Language Popularity

[Todd VanderVeen]

I am moving this answer to a new post, as my intent was not to hijack the
lexer thread.

Tiobe and others have tried to determine language popularity by various means.
They are drawing inferences where no definitive data set exists. There is no
reason to treat these numbers as scientific results. That said, various
sources lead to similar results with the differences being reasonably
understandable in light of the user bases supporting the various languages and
the methodology being used, e.g.

http://langpop.com/
http://lang-index.sourceforge.net/
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/comp.lang-statistics/

That Fortran and Ada do not rate relatively well on a search engine index
rating is not surprising to me.

My post wasn't intended to defend Tiobe or others. It was suggested that Java
was "rapidly becoming a legacy language". What is the basis for this claim and
where is the evidence supporting it? Assuming legacy was used to mean
"becoming obsolete", these ratings and my experience don’t corroborate it. I
am interested in what others see here.

The biggest risk to Java at the moment would seem to be political, i.e. Oracle
alienating the community. From a language standpoint, I don't see any imminent
challenges to the role it fills. Given its inertia, cross platform nature, and
library support, I don't see competitors offering a fundamental challenge any
time soon. I also see two areas where Java has untapped potential, the desktop
space and mobile code.

With regard to D, there seems to significant potential market/mind share to be
had. There is the obvious space held by C and C++, but also in other areas
where the specialized features of the other languages are not required. I also
find the surge in interest in Objective-C to bode well for D. Being less
familiar with OSX development, I am curious if this is a reflection of
increased usage there, or is there an itch that C++ isn't scratching?

Cheers,
Todd