Java drops to #2 in TIOBE index

My numbers are better than theirs: <a href="http://langpop.com" rel="nofollow">http://langpop.com</a> - I use multiple sources. While I stand by my results, I think that they are, by their very nature, not all that precise, so making a big deal out of a blip like this is great for publicity, but probably not very meaningful.

<i>Is it cause for concern, or just a statistically insignificant blip?</i><p>It seems obvious to me that it is neither. Even among java programmers, a miniscule fall that brought it a tiny bit below another language that isn't generally used for the same things as Java is totally unimportant. Not to mention other JVM languages are climbing up the rankings. And it's not very sound as a basis for what languages are important.<p>And it's <i>definitely</i> not a blip. Java's been going down for years in the TIOBE rankings.

Seriously? Go outranks action script? This list is flawed.

The claim is that Java is losing ground to other languages that use the JVM yet very few in the top-50 rely on the JVM. JavaFX is cited but it's only "approaching" the top-20.

I am only surprised it's second to C.

I get the feeling that C and C++ are undergoing a mini-renaissance right now. This is a good thing.<p>The high level language / low-level language thing is one of the "cycles of reincarnation" in software.<p>I do sometimes wonder... if we spent our time cleaning up the C/C++ ecosystem instead of recoding everything in the newest language of the month, would we get further with that?

I noticed the delta from #1 to #2 is 0.007%, i.e. in the 4th significant digit if you round.<p>(I suppose that if a C programmer had the flu for a couple of weeks, it would be a tie ...)

It's the new COBOL!<p>It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, I think one of the worst reasons to use a particular language is because of it's popularity. Java did a lot of great things but I think its time has passed.<p>The codebase that is out there makes it difficult to make any significant changes to the language. (eg. generics)<p>It's lagging because its popularity makes any revolutionary changes impractical to enterprise customers (eg. Oracle). I actually think that Oracle may piss the community off enough that the open source forks of java start making improvements to the language. (eg. MySQL)<p>New language features are being added to JVM based languages such as scala and clojure instead. This allows new ideas (i realize these are old ideas from a LISP perspective) to florish and reuse the extensive codebase.