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Most Popular Programming Languages: C++ Knocks Python Out of Top Three in New Study (techrepublic.com)
C++ has knocked machine-learning favorite Python out of the top 3 in the TIOBE Index of popular programming languages. From a report: It marks a reversal of fortune for C++, which, after years of occupying third place in the index, was pushed down to fourth place by Python in September last year. First and second place in the list remain unchanged, with Java in pole position and C at number two. The TIOBE Index attempts to estimate the popularity of languages worldwide based on results from major search engines. The index is sometimes criticized for being a rather blunt measure, likely to be influenced by a range of factors beyond a language's popularity, but its rankings are broadly in line with others, with a similar mix of languages albeit arranged in a different order.
In an analysis alongside the latest figures, TIOBE attributes the comeback of C++ to a surge in its popularity, rather than a fall in the use of Python. "This is certainly not because Python is in decline: Python is scoring all time highs almost every month. It is just that C++ is also getting more and more popular," it writes. The report credits this growing interest in C++ to C++11, the version of the language released in 2011 that TIOBE said made C++ "much simpler, safer and more expressive."
In an analysis alongside the latest figures, TIOBE attributes the comeback of C++ to a surge in its popularity, rather than a fall in the use of Python. "This is certainly not because Python is in decline: Python is scoring all time highs almost every month. It is just that C++ is also getting more and more popular," it writes. The report credits this growing interest in C++ to C++11, the version of the language released in 2011 that TIOBE said made C++ "much simpler, safer and more expressive."
Pick any two.
You don't have to remove large slabs of the language, you just have to choose not to use them. The craziness that is C++ locales, for example, need not concern you because you won't use it.
This is only true if you are either working alone or have control over the development practices of your product team. And hopefully you never move companies or acquire a company that develops differently than you do.
Otherwise every feature in your language of choice is something you may need to use if you are supporting work done by other developers who use that feature.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
It's also only true if you ever only look at your own code. One of the most irritating things about C++ is that in order to understand someone else's code you have to first essentially learn a new language by going through the project's style guide. If they have one. And it's any good.
Hey, I found this great open source project, I just need to add/tweak this little feature... OMG, KILL IT WITH FIRE.
What TIOBE measures: how puzzling a language is to how many Stackoverflow members. So C++ can win, even if it used by fewer Stackoverflow members, because it is more puzzling.
Of course, in order to have any users at all, a language must make itself useful, which C++ does by a variety of metrics, but most notably efficiency. If you care about getting the most bang for your buck out of your expensive, power hungry data center, then you hire more expensive developers and do the job in C++. If you care about lowest possible latency in a financial trading platform, again you do the job in C++. Go ahead, try it in Python. You can do it, it has been done, but you will get eaten alive in the trading jungle.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Career advice: Ignore the drip drip of new rising star languages and the drivel of proponent's blog entries.
There are jobs out there for general purpose languages only occupying a niche of the total number of programming jobs. Becoming an expert in one of those narrowly used in paid jobs languages is a hobby and not a career move.
Case in point: Search for jobs where Ruby is the main programming language versus Cobol jobs. Cobol's been on the skids since the middle 1980s and has more jobs than many of the once over hyped programming languages of the 90s and 2000s.
Blogs, magazines, podcasts, etc. have space to fill and it's much easier to cover the new language, library or tool of the month versus giving in depth information on a well established technology. It's why many sites gravitate to a list of links to what essentially are press releases or blog entries promoting the author's own project.
You're getting marked as flame-bait, but I agree. Try reading (and typing in) code from a book with C (or practically any other language), and you'll have no problems. Try the same with a book with Python code that spans a page-break, and you'll have to break out a ruler to figure out the correct number of syntactic spaces.
It's a fine scripting language, but it's hard to take seriously with limitations like that.