Python Is On the Rise, While PHP Falls (dice.com)

Nerval's Lobster writes: While this month's lists of the top programming languages uniformly put Java in the top spot, that's not the only detail of interest to developers. Which language has gained the most users over the past five years? And which are tottering on the edge of obsolescence? According to PYPL, which pulls its raw data for analysis from Google Trends, Python has grown the most over the past five years—up 5 percent since roughly 2010. Over the same period, PHP also declined by 5 percent. Since PYPL looks at how often language tutorials are searched on Google, its data is a good indicator of how many developers are (or aren't) learning a language, presumably because they see it as valuable to their careers. Just because PYPL shows PHP losing market-share over the long term doesn't mean that language is in danger of imminent collapse; over the past year or so, the PHP community has concentrated on making the language more pleasant to use, whether by improving features such as package management, or boosting overall performance. Plus, PHP is still used on hundreds of millions of websites, according to data from Netcraft. Indeed, if there's any language on these analysts' lists that risks doom, it's Objective-C, the primary language used for programming iOS and Mac OS X apps, and its growing obsolescence is by design.

Comments

Go away Dice

[Anonymous Coward]

We won't want this Dice shit here.

Is there really no one at all willing to buy Slashdot?

Re:PYPL shows C language share @ only 7.5%

[iggymanz]

this is Dice trying to churn their candidate pot, nothing more.

Slashdot really circling the drain quickly now

False metric

[techno-vampire]

Counting the number of times tutorials are accessed tells you how many people are learning (or considering learning) a language, not how many are using it now. All this can do is tell you if people expect to need it in the future, because for the most part, if you're currently programming in a particular language, you shouldn't need to be going over tutorials.

Re:False metric

[h33t l4x0r]

Right, so in other words we're comparing the number of people who *don't* know Python to the number of people who *don't* know PHP.

I already know PHP, so if I search for a Python tutorial that's somehow a win for Python?

Re: False metric

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been programming for 20+ years. I *still* look things up all the time. Why? Because I have not memorized the documentation on thousands of API calls or that one bit o language one of my fellow co-workers found and I now have to decipher again.

I learned long ago. Even though I think I may know a function it is best to look up the docs and at least re-read them. For example take the well used C standard printf. I can think of the top of my head at least 5 different quirks with that little bad boy depending on which platform you are on. I program in no less than 3 different ones. So I look it up all the time.

Then as you jump around thru different languages you need to remind yourself on the syntax for *this* one. Is it AND or and or And or && or & in this language. Some langs let you do them all some only one or a subset and they have different meanings.

So even if you are fairly proficient sometimes the languages get muddled together. Take 2 seconds look it up and be done with it.

Assumptions are the cause of more fuckups than I can count. Look it up. Once you have read it a few hundred times I may allow you to assume a few things.

Har har har?

[Anonymous Coward]

Python? Seriously? The language where I can't cut and paste anything without it seriously being broken because... whitespace matters?!

Python is as dumbass does.

Re:Har har har?

[Shompol]

Aliluâ! Panacea against copy-paste programmers is finally here!

Understand the Allure

[Thunderf00t]

I know it's a matter of taste, but I understand why Python, aside from simply being popular, is used so often. Having spent time using several languages, I can say that brevity bordering on the obscure (often mistaken for elegance) is not something to encourage. Don't get me wrong, it's great if you can reduce the steps used to implement an algorithm (especially if you get big-O benefits as well), but simply reducing line counts isn't anything to brag about. I mean, who cares if you implemented something in a single line of Perl that took 5 lines of Python for me? Eighteen months later, when the code gets dug up for whatever reason, I know which will be far easier to follow and correct if needed.

That, to me, is the real strength of Python: it enforces readability without requiring too many extra characters (Tcl being representative of the other extreme). If using an interpreted language isn't an issue, it almost always seems like the way to go for my tastes.

Re:Spare Us

[invictusvoyd]

A real programmer does not care about languages. A real programmer does not attempt to write a kernel in perl. A real programmer does not attempt to write a glue script in C . A real programmer cares more about the optimum solution to the problem than which tools to use .

Re:Spare Us

[TWX]

His statement is true if you consider it to mean that a real programmer does not care about any one language to the exclusion of others.

I was at a Cisco event recently that had a discussion on Application Centric Infrastructure, basically using a master controller to do all kinds of fancy on-demand things to switchports at the access layer depending on factors like authentication of the device or user account. The presenter basically said there are two ways to go about it, the first is to use the somewhat crappy GUI/Web interface, and the second is to write stuff in Python that the controller makes use of. As someone that uses a lot of Bash right now the Python approach is definitely more my style than relying on a web page.

But... but...

[DaTroof]

Didn't Slashdot just run a post about how WordPress (written in PHP!) powers 25% of the web?

Why, yes. Yes, they did.

Please stop the hyperbolic clickbait.