The Rise and Fall of Programming Languages in 2011

<p><pre><code> &#62; LOCs of Ruby changed or added in 2011 were [...] a fifth of what they were in 2008 </code></pre> I guess he means this peak in 2008 (though it's not 1/5 by averges) <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?commit=Update&#38;l0=ruby&#38;l1=-1&#38;l2=-1&#38;l3=-1&#38;l4=-1&#38;measure=loc_changed&#38;percent=true" rel="nofollow">http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?commit=Update&#38;l0=...</a><p>ruby-rant: I've been playing with ruby recently, and was amazed to find my working toy code broken by each upgrade of ruby (even point upgrade 1.9.2 to 1.9.3). It's a different world/philosophy from java's back-compatibility. I was so surprised I wasn't even angry, just shook my head, wow.<p>I wanted to try heroku, and the number of layers needing to be installed was also amazing (e.g. heroku's apt-get record doesn't state it needs ruby... ubuntu's repository now doesn't include ruby1.9.1... so I installed rvm (and another round of dependencies and documentation), and found an old gem (undocumented on heroku.com) that would install it). I hit roadblocks several times in this; so it took several days, and several hours on each. So... you've got upgrades/dependency management in apt-get, gems, rvm and heroku - and breaking changes in ruby itself. I recall reading that getting started in ruby had become complex and difficult for beginners, serving its present professional user needs, and very different from the experience that got them started.<p>Finally... it's a thrilling feeling to reduce 10 lines of Java into 1 line of ruby; but I have a doubt about whether that one short line really is clearer. I'm not saying that it isn't clearer, just that I'll only really know when I come back to it in a few months time and try to understand it. They have identical conceptual complexity; it's just syntax. Don't get me wrong - I really <i>enjoyed</i> making it shorter, I'm just not (yet) sure it's actually better.

To me this seems very tea-leaf-reading-ish. Specifically, some people tried to boil down the popularity of each programming language with a number (the tea leaf). Then the OP simply looks at those numbers, points at some related events and say "Aha, that is how those numbers came to be!" (the reading). Neither the "leaves" nor the "reading" provide much value, IMO.

Many indicators suggest that Ruby peaked in 'buzz' (which is what TIOBE measures) around four or five years ago. Python became ultra-trendy during 2010 but has likely undergone a correction since then, although it's still very fashionable and has even seen a limited transition to the mainstream (where 'mainstream' means corporate and/or educational use). And there's no doubt that Objective-C and C# have seen large recent increases in use, for obvious reasons. So I'd conclude that, broadly speaking, the TIOBE index isn't that far wide of the mark.

I often try the trendy languages and tools, just to see what the fuss is about. It's astonishing how fast these things seem to flame out and cycle. Like "people" magazine for technology or something.<p>Programming fads do occasionally provide something new for my toolkit - the functional programming craze led me to "High Order Perl", and git wound up making more sense to me than cvs or svn ever did.

Dr. Dobbs should really hire a talented designer to take their website out of the 1990s

"The well-known Tiobe Index " [...]<p>Dang. I stopped reading at this point.

I better drop Python &#38; Ruby and go pick up (sure, will do right now) Objective-C &#38; C#. Well, I suppose at least they [Python &#38; Ruby] still "...are the most interesting" (?!) so guess I'll stick w/ 'em for a bit longer. ...she'sus.