Perl is dead. PHP sucks. Long live Python!

[AL the Inconspicuous]

I almost went crazy trying to be all Howard Roark-like about what I code.  Now I just let the job postings dictate, and PHP, MySQL, and jQuery rule the school.  The only paid programming projects for functional languages I've seen are lazy Computer Science majors trying to hire someone to do their homework. 

[Level 20 Anklebiter]

There's several companies that use Functional Programming, chiefly those are the telcos who need fast programs that can work fast without a context switch. Erlang was created just for that purpose.

[Alex Libman]

An update to the TIOBE Programming Community Index for July 2010 --

July Headline: C# is rated higher than Visual Basic for the first time in history

It has taken much longer than expected before C# finally surpassed Visual Basic in the TIOBE index. Although C# is generally considered to be the second enterprise language behind Java, it is rising only very gradually. On the other hand, Visual Basic adepts regarded Microsoft's introduction of VB.NET in 2002 a rude stab in the back. It has taken 8 years from that moment on to see a serious drop down of Visual Basic, however.

Other interesting changes in July are: JavaScript is back in the top 10. The winners of the first half of 2010 are C (+2.3%), Java (+1.2%) and Objective-C (+1.1%). The losers are Visual Basic (-1.8%), PHP (-1.5%) and Go (-0.8%).

I started programming flavors of BASIC for DOS a zillion years ago, but I'm glad to see it decline.  I'm glad to see PHP decline as well.  I want like 90% of languages out there to go extinct already and stop being a nuisance.  It's like putting a bunch of rats in a barrel until you only have one. 

[Alex Libman]

An update to the TIOBE Programming Community Index for August 2010 (and isn't it nice that it comes out a few days early this time (instead of in the middle of the month (though the latter might be better for ad revenue (not that it matters anyway (because most programmers use AdBlock))))) --

August Headline: Dinosaur Smalltalk falls off top 50

Smalltalk, the first pure object-oriented programming language ever, lost its position in the TIOBE top 50 this month. The same happened to the other well-known pure object-oriented language Eiffel a couple of months ago. This is probably part of the trend that languages are becoming more and more multiparadigm: both object-oriented and procedural with a functional flavor.

I mostly follow that index to see how the various scripting languages (ex. PHP, Python, Perl, JavaScript, Ruby, etc) are battling it out, and it seems that all of them are slowly sagging with no viable replacement yet in sight.  In order to compete with the aforementioned languages, the next scripting runner-up (Lua) would have to increase its popularity at least eightfold, which simply is not gonna happen.  The stalemate continues...

Among the "corporate languages", The most visible changes in the index currently are the rapid decline of Visual BASIC and the rapid ascent of Objective-C.  Could this be indicative of Apple's potential to leapfrog Microsoft, if not in desktop market share then in overall industry significance?  Only time will tell.

Even though most things Google touches turn to pure platinum, Go remains a flop.  I understand that it was released early and all, but there should be a lot more buzz.  I think Google has its fingers in too many soups at the same time, and should probably focus its efforts (including its Summer of Code sponsorship) on a more integral vision, hopefully involving BSD licenses and trying to eventually move away from Java (which for now remains #1).  I really love what they're doing with the Native Client and LLVM integration - maybe that will be the venue through which Go will express itself and triumph.  It will have to compete with all the other LLVM languages, now including PHP [2] and Google's own Python front-end.