I've noticed this issue a lot more recently. Developers who live in a language / platform bubble that assume that the large majority of paid developers are using whatever trendy language and less than 24 month old framework they're on etc.
Listen kids. A colossal amount of the software engineering that takes place on this earth is paid development for closed source apps and services. It's not on GitHub. It's not written in JavaScript. It's not done on Node.js. A great deal of it doesn't happen in California. And it dwarfs the amount of software on GitHub or GitLab.
It happens in Java and C++ and C# and Visual Basic and other not-sexy languages and involves writing crappy enterprise interfaces and tons of backend code.
The great thing about TIOBE is its a good indicator of what jobs are being hired for. That's why it doesn't match whatever trendy expectations most people expect to see in a languages ranking. That's why Visual Basic is always ranked so highly. Because the actual world of paid software engineering and your mental view of that world are wildly different.
Personally I think TIOBE is very valuable for what it's for. I tell young developers to use its top 10 list as a guide for where to invest your time IF you're taking a "safe" approach to career skills and employability. If you use one of the other guides for that, you may decide that learning new and exciting languages might be optimal for employment. Generally speaking that's not the case.
If one wants filter bubble expectations met, I recommend sticking to language rankings that are solely based on GitHub and other publicly available source code.
Listen kids. A colossal amount of the software engineering that takes place on this earth is paid development for closed source apps and services. It's not on GitHub. It's not written in JavaScript. It's not done on Node.js. A great deal of it doesn't happen in California. And it dwarfs the amount of software on GitHub or GitLab.
It happens in Java and C++ and C# and Visual Basic and other not-sexy languages and involves writing crappy enterprise interfaces and tons of backend code.
The great thing about TIOBE is its a good indicator of what jobs are being hired for. That's why it doesn't match whatever trendy expectations most people expect to see in a languages ranking. That's why Visual Basic is always ranked so highly. Because the actual world of paid software engineering and your mental view of that world are wildly different.
Personally I think TIOBE is very valuable for what it's for. I tell young developers to use its top 10 list as a guide for where to invest your time IF you're taking a "safe" approach to career skills and employability. If you use one of the other guides for that, you may decide that learning new and exciting languages might be optimal for employment. Generally speaking that's not the case.
If one wants filter bubble expectations met, I recommend sticking to language rankings that are solely based on GitHub and other publicly available source code.