Response from: Charles Miller (Check me out!)

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.

Response from: Jason (Check me out!)

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.