Python surpasses Perl in TIOBE index

[Paul Rudin]

George Sakkis <george.sakkis at gmail.com> writes:

> On Dec 4, 11:07 am, Paul Rudin <paul.nos... at rudin.co.uk> wrote:
>> George Sakkis <george.sak... at gmail.com> writes:
>> > Even more amazing is the rate C++ is losing ground:
>> >http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index/C__.html
>>
>> I don't really find surprising that low level languages lose ground at
>> the expense of higher level ones. The developer-time/run-time
>> trade-off tends to move in favour of higher level languages as
>> hardware gets faster and cheaper.
>
> Well we Python folks are spoiled but for most people C++ counts as a
> high level language (hell, some consider even C high level). 


I guess it's all relative.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?HighLevelLanguage includes the words:

  The term "High Level Language" was originally used to distinguish
  things like FortranLanguage from things like assembly
  language. Therefore, originally "high level language" very much
  included Fortran, Basic, COBOL, Snobol, PL/I, and a little later, C.

  Observing that such languages are not very high level compared with
  e.g. Prolog, YACC, Lex, ML, Haskell, etc, some people started
  calling the older high level languages "low level languages", or
  qualifying them as "higher level languages", etc.


> more interested though how well do these numbers correlate with actual
> penetration (new projects, job openings, etc.)

I dunno, but I'm pretty sure that the number of Python jobs has
increased. 

I don't think it's just about the "level" of the language tho',
e.g. in some ways the language (Common) Lisp is at least as "high
level" as the language Python and has certainly been around longer.
But the former lacks the same range of standard libraries for actually
getting stuff done and lacks a de facto standard implementation. (I'm
not trying to start a Lisp vs. Python flame war here.)