Thought this would be interesting given #code2105
Thought this would be interesting given #code2105
Originally shared by Warren Postma
The relevance of the TIOBE numbers is increasing. (Wink) That's code for "Delphi went up this year!".
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
Originally shared by Warren Postma
The relevance of the TIOBE numbers is increasing. (Wink) That's code for "Delphi went up this year!".
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
We're NUMBER 12! We're Number 12!
ReplyDeleteKidding aside Delphi moved up 8 positions but still has alot of work to catch up to VB.NET and the funny one is that C is #2 instead of C#.
Hm, it was number 10 in June 2015.
ReplyDeletehttps://web.archive.org/web/20150627132933/http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
Richard Baroniunas C is quite ubiquitous: basically everything else is using or relying on some C code at one point or another, that includes all the other languages, which either are either implemented in C, rely on C, are extensible in C, use C-based DLLs, compiled by C compiler... and when it's not C, it's C++, and people learning C++ start by learning C.
ReplyDeleteC# on the other hand is just a regular language, which is essentially found in C# application and C# frameworks.
You can do any computer task without involving C#, even indirectly, but you can't do much without directly involving something that is written in C.
Eric Grange I will say this when was the last time you were offered a position that C was the main programming language. Not understanding the language because I have to assume all of us know but an actual company that deals with it.
ReplyDeleteFor the most part in the states Visual Studio positions are offered and they tend to be C#.
I have not had a job since the 1990s dealing with C when I was working at the telephone company.
Richard Baroniunas TIOBE does not track jobs, but search on "SomeLanguage programming", and pretty much every developper of whatever programming language had to face or will face C at some point. Not so much with C# or Delphi or most other languages. A Python dev f.i can work years without ever seeing C#, but will see C regularly. It's also hard to do any kind of Linux work and never see C. Etc.
ReplyDeleteEric Grange that is why I do not consider the TIOBE to be more then a survey done based on who sees and votes it their way.
ReplyDeleteIn the States you would see Visual Studio with C# or VB.NET much more. With Python you can get jobs just as when PHP was huge a few years ago, there were jobs coming out of the wood work but the latest craze and everyone moves on.
Positions that are listed on job boards will give you an idea as to where the money is.
You'd better check the StackOverflow stats and the github-stats, that is where progreammers communicate, that are much more interesting stats then the Tiobe-stats which is based on wild google-searches. That is why C scores so high, while in fact, lines of code written in it, people using it, are low. I think Object Pascal (don't forget Lazarus) does better then C.
ReplyDeleteRichard Baroniunas Yes, while C/C++ is still at the core of all critical components, there are relatively few developers and jobs centered straight on it. PHP / Python have vaster job markets, but IME with a completely different developer population.
ReplyDeleteIMHO you cannot lump "developers" and their jobs into a single category, just like you can't lump "engineers" into a single category (or any other broad brush terminology). Jobs around PHP or VB can vastly differ from those around Java, which will vastly differ from those around C. The "available job count per language" is only meaningful if you are starving or cornered.
Bert Verhees StackOverflow is still quite skewed by its initial population IME, while that is changing, I would not count it as being representative (it certainly is not representative of the developers I know IRL)
Which forum would you call representative for counting developers using a specific technique/language/platform?
ReplyDeleteBert Verhees for major languages/platforms? none. Just like no club can be called representative of a country.
ReplyDeleteI take the freedom to believe otherwise. There are thousands of questions about Delphi on StackOverflow, so the fact that you don't know one of them personally does not tell us much, but that Delphi-developers have discovered StackOverflow by thousands is for sure.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the numbers are not correct, they are probably not. But the fact that the Delphi-tags, although thousands, is not enough to appear significant in the statistics (of 2012) tells me something, but not the whole story.
http://hewgill.com/~greg/stackoverflow/stack_overflow/tagstats.html
So Delphi was nothing compared to Java. But should it be? That is what you must ask yourself. Delphi sure has a purpose in the development world, and will remain to have a function.
The competition between Delphi and Java is not very interesting.
By the way, if you want all questions asked with a specific tagged , look here. Nice to have.
http://hewgill.com/~greg/stackoverflow/ebooks/
Bert Verhees concluding anything about representativeness from just one sample is generally fraught with peril, just like concluding that football club supporters are a representative of their countrymen, just because there are many of them. Same goes for StackOverflow, or any social network on the Internet.
ReplyDeleteI agree, you can never be sure of anything.
ReplyDeleteBut the larger the group of relevant cases that are measured the more valuable the results are regarded. It is how marketing research takes place. Because it is not sure that there is a representative group, a large group of interested people is taken (in this case, developers).
If you were right, Facebook or Google or "any social network on the Internet" was worth nothing.
I quit the discussion, thanks for your replies.
Best regards
Bert Verhees
Bert Verhees "worth nothing" and "not representative" are two very different notions :)
ReplyDelete- using facebook or twitter to gauge the general population trends failed quite reliability (multiple studies in the USA demonstrated that), hence they are not representative.
- using social networks for advertising targeted at the social networks populations works very well, they are most definitely not worth nothing.
So if you can use social networks to find out what kind of muesli sportsmen like best, then it should also be good to find out which programming language programmers like best. As long as the numbers are big, the chance that you have a valuable outcome rises.
ReplyDeleteStackOverflow has large numbers. Github also.
I don't see the point in denying that it is valuable what they show. It is not 100% truth, but it are trends. More reliable then Tiobe which ignores these programming-focused resources. That is my message, nothing else.
And again, why should Delphi be as big as Java, what is the point, why this stupid competition?
Sorry, I should stop this discussion, I will now do. ;-)
ReplyDeleteBert Verhees Yes, better stop, your confusion comes from assuming that "sportsmen on social network" is the same thing as "sportsmen in general", or that "programmers on stackoverflow" are the same thing as "programmers in general". And big numbers do not protect you from it, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_bias
ReplyDeleteBert Verhees I won't go into details if you want me to, but I once did a study on Stack Overflow tag data from its inception to I believe 2014. I looked at the percentage of questions about a language compared to total questions. Just looking at total questions isn't useful because as Stack Overflow becomes more popular, every language's questions grow in volume. The relevant metric is out of the pie (of whatever size), what is the slice that language X is getting? This shows relevancy.
ReplyDeleteMy study showed that After a brief rise in the first year or two, Delphi questions as a % of total began a slow decline over time. It wasn't that the volume was decreasing; it was just that most other languages' volume was increasing and Delphi's wasn't. Other major languages either held their own or increased (with the exception of C# because it was overrepresented in the first months of Stack Overflow).
Even new languages like Scala have already gained more question share than Delphi.
I think it provides another piece of evidence for the hypothesis that the Delphi community is stagnant with a slight "leak".
I've got a spreadsheet with data and I've also got some charts if anyone wants to look at it. I haven't run anything for 2015 yet. I also need to look at new Github projects by language for 2015 (Delphi has dropped 3 ranks per year for the last 2 years in this metrics and was in the 40s).
I'm interested to see if I can look at total unique question-askers. If so, that might be another way to note new users or if it's the same community asking questions month after month.
Eric Grange In what way don't you believe that StackOverflow is representative?
ReplyDeleteJoseph Mitzen in many ways, from the obvious like being in English, to the documented, like being a social network.
ReplyDeleteMultiple studies have demonstrated social networks are not representative of their target audience, and that social network participation is not even representative of their members.
Joseph Mitzen, Eric Grange. I think the figures on social networks are saying something. But not always the obvious.
ReplyDeleteFor example on StackOverflow. When there are many questions asked for a language, then is it clear that there are many people using that language, which don't know how to do things. Mostly these are newcomers.
The low representation of Delphi on StackOverflow does not say something about the part of Delphi-programmers on the world, but it says something if it is a language which gets newcomers learning it. I am afraid this is not true. Delphi is a programming language of the older programmers.
We can discuss why that is, but that is another subject.
The same, but in another way counts for Github. Github tels us something about open source code. There is not much open source code for Delphi, at least, not as much as there is for many other languages.
Although these figures say nothing about the part of programmers programming in Delphi, but it are signs. I think Delphi is slowing dying out. This is widely denied in Delphi communities, that is why the cause of this happening is not discussed.
But that would be an interesting discussion, that could help to change this. But, as said, that is not a negotiable subject. The Delphi community is conservative. I discussed only a few times some problems with Delphi, I brought in some solutions, but all I get is Delphi-fans getting angry, even getting aggressive. I even stopped discussing this, because the my online reputation was at risk.
Delphi programmers are very uncertain, so they regard criticism as dangerous, while it should just be the other way. It should be welcomed. Criticism is a way to modernize, to adapt.
The discussions I had was on LinkedIn, and I cannot read them back, because I left that discussion group. Maybe if you search for my name, you can find them, about a year ago.
But there is one interesting discussion which you can find, which shows the hidden anxious feelings of the ObjectPascal community.
Since I am in the business of letting Java and Delphi/FPC communicate together, I know something about that subject. There was someone who wanted to get the output of a Java program in Lazarus, and asked how this could be done.
Read for yourself:
http://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php?topic=22565.0
I think a discussion about the slowly declining of Delphi/Object Pascal must be done, I live from Object Pascal, you do, many do. We all see advantages, why not helping it by looking critical at the why young people don't like to use it.
I have some suggestions, but I have no discussion forum.
Eric Grange Is Stack Overflow really a social network in the truest sense? Isn't it more a user-generated information source in the same style as Wikipedia?
ReplyDeleteThe language issue is a valid point and in the last Stack Overflow survey they themselves believed it could be an issue.
I guess two other questions to ask then are 1) Do you believe there is a more representative source and 2) Do you believe Stack Overflow to be a significantly distorted/biased source?
Bert Verhees Bert, we could be twins, except I have no online reputation left to lose. :-(
ReplyDeleteI've been considering setting up a "safe space" where people could talk about the future of Delphi and what could be done to make it a brighter one without fear of being banned or deleted or harassed. I was thinking about a blog dedicated to the subject and a forum. Delphi tends to have become something of an isolated island where information about modern Delphi never leaves for the mainland but new ideas never reach the island either. And as you've noticed, if you leave the island and return with news of the outside world you find the natives assembled on the shore with torches to keep you at bay. :-(
If you're interested that might provide the motivation I need to "pull the trigger". I'd certainly love to hear your suggestions either way.
In regards to things like Stack Overflow and Github, they are all individual glimpses of the "big picture", but they all tend to point towards the same picture which is much as you described, and that lends validity to them as indicators and to the hypothesis you've laid out.
It is a good idea Joseph Mitzen, if you set up such a forum, I'll be happy to write some contribution.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if that is your plan at first.
First, I am pleased and really a bit surprised that I am not the only one who likes Delphi but thinks it does not improve enough to stay alive. Too bad those people do not speak out, but maybe there is just no forum to do so.
So, I welcome your idea. But I need to make a few remarks to see if we are on the same track.
Delphi/ObjectPascal is not a religion for me. There is nothing sacred to it.
But having said this, what we need to be careful for is that it does not become an anti-Delphi forum, rather a pro-Delphi forum, which has a lot of emphasizing on the advantages of Delphi, but also addresses critics. As I said before, Delphi/(rather ObjectPascal) is making me money, and I want to keep it doing that for the coming years. I am a great fan of FPC (and then also Lazarus and CodeTyphon. I think they are better then Delphi, mostly because of the multi-platform.