Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!newsfeed.hal-mli.net!feeder1.hal-mli.net!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!postnews.google.com!news2.google.com!npeer01.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!post01.iad.highwinds-media.com!newsfe01.iad.POSTED!8ad76e89!not-for-mail From: Arved Sandstrom User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.17) Gecko/20110424 Lightning/1.0b2 Thunderbird/3.1.10 MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: =?UTF-8?B?QW5kcm9pZOKAlFdoeSBEYWx2aWs/?= References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Lines: 41 Message-ID: X-Complaints-To: abuse@newsgroups-download.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 04 Jun 2011 00:52:57 UTC Organization: Public Usenet Newsgroup Access Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2011 21:52:55 -0300 Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.java.programmer:4964 On 11-06-03 09:13 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote: > In message , Michael Wojcik wrote: > >> [TIOBE’s] long-term data shows Java and C securely holding the top two >> spots for the past decade. > > With Java on a downward trend. Not at the moment in any serious kind of way. After 2005 or so you'd be hard-pressed to argue that Java has lost its position, and it certainly hasn't over the last 12 months by TIOBE data. Who actually cares where Java was in 2001 or what happened to it in the first 5 years after that? Arguably Java was found in a lot of applications at the time precisely because a lot of other languages sucked pretty hard, but now there are reasonable competitors. Java has now settled into a solid position that it's unlikely to give up for decades. By your own admission you don't play in the enterprise space: I can assure you that in that space Java has a lock. >> But as I noted, the TIOBE rankings are suspect. They're based on >> things like advertised positions and classes, so they mostly measure >> demand or perceived demand in various markets. > > Which is a good basis for deciding what skills to brush up on, don’t you > think? [ SNIP ] I agree. To an extent. The TIOBE rankings don't say anything about application domains. One's ability to program many problems requires comprehensive knowledge of the domain, and many domains (finance, science, engineering etc) have preferred language choices that are markedly different from what the overall TIOBE rankings indicate. If you're going to be simply a general-purpose programmer with no extensive knowledge in specific application domains then you may as well go with TIOBE. But as soon as your education and experience starts to position you in a sector then TIOBE is less relevant. AHS