Usage statistics?

[Gabriel Zachmann]

For some reason, I would like to have some statistics about how often
Python is used in the *scientific* communities (such as astronomy,
genetics, electrical engineering, ...), as opposed to C++ or Java
or other "common" programming languages.

I know about TIOBE's Programming Community Index, and Francois Labelle's
statistics from sourceforge.

Any pointers or insights will be highly appreciated

Best regards,
Gabriel.

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[Andrew Dalke]

For some reason, I would like to have some statistics about how often
Python is used in the *scientific* communities (such as astronomy,
genetics, electrical engineering, ...), as opposed to C++ or Java
or other "common" programming languages.

It would be nice to know the reason. You're not in computational
genetics since you didn't mention Perl as a "common" programming
language. You ask for broad fields -- experimental, computational,
sequencing/assembly, annotation, gene expression, genology and
cladistics are all aspects of genetics.

In the one I know best, bioinformatics (overlaps well with
computational genetics), people use Perl, Java, Python, then
Ruby and others. Guessing based on talking to people at
conferences I'll put the numbers at 75% (Perl), 10% (Java),
10 (Python), 5% (other).

Whereas the sequence assembly most widely used are in C/C++
for performance reasons and the cladistic programs I know of
are in C because they were started in the 1980s. But I don't
know those fields well.

Andrew
(e-mail address removed)