Was interested tonight how well Java (A language I know) is doing against other languages such as C# (One that I don't know). I'm also something of a Bash/Ksh and Perl buff so I was also interested in popularity indexes as well. I remembered earlier a site I had used to check for this.  I managed to locate it as just recently at:

http://www.tiobe.com/tpci.htm (TIOBE Software)

which rates language popularity on the web.

So I am glad (keeping in mind I'm a bit in favor of Java since it's a multi platform and this appears be working in it's favor well) to report Java is still a top pick around the globe which to me is good news, but to others likely disappointing news, though C# is showing higher, though very small, rate of increase of popularity over Java. 🙂

Interestingly Perl has dropped in popularity however I'm not surprised there. Most functionality in Perl can be done much easier using KSH/Bash and other alternatives like Python for Perl to be much good there, though I speak from limited experience here as well. Python appears also to be a more watertight language, IMHO, having written code in it a long time back.

However Python in 2004/2005 was very slow and did not appear ideal for large applications, it did have ease of use and development however which I found very appealing. Apparently the speed problems in Python were resolved in 2006 when I test drove the, at-the-time, new Python version and looked up speed comparisons online done between the two versions.

All of this is definitely something to think about when selecting Python over Perl and C# over Java.