Tag: java

Programming Community Index for February 2011

February Headline: C# and Python are closing the gap on PHP

The rise of C# and Python are continuing in 2011. Both languages scored another old-time high this month and are now busy with overtaking PHP. Other interesting news is that we started to add results of Chinese search engine Baidu and reintroduced Yahoo!. These search engines now only count for 3% each until all false positives have been weeded out. This change has already some effect: JavaScript is back in the top 10 while SAS and Transact-SQL both lost much ground.

The TIOBE Programming Community index is an indicator of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, YouTube and Baidu are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that the TIOBE index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.

The index can be used to check whether your programming skills are still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what programming language should be adopted when starting to build a new software system. The definition of the TIOBE index can be found here.

Position
Feb 2011		 Position
Feb 2010		 Delta in Position Programming Language Ratings
Feb 2011		 Delta
Feb 2010		 Status
1 1 Java 18.482% +1.13% A
2 2 C 14.986% -1.62% A
3 4 C++ 8.187% -1.26% A
4 7 Python 7.038% +2.72% A
5 3 PHP 6.973% -3.03% A
6 6 C# 6.809% +1.79% A
7 5 (Visual) Basic 4.924% -2.13% A
8 12 Objective-C 2.571% +0.79% A
9 10 JavaScript 2.558% -0.08% A
10 8 Perl 1.907% -1.69% A
11 11 Ruby 1.615% -0.82% A
12 - Assembly* 1.269% - A-
13 9 Delphi 1.060% -1.60% A
14 19 Lisp 0.956% +0.39% A
15 37 NXT-G 0.849% +0.58% A–
16 30 Ada 0.805% +0.44% A–
17 17 Pascal 0.735% +0.13% A
18 21 Lua 0.714% +0.21% A–
19 13 Go 0.707% -1.07% A–
20 32 RPG (OS/400) 0.626% +0.27% A–

More details can be found on TIOBE Index here

The History of Programming Languages

For 50 years, computer programmers have been writing code. New technologies continue to emerge, develop, and mature at a rapid pace. Now there are more than 2,500 documented programming languages! O’Reilly has produced a poster called History of Programming Languages (PDF: 701K), which plots over 50 programming languages on a multi-layered, color-coded timeline.

How It Started

We first saw the “History of Programming Languages” diagram, created by Éric Lévénez, while visiting our French office. We were so taken with the level of detail and the visual impact of viewing 50 years of programming history that we wanted to come up with a way to share it more widely. We started big. We printed it out full-size, all 18 feet of it, on our plotter and ran it along a wall at our Mac OS X Conference last fall. So many people came by to make notations on the diagram that we knew there would be a lot more interest and discussion if we could only get it in a more manageable format. With Éric’s permission, we collected comments from our authors, editors, and friends, and rebuilt the file so we could print it at its current dimensions, 39″ x 17″. Éric maintains a site with his original diagram, change logs, an explanation of how he creates his charts, and links to additional resources such as Bill Kinnersley’s Language List of over 2,500 programming languages. Éric also has Windows and Unix historical diagrams that he makes available for non-commercial purposes, all at www.levenez.com

About the O’Reilly Poster

“Cool” is generally the first thing we heard from people who reviewed our poster. Then came reams of suggestions for additions to the diagram. We made only a small number of changes–in order to keep the file in a relatively manageable state that enables us to print and share the poster–but there is a high level of historical knowledge and personal experience of the events in this poster among our friends, authors, and editors. We hope to inspire and capture your comments and discussion here in our History of Programming Languages Wiki. Please note, however, that we do not intend to update the poster. Our walls aren’t big enough.

Getting Your Copy

The poster is available online in PDF format (701k). You can also find full-size copies, while they last, at O’Reilly conferences (http://conferences.oreillynet.com/).

Open Source On The Rise, Online Work Index

The April Online Work Index reveals that IT and marketing skills continue to dominate the online work landscape as the Top 10 graphic clearly demonstrates.

Beyond the general demand for technology and marketing skills, businesses are clearly chasing domain expertise in open source technologies, help with delivering world-class user experiences, and insiders with savvy working with social media.

  • Open Source on the Rise: The overall trend of businesses migrating to open source technology solutions is stronger than ever with PHP (#1) programming now topping the Index followed closely by MySQL (#2). Demand grows for a variety of other open source skills including Joomla (#18), Drupal (#48 – up 10 spots), osCommerce, (#49 – up 20 spots), Ruby on Rails (#73 – up 27 spots), and Linux (#74 – up 13 spots).
  • User Experience Paramount: With more pressure than ever for companies to compete with world-class user experience, hiring trends show accelerating interest in technologies that deliver and enable great customer experiences, such as HTML (#3 – up 3 spots), Flash (#10 – up 2 spots), AJAX (#12 – up 14 spots), JAVA (#16 – up 13 spots), and – the biggest mover on the list – Actionscript (#56 – up 43 spots).
  • Social Media Rising: Social media continues to gain mainstream traction as companies strive to connect with customers, drive traffic, and become part of the online conversation with their communities of users, partners and even prospects. Demand for professionals skilled in developing for Facebook, Twitter, and blogging applications is surging. WordPress (#15) and Blogs (#19) crack the top 20, while Social Networking (#38) moves up 6 spots, Facebook (#61) is up 10 spots and Twitter (#93) makes its debut on the Index.