Python's popularity statistics

[Carl Banks]

Ian Bicking wrote:
> On Wed, 2002-12-11 at 19:24, Mike Dean wrote:
>> Also, it is intriquing that C is below both C++ and Java - from a rough
>> survey of implementation languages for free software on the Internet,
>> one gets the impression that C is used more (possibly even twice as
>> much) as C++ and Java combined.  Do they also have such a huge hidden
>> following, or are there so many more questions in them that they warrant
>> such a large amount of discussion traffic?
> 
> What questions are there about C that haven't been answered in
> innumerable books and online sources?  It's a fully matured language,
> and very boring to talk about.


Last time I read comp.lang.c, the breakdown by type of post was
something like this:

30% - people with questions about programming in Windows, and replies
      from the regulars saying it was off-topic

15% - discussion over what is supposed to happen when you write code
      like i=i++ or i^=j^=i^=j

10% - discussion about what and what was not considered on-topic
      (where it was generally agreed that discussion about what was
      and was not on-topic was on-topic)

10% - college kids posting their homework assignments, and the replies
      (which were generally the most entertaining posts on the group)

10% - flame wars comparing C to other languages, especially Java and
      Visual Basic

 5% - posts whose only point was to point out that someone used a
      nonstandard header (especially <conio.h> and <unistd.h>)

(And, in all fairness, there is a recently approved C 2000 spec that's
kind of new and unusual.)


ok-I-might-be-exaggerating-the-percentages-a-little-ly yr's

-- 
CARL BANKS