0w2.png](http://i.imgur.com/KbIm0w2.png) (Java -
red, Programming - blue)

------
Mithaldu
What do you mean unintentionally? TIOBE have always been bald-faced liars who
know their methodology is broken, their data useless and who only publish
clickbait to get ad impressions.

~~~
Mithaldu
So, i've gotten multiple downvotes. Why? Do you wish a detailed explanation of
exactly how broken their approach is? Please ask questions. What i stated is
merely simple fact and if it is doubted, i will happily expand.

~~~
Terretta
When making an inflammatory statement, perhaps you should have expanded in the
first place.

Then when you perceived the down votes, perhaps you should have gone ahead
with that detailed explanation instead of doubling down with a contentless
comment.

~~~
Mithaldu
It wasn't a contentless comment. I explicitly asked for questions, because i
do not know or understand which of the facts exactly are not understood or
maybe even contested. I would still love actual questions to answer, because
then i would actually know what specific information to provide. I'm not
writing it all down right off the bat, because doing so would mean having to
explain basic math principles, as well as soft human issues like how the very
name of a language can make it perform better or worse on tiobe.

As an addendum: I do not think it is inflammatory if there is no other
description of their actions that would be "softer" while also being truthful.

