Blog Archive » Ranking the popularity of programming langauges. Posted: December 9th, 2010 | Author: drewconway | Filed under: outliers | Tags: languages, programming, visualization | 54 Comments How would you rank the popularity of a programming language? People often discuss which languages are the best, or which are on the rise, but how do we actually measure that?
One way to do so is to count the number of projects using each language, and rank those with the most projects as being the most popular. Another might be to measure the size of a language’s “community,” and use that as a proxy for its popularity. Solution: measure both, and compare. This week John Myles White and I set out to gather data that measured both the number of projects using various languages, as well as their community sizes. The above chart shows the results of this data collection, where high rank values indicate greater popularity, i.e., the most popular languages on each dimension are in the upper-right of the chart. Raw ranking data available here. How to Choose and Learn a New Programming Language | Micah Elliott. They say you should learn a new programming language every year . I don’t necessarily agree, but it’s happening this year for me with R . Here are the steps I have found over the years to make it go smoothly.
If you’re a perl, C++, or Java zealot, it’s been nice knowing you… Why Learn a New Language? You may disagree or have your own unrelated reasons, but addressing the why seems a necessary start for such a how post. Here are the reasons I could think of: You want to impress someone. Pursue a new domain. You want to expand your mind. You’re actually going to need to use the new language for real work. Get connected to a new community. Have something new to write about. Feed the hype machine. There’s got to be more reasons. How Long Should it Take? Depending on your background and the new language you’re targeting, you should plan to dedicate some significant time to learning it.
Not that it took me very long to learn the feature set. How To Actually Learn It Read the FAQ. Get a book. Languages best suited for scientific computing? I work in a field where the standard for high-performance scientific computing is still Fortran (albeit Fortran 95 nowadays). The array-based nature of Fortran provides a relatively clean and intuitive syntax for solving the systems of equations often involved in numerical simulations. The simplicity of Fortran has also facilitated highly efficient Fortran compiler implementations. However I'm searching for a more modern and general purpose scientific computing language. Fortran is probably not the ideal language for writing networked graphical applications, neither I would argue is MATLAB or IDL.
SciPy has deservedly gained traction amongst scientists recently and it is certainly a very attractive option. I'm of the belief that the ideal language should also be functional and open-source. Any suggestions in my quest for a better language are welcome. Languages best suited for scientific computing? I work in a field where the standard for high-performance scientific computing is still Fortran (albeit Fortran 95 nowadays). The array-based nature of Fortran provides a relatively clean and intuitive syntax for solving the systems of equations often involved in numerical simulations.
The simplicity of Fortran has also facilitated highly efficient Fortran compiler implementations. However I'm searching for a more modern and general purpose scientific computing language. Fortran is probably not the ideal language for writing networked graphical applications, neither I would argue is MATLAB or IDL. I'm of the belief that the ideal language should also be functional and open-source. SAC lacks many desirable features for a general purpose programming language.Boo is one of the most promising new "main-stream" languages but multidimensional array operations are not a core feature (although it recently gained array slices).
Any suggestions in my quest for a better language are welcome. The Nature of Lisp. Monday, May 8, 2006 Introduction When I first stumbled into Lisp advocacy on various corners of the web I was already an experienced programmer. At that point I had grokked what seemed at the time a wide range of programming languages. I was proud to have the usual suspects (C++, Java, C#, etc.) on my service record and was under impression that I knew everything there is to know about programming languages.
My initial attempt to learn Lisp came to a crashing halt as soon as I saw some sample code. The moment I regained my sight I communicated my frustrations to some members of the Lisp sect. For many months the Lisp advocates pressed on. The enlightenment came instantaneously. That very second I became a member of the Lisp cult. I gave the matter careful thought. I shared my ideas with fellow Lispers.
XML Reloaded A thousand mile journey starts with a single step. <todo name="housework"><item priority="high">Clean the house. Let's take this a little further. So, where are we? Ant Reloaded.