Python's popularity statistics

[rzed]

"Aaron K. Johnson" <akjmicro at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:at8gh6$bgf$1 at bob.news.rcn.net...
>
> For all who are interested, I wrote a couple of python scripts that
helped
> extract newsgroup activity from the comp.lang.* hierarchy, and this
can be a
> rough guide to the popularity and usage of the big programming
languages.
>
> On a pragmatic note, I wrote this scripts in under a hour. I
challenge
> advocates of another language other than Python to beat the ease
with which
> this can be done. (esp. languages with weak real world libs like
Lisp!)
>
> Note the admirable position on the Python at the top of the heap!
IMO it should
> knock Perl down a notch, but Perl has a strong unix traditional
community.
>

A couple of entries just jumped out at me: Clarion? Labview? I can't
believe either is "more popular" than, say, Cobol or Fortran. There
may well be more reasons to discuss them in a newsgroup, though.

It's hard to say what, if anything, the numbers really mean. There's
an element of buzz factor, an element of befuddlement, and, as you
suggest, an element of undifferentiated involvement: the sheer number
of users. In Python's case, I think all those factors have contributed
to a recent jump in the numbers.

It might be interesting to scan all the messages to find out what
languages are most mentioned outside their respective newsgroups.

And then somehow analyze the context of the mention.

--
rzed