Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!goblin2!goblin.stu.neva.ru!cyclone02.ams2.highwinds-media.com!npeer02.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!spln!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!news2 From: Michael Wojcik Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: =?UTF-8?B?QW5kcm9pZOKAlFdoeSBEYWx2aWs/?= Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2011 12:26:23 -0400 Organization: Micro Focus Lines: 71 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: p2d5e69adc14b6e3f6b0bb2b66410711b5bd1313cbaa3eb40.newsdawg.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.23) Gecko/20090812 Thunderbird/2.0.0.23 Mnenhy/0.7.5.0 In-Reply-To: Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.java.programmer:5095 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. Which could just be a market correction. While we might speculate that Java will eventually drop further down in the rankings, we don't have a good model for long-term interest in programming languages. The oldest languages still in relatively widespread use - Fortran, COBOL, LISP, and assembly (considered as a general category) - might be typical of once-popular languages, or they might be outliers. My personal suspicion is that Java has matured, and that its historical peak in relative interest is past, but that it will continue to be a major player for a good long time. But that's pure speculation. Android app development might be enough to drive it to a new peak, for example. I think it's safe to assume that new languages will continue to be invented (because programmers and computer scientists like to create them), and it seems likely that occasionally one will become popular, and it will take some share away from older languages. So over the long term I expect every language to show a downward trend. The question is how long that term is. People - including more than a few COBOL programmers - have been predicting the death of COBOL for at least a quarter-century. Micro Focus has been around since the '70s and we're selling more COBOL compiler and runtime licenses than ever. Do I think everyone's going to drop their favorite languages and switch to COBOL? Of course not. I think we're seeing a very long tail, and I think we'll see the same for Fortran, and eventually for C, and for Java, and so on. >> 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? Depends on your goals, I suppose. I don't let TIOBE decide what I study, but then I'm not chasing entry-level positions where a language on a resume is considered a qualification. >> And simplistic interpretations of their data are likely to be >> misleading. For example, they rank COBOL at #37, well below, say, Logo >> (#24). (Time to brush up on those Logo skills!) But there are a few >> billion lines of COBOL application source code still under >> maintenance. They're rarely touched (indeed, businesses are >> tremendously wary of touching them), because they encode business >> rules. But they still exist and the programs compiled from them are >> still used. Does that mean COBOL is under-ranked? > > The code exists, but there’s less demand for humans to look at that code. > That’s what TIOBE is telling you. That's what TIOBE is claiming to tell me. It's not clear that's entirely correct. Also, as Joshua noted, TIOBE say that the rankings under #25 or so aren't meaningful, so my whole paragraph above is really unfounded speculation. I'm treating their report as having more precision than it claims. -- Michael Wojcik Micro Focus Rhetoric & Writing, Michigan State University