ESR: Computer Language Trends in 2009

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1016

by rglovejoy • 17 years ago

29 26 17 years ago

esr.ibiblio.org

noss• 17 years ago

Looks like we Erlang people can remain as a cool underground movement.

Thank you ESR.

dfranke• 17 years ago

At least until the next time Techcrunch links to news.yc.

stcredzero2• 17 years ago

Erlang people can remain as a cool underground movement

Really, it's quite enviable. Enjoy it while it lasts.

10ren3• 17 years ago

Erlang has 40 projects on freshmeat: http://freshmeat.net/tags/erlang

    Java   5316
    C++    4824
    Perl   3730
    Python 3161
    ...
    Erlang   40

It may be that Erlang people don't add their projects to freshmeat.

benkant• 17 years ago

People still go to Freshmeat?

davidw• 17 years ago

As for why Tcl won't just up and die, see the SQLite testing thread. Tcl's built like that too, and built well: native threads, Unicode, a very extensive C API. Definitely some pieces missing (OO), but they are being actively worked on. In other words, Tcl is not the most popular thing out there by a long shot, but it's not "dying" either.

stcredzero2• 17 years ago

Good, old languages are like good, old comic book characters. They might be declared dead, but someone's always going to bring them back.

bayareaguy• 17 years ago

Tcl is still great when you need to whip up a testing wrapper for a C/C++ library but I think these days Lua is doing a better job at the original goal Tcl set out to accomplish.

gchpaco• 17 years ago

I have to admit, I really like Tcl's syntax. Some issues, but it was something you could programmatically manipulate without huge pains. And the C interface was quite pleasant, particularly if you had ever dealt with contemporary Perl modules. I was looking into it many years ago as an extension language that was simultaneously not extraordinarily lame but not permitting you raw hardware access, either, and liked what I saw.

But the core design didn't age well, I don't think; dynamic variables, little consideration for modular programming, primitive data structuring tools, etc. I like looking at Tcl-without-the-warts type languages, but it's really just masturbation. Lua is almost as flexible and certainly better put together.

draegtun2• 17 years ago

Tcl may well get a second chance at glory with Parrot: http://code.google.com/p/partcl/

The whole interoperability with other languages on Parrot is going to be a game breaker IMHO.

adamc• 17 years ago

Favorite quote: "Perl has become the COBOL of web design"

SwellJoe3• 17 years ago

Awesome...except it isn't true. CPAN grew more in raw number of distributions than both RubyForge and PyPI in the time span under discussion.

brand• 17 years ago

CPAN vs RubyForge vs PyPI isn't exactly an appropriate comparison.

Take a look at:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=python%2C+perl%2C+ruby&ct...

http://www.google.com/trends?q=cpan%2C+pypi%2C+rubyforge&...

Google Trends isn't a great measurement tool, but the 3 languages have similar search volumes (with Perl declining, Python stable and Ruby ascending), yet CPAN is has a much higher volume than either RubyForge and PyPI. I think the relevance of each repository to its language community isn't comparable.

silentbicycle• 17 years ago

While the language is still growing, the direct point ESR is making is that there is a lot of legacy Perl code in use, and this is not likely to change soon.

catch23• 17 years ago

Publishers put their stuff on github now, there's more packages there than RubyForge.

sho• 17 years ago

I don't think this is a very valid comparison. Sourceforge is not popular as a repository for a number of the more "modern" languages, and seems to focus more on "end user ready" projects than modules, plug-ins, etc, which is perhaps the primary delivery format for projects in the script-y languages.

Even if you included more repositories, though, still - what's the point? It's good to see trends, yes, but at least try and keep them in the same general domain. No-one is going to be making a choice between developing in C or in Ruby; they are different worlds in so many ways. And even counting projects is a bad metric in itself; someone starting a C project might be expected to have some reason for doing so, and thus he might be likely to at least half-finish it; Ruby "projects" are so easy to start that many developers don't seem to feel the day has really begun until they've tossed off half a dozen crappy new gems.

Nice talking point I guess but I wouldn't read much into these. And personally I am happy to see the fast rate of change and evolution. I would like to see it accelerate even faster. In particular I am hoping to see a mass migration towards a more distributed, federated project hosting paradigm; hopefully the next step after everyone is comfortable with git and the other DSCM systems, which will render this kind of "trends" article even harder to write :D

rjurney• 17 years ago

Perl projects and modules exist in CPAN, so the data has very little relevance. Perl developers tend to push FOSS modules, not complete systems.

wheels• 17 years ago

davidw runs a site that does much more comprehensive stats:

http://langpop.com/

ESR: Computer Language Trends in 2009

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