Java Is Rated The #1 Language
I think it is amusing that while a number of people think "Java Is Dead" the language gets rated number one by TIOBE Software. First, Full Disclosure about my understanding of where this index came from is in order: I've never heard of this company before and have no idea what methods were used to compile this index. The "TIOBE Programming Community Index for February 2006" does have Java at the top of the list though and I've seen a few other people that I respect refer to it.
Funny thing about this is that Ruby, which I would have assumed would at least appear in the top ten, is not even on the list. Python is listed at number eight and C# at number seven. It is interesting to see the popularity of all these different langauges. TIOBE even lists how these languages are being adopted or dropped. Check it out
February 27th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
The index is calculated based on how many search-engine hits the language gets. So web pages containing “Java is a dead programming language” or “I am never programming in Java again” all count as a hit in favour of Java for the index. As a measure of… well… anything useful whatsoever, the TIOBE index falls significantly short.
On top of that, nobody (or at least nobody sane) is actually saying Java is dead. Many people are saying that Java is tired, or has serious shortcomings, but nobody is really denying that lots of people use Java.
So really, what you’ve got is a meaningless statistic that disproves something that people aren’t saying in the first place.
February 28th, 2006 at 8:32 am
Thanks Charles. Now I have some idea of how they pulled together this index. I’m still surprised that Ruby is not on the list with all the hype it has been getting recently with Rails. Even if the methods used to put it together are suspect I found the idea of such a list interesting. I viewed the information cautiously and I thought I made that clear in the post.
Also, there are a number of Ruby On Rails zealots I’ve encountered recently that do think Java is either dead or dying. As for me knowing if they are sane or insane I’m not sure. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.