programming languages (etc) "web popularity" fun

[Alex Martelli]

jmdeschamps wrote:
   ...
>> may perhaps be explained by some occurrences of 'scheme' as an ordinary
>> word rather than the language name, and
> 
> Naturally we can also ponder about the fact that python is also a
> snake, a java rats eating thing even ;-)

However, I think that the inclusion of 'programming' in the search cuts
down references to snakes and monty python.  'monty python programming'
does give 22,000 hit, but that includes (e.g. on the first page) lots
of pages about the python language that mention its name's origin --
eyeballing a few pages of such hits suggests over half of those are
like that; '(clever OR crafty) scheme programming' gives 23,500 hits
which include "hacker" in the AHD ("hack, practical joke, clever
scheme"), Linux Today's denunciation of "MS 'Software Choice' Scheme
a Clever Fraud', etc.  It's hard to gauge!

For example, one purely suggestive indicator may come from
looking just for the phrase "XXX programming language" (with
the quotes in the search).  With that, focusing on the 20
languages that previously appeared most popular (java down to
ml, and, for fairness, adding a -visual to ALL searches with
the single exception of the one for visual basic)...:

            Language # of hits

                java     58300
                   c     45300
                 c++     17100
                perl      9090
              python      7110
                 ada      5610
              scheme      3910
        visual basic      3810
               basic      3610
                lisp      1820

                  c#      1480
             fortran      1320
                 php      1310
          javascript       881
               forth       829
                 tcl       519
                  ml       513
              delphi       396
          postscript       228
                 abc        95

lisp and particularly ada make a great recovery and push out
of the Top 10 php and javascript.

But if we look for "XXX programmer" instead of "programming
language" things change rather drastically below the top 3
unchanged places...:

            Language # of hits

                java     37000
                   c     13400
                 c++     12400
        visual basic     11300
                perl      9160
                 php      7100
              python      3820
              delphi      2190
                lisp      1990
             fortran      1530

          javascript      1450
                 ada      1370
               basic      1190
                  c#       479
                 tcl       323
               forth       305
              scheme       283
                 abc       145
          postscript       144
                  ml       123

visual basic jumps up to 4th plage -- php is in again with a
vengeance -- and so is delphi and venerable fortran.  lisp
holds and notches up, but scheme disappears into the depth
of the ranking!  What fun!


> BTW Thanks for a great nutshell book!

You're welcome!  googling for 'XXX in a Nutshell' does show
my work doing roughly as well as could be expected given the
languages' popularity (and the lack of Nutshell books for
some, which helps:-):

                java     10700
                perl      5540
              python      1140
                  c#       393
              delphi       354
                 c++       352

...:-)


Alex