Survey Says C Dominated New '08 Open-Source Projects 378
svonkie writes "C overwhelmingly proved to be the most popular programming language for thousands of new open-source projects in 2008, reports The Register (UK). According to license tracker Black Duck Software, which monitors 180,000 projects on nearly 4,000 sites, almost half — 47 per cent — of new projects last year used C. 17,000 new open-source projects were created in total. Next in popularity after C came Java, with 28 per cent.
In scripting, JavaScript came out on top with 20 per cent, followed by Perl with 18 per cent.
PHP attracted just 11 per cent, and Ruby six per cent. The numbers are a surprise, as open-source PHP has proved popular as a web-site development language, while Ruby's been a hot topic for many."
no C++ (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm surprised C++ didn't make the list.
Python redacted? Rubymandering! (Score:2, Interesting)
The linked article was based on a post from the Black Duck news release that outlines language popularity briefly. From the real source, "..Python at nearly 10% and Ruby at 6%," was replaced with simply "and Ruby six per cent."
Why? Out of all the languages mentioned, why remove only the pen-ultimate?
C development? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Also headlined: "C developers lost more jobs in 2008. Java, Ruby, Python, and C# hired more people (and payed higher) in 2008. Twice as many applications roll out for 2008 vs. 2007"
.
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In other news: "PHP development held flat."
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Ouch?
Re:Just because PHP is popular (Score:5, Interesting)
For the services that they provide...
I'd say that it is quite remarkable.
An alternative list (Score:5, Interesting)
Tiobe maintains a list [tiobe.com] that is updated every month that tells a different story.
For January 2009, rounded; Java, 19%; C, 16%; C++, 10%; VB, 9%; PHP, 10%.
The spectrum of "C" and it's ilk vs "scripting" (Score:2, Interesting)
A lot of C and C++, moderate Java, lots of perl...
In C I "believe" I know almost always have a good idea of what's happening at the machine level. How many instructions (up to a constant), how many nanoseconds (ditto). I may be wrong up to small constants (especially taking account of caching effects, parallelism, blah blah) but I don't think I'm radically off much. I also have a good (IMO) feeling for what optimization is doing.
In C++, I feel the same way but I also think this is more arguable, and more of a nontrivial skill to acquire.
In perl, I absolutely don't. What's the time
to evaluate this regex? Yes, I know some of the
underylying theory and could probably do a decent
job if I thought hard about it, but the point is I don't. And ditto for other high level constructs
in perl. And if I start to fret about such things,
maybe perl is the wrong language for whatever I'm
doing at the time.
Java puzzles me. It's a bit opaque in terms
of quick "what's the metal [/silicon?] doing?" but ultimately manageable if you understand the "interpreter/VM/..." and your own "low level" code. Yet many developers - including developers of core java libraries - clearly are more in the perl mode of obliviousness. So it's a grey area whether Java is overall for someone who has to care about speed/efficiency vs productivity.
Nevertheless, I think the point is that
there is a performance vs quick-productivity
spectrum, and no answer is universally right, but
it is one reason why the "low level" vs "scripting" continuum actually isn't arbitrary
or unwelcome.
Re:Open source != popularity (Score:2, Interesting)
PHP?
Java still dominates PHP in the web application job market. Just do a search in most major job sites.
http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=java%2C+php%2C+j2ee&l= [indeed.com]
Re:Just because PHP is popular (Score:3, Interesting)
Truth is, static verification is generally overrated... This topic is hotly debated, but for me the proof is in getting the job done effectively and quickly.
Yes, err... I just spent a month converting a bunch of qt3 python apps to qt4. If it were in c++, there are a bunch of errors that I could have seen at compile time. I think it would have saved me a lot of time, and right now, I would be more sure that those apps worked (there is only so much testing I could do, never having used these programs). In my opinion, static verification, if anything, in underrated.
I thought PHP is much more popular than this! (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Just because PHP is popular (Score:3, Interesting)
Wikipedia uses php and is one of the fastest sites on the web despite staggering demand
Note that 99% of wikipedia traffic is handled by the front-end caching proxies, which were put in place because PHP couldn't handle the load on its own. I'm not saying that any other language could perform better, just that it's useless to use wikipedia as proof of PHP's speed when all the speed comes from *avoiding* PHP :-P