How popular is Python, anyway? (was: Long Live Python!)

[phil hunt]

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:31:11 -0700, Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
>Perl, Java and PHP all grew popular by solving a particular problem at a
>particular time, better than any other language. (I'm thinking of system
>administration/CGI, Applets and web page generation). Perl and Java grew
>into general purpose languages over time. The jury is still out on PHP.

Popularity as a langauge for open source projects can be measured
by looking at Sourceforge's statistics.

>From http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=160
we have these figures:

C++      4078
C        4889
Java     2739 
Perl     2142 
PHP      1999 
Python    934
Shell     439
VB        390
Tcl       326 

So Python is the 6th most popular language for open source development.

Out of interest, here's the figures for some other languages:

JavaScript  269
Delphi   252
Pascal   110
Object Pascal 59 (total pascal-like = 421)
PL/SQL 237
Ruby 31
Lisp 122
Scheme  74  (total lisplike = 196)
Smalltalk 20



On 27 April 2001, I took this list from Sourceforge:

C         4250
C++       3458
Java      2252
Perl      1840
PHP       1652
Python     773
Unix Shell 380
Visual Basic 306
Tcl        279
Delphi     191
JavaScript 183


That was about 2 1/2 months ago. Subtracting, we can see what's
popular for new development. Analysing these figures, we get:

Language  27Apr 11Jul %age   diff %age   Diff %age
C         4250  4889  26.49  639  22.09  -4.4
C++       3458  4078  22.09  620  21.43  -0.66
Java      2252  2739  14.84  487  16.83   1.99
PHP       1652  1999  10.83  347  11.99   1.16
Perl      1840  2142  11.61  302  10.44  -1.17
Python     773   934   5.06  161   5.57   0.5
JavaScript 183   269   1.46   86   2.97   1.52
VBasic     306   390   2.11   84   2.9    0.79
Delphi     191   252   1.37   61   2.11   0.74
Shell      380   439   2.38   59   2.04  -0.34
Tcl        279   326   1.77   47   1.62  -0.14

Total    15564 18457        2893

In terms of new projects, Python is still 6th, but its %age
share has gone up. This means it is increasing in popularity
compared to the other languages in the table (though not 
necessarily compared to all languages).

The lang with the biggest increase in share is Java. The one
with the diggest decrease is C, though is is still the most popular
lang for new OSS projects.


-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##