Python surpasses Perl in TIOBE index

G

George Sakkis

G

George Sakkis

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

George
 
P

Paul Rudin

George Sakkis said:
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.)
 
G

greg

George said:
Well we Python folks are spoiled but for most people C++ counts as a
high level language

Well, some parts are high-level, but it's full of very
deep elevator shafts for you to accidentally fall
into...

A truly high-level language also *doesn't* have low
level parts (or at least doesn't expose them unless
you explicitly ask it to).
 
D

Daniel Fetchinson

Well we Python folks are spoiled but for most people C++ counts as a
Well, some parts are high-level, but it's full of very
deep elevator shafts for you to accidentally fall
into...

A truly high-level language also *doesn't* have low
level parts (or at least doesn't expose them unless
you explicitly ask it to).


Anyone has an idea what the huge peak around the middle of 2004 can be
attributed to?

http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index/Python.html
 
R

Roy Smith

"Daniel Fetchinson said:
Anyone has an idea what the huge peak around the middle of 2004 can be
attributed to?

There's a Q/A section at the bottom of
http://www.tiobe.com/index.htm?tiobe_index which covers this:

Q: What happened to Java in April 2004? Did you change your methodology?
A: No, we did not change our methodology at that time. Google changed its
methodology. They performed a general sweep action to get rid of all kinds
of web sites that had been pushed up. As a consequence, there was a huge
drop for languages such as Java and C++. In order to minimize such
fluctuations in the future, we added two more search engines (MSN and
Yahoo) a few months after this incident.
 
D

Deltantor

This is *not* an attempt to start yet another Python-versus-
AnyOtherProgrammingLanguage flame war, but I thought people might be
interested in this:

http://www.tiobe.com/tpci.htm

Marc
Real programmers use brainfuck.

Kidding of course, I believe someone should use the language they like
and that fits the purpose of the program they are writing. All
programming languages have their ups and downs. Brainfuck is just all
downs :(
 
G

George Sakkis

I find Ohloh comparisons also useful:http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?commit=Update&l0=python&l0_0=-...

What it highlights is that the number of python programmer is growing
quicker than the number of perl programmers.

Not necessarily; it shows that the count of monthly commits by open
source developers is growing, which might be mostly thanks to
relatively few dedicated committers rather than an overall increase in
the population.

Another interesing point is that the gap with PHP is narrowing too:
http://www.ohloh.net/languages/comp...rl&l1=php&l2=python&l3=-1&l4=-1&commit=Update

George
 
C

Carl Banks

Not necessarily; it shows that the count of monthly commits by open
source developers is growing, which might be mostly thanks to
relatively few dedicated committers rather than an overall increase in
the population.

I think it's probably more to do with the opinion of version control
is held in by the Python and Perl communities.

Less pejoratively, Perl's main strength is simple throwaway or single-
task scripts that (paraphrasing the perl man page) require a bit more
complexity than sed or awk; these sorts of things don't really need
version control. Python is more geared to complex applications, so
version control comes into play a lot more. It's not a surprise that
Python would have more commits then, even back as far as 2000 when
Perl was the shizzle.


Carl Banks
 

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