Computer Language Popularity Trend

[semiopen at hotmail.com]

John Bailo wrote:
> Xah Lee wrote:
> > Computer Language Popularity Trend
> >
> > This page gives a visual report of computer languages's popularity, as
> > indicated by their traffic level in newsgroups.
>
> The only problem being that in the last five years, there are now a
> multiplicity of options for discussing any of these languages, in places
> that are not Usenet.
>
> For example, Sun hosts a variety of bulletin boards on its java.net
> site.   Likewise Microsoft has it's "communities".
>
> My guess is that if you included all the new avenues the other languages
> would have growth curves about the same shape as for LISP.
>
Good point - especially given the sheer volume of the microsoft groups.
For example, I follow microsoft.public.excel.programming (and thus have
been quite interested in the discussion in fa.haskell recently about
finding a way for VBA to call Haskell functions) regularly and it
almost always has hundreds of posts a day - most of them business-like
discussions of code. Few of the traditional comp groups can boast of
such volume - so any attempt to measure an ill-defined popularity by
focusing on them will be skewed.

-semiopen