Java Remains #1 Programming Language, But Ruby Is Now 10th @ JAVA DEVELOPER'S JOURNAL

Java Remains #1 Programming Language, But Ruby Is Now 10th

Ruby is now the 10th most popular programming language, up from 13th place a year ago

Oct. 31, 2007 06:15 AM

In the aftermath of the latest spat between Rubyists and Javaholics, it might be worth noting that Ruby is now the 10th most popular programming language, up from 13th place a year ago. That, anyway, is the story according to the TIOBE Programming Community index which gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages and is updated once a month based on the world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors.

The popular search engines Google, MSN, and Yahoo! are used to calculate the ratings, according to TIOBE - which on its site carries the warning:

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 ratings are calculated by counting hits of the most popular search engines. The search query that is used is

+"<language> programming"

The search query is executed for the regular Google, MSN, and Yahoo! web search and the Google newsgroups and blogs for the last 12 months. The web site Alexa.com has been used to determine the most popular search engines.

By applying the search engine query as defined above, a lot of hit counts are collected. Let's define "hits(PL#i,SE)" as the number of hits of programming language PL at position i of the TIOBE index for search engine SE. The counted hits are normalized for each search engine for the first 50 languages. More formally, the rating for PL#i becomes

((hits(PL#i,SE1)/hits(PL#1) + ... + hits(PL#50)) + ... + (hits(PL#i,SEn)/hits(PL#1) + ... + hits(PL#50)))/n

where n is the number of search engines used.

The Top 10 as at October 2007 is as follows:

1.   Java
2.   C
3.   (Visual) Basic
4.   C++
5.   PHP
6.   Perl
7.   C#
8.   Python
9.   JavaScript
10. Ruby

Below is a line diagram detailing the long term trends for these ten:

Published Oct. 31, 2007 — Reads 24,261
Copyright © 2008 SYS-CON Media. All Rights Reserved.

▪ Steve Jobs Dismisses Java As "Heavyweight" in an Age of Lightweight Computing

▪ How and Why AJAX, Not Java, Became the Favored Technology for Rich Internet Applications

▪ Javaland Discusses Eckel's "Java Backlash" Analysis

▪ Is Java a "Ball and Chain"?

▪ Blogger's Flamebait Posting on Why Java Sucks Continues To Attract Rebuttals

About Java News Desk
JDJ News Desk monitors the world of Java to present IT professionals with updates on technology advances, business trends, new products and standards in the Java and i-technology space.

CAT wrote: Well that's impressive. Java and C have swapped places over the last couple of years at least once, but that or maybe Basic are probably the only valid comparisons. This whole Java vs. Ruby bash and picking on each other's community is like farmers of apples and pears or grapes comparing their fruits... Ruby remains a Scripting Language, so even if it may gain ground compared to JavaScript, PHP, Python or others, you cannot fully compare it with languages that cover different areas beside server side scripting or dynamic web applications. Especially at times when some tendencies go towards Rich Client UI (again) where you may see JavaScript in many of them, but if it gets any richer, then you are more likely to deal with Java, C#, Basic or C(++) Which languages has it replaced btw? Ada, SmallTalk or others? Anybody knows that?

read & respond »

LATEST JAVA STORIES & POSTS

JavaOne 2008: A Developer's Perspective

By Andres Almiray

This is my third JavaOne. Many topics were discussed, friendships were made, new partnerships were started. I must say things have changed a lot and stayed the same yet again, here are my thoughts in no particular order, bear in mind that they do not represent the opinion of my c

3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo: Themes & Topics

By Jeremy Geelan

From Application Virtualization to Xen, a round-up of the virtualization themes & topics being discussed in NYC June 23-24, 2008 by the world-class speaker faculty at the 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo being held by SYS-CON Events in The Roosevelt Hotel, in mi

A Lightweight Approach to SOA and BPM in Java Using jBPM

By SOA World Magazine News Desk

SOA is mostly associated with technologies such as BPEL, SCA and Web Services. But does SOA really imply these technologies? In this session we will show how you can use the service oriented approach while staying inside the Java world. jBPM is a powerful lightweight framework th

Case Study: Java and the Mac

By Bob Cusick

This is the story of a Mac application developer (okay - it's about two of them) who set out on a quest to find an application development tool based on Java so his boss would let him develop on the Mac platform, which he loved. There was only one catch - he had to find a tool th

eApps Hosting Now Offers the GlassFish Java Application Server in VPS Hosting Plans

By Java News Desk

eApps Hosting announced that the GlassFish Open Source Application Server for Java EE 5, from the GlassFish community project, is now available as a click installable application service in low cost Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting plans. The eApps Hosting service has support

The 4 Core Principles of Agile Programming

By Joe Winchester

One of the things I really enjoy at the moment is the recognition and adoption of agile programming as a fully fledged powerful way to deliver quality software projects. As its figurehead is a group of very talented individuals who have created the agile manifesto (http://agilema