D enters Tiobe top 20

[Jeff]

On Tuesday, 10 December 2019 at 13:27:04 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:
> On Tuesday, 10 December 2019 at 10:04:17 UTC, Martin 
> Tschierschke wrote:
>> Any comment on this curve?
>> Is it possible to match certain events to this shape?
>
> More interesting curve to discuss:
>
> https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=dlang
>
> Basically no change over the past 5-6 years for active people 
> searching for "dlang".

I never understood why people here seem to think that D is more 
popular? If D is more popular, you will see it reflected in a 
very key core component. All you need to do is look up 
code.dlang.org its growth and you see that D has the same growth 
as before. You can even track it on websites like 
www.modulecounts.com where its growth is the same slow 1 package 
/ day, over the 3 years.

No spikes, no sudden growth change ... You expect with a increase 
in downloads ( d statistic ), blogs, increased marketing that a 
increased interests results in a growth spike ( like other 
languages ). But it does not. What does it tell you? People try 
D, they discus D but a lot simply do not progress beyond trying D.

D is not some magically language where all users do not 
contribute or make missing modules.

Just compare the package growth of Rust or Julia or ... That is 
what a surge in popularity will look like.

Maybe compared to 10 years ago D is more popular, but when your 
looking at a ultra low bar, its easy to feel that your doing 
good. Tiobe has been fairly unreliable for years by checking 
google results. The more non-unique a programming language there 
name, the more the results are unpredictable. Last year Crystal 
was at 38 because ... crystal + programming = not the programming 
language. Yikes!

Even Swift / Objective-C results are nonsense because they are 
the same market. Yet now both results 75% are bigger, then the 
actual original Objective-C market share. Past legacy results 
keep Object-C at a higher position resulting a wrong impression.

A better metric has always been: Jobs posting, Github/Gitlab, 
module/package gains etc. Show me the D jobs? In Europe there are 
none. Modules growth is the same as it was 3 years ago ( turtle 
speed ).

In essence while D has been on a charm offense, if one looks at 
the data. Its clear that D may have people trying out D ( 
increased in downloads of D ) but this is not reflected in actual 
contributors to D. Even if new D users are very selfish to not 
contribute, they can not be all 100% selfish. Even a 10% gain, 
with a increased in users, will reflect back in projects, 
modules, contributions etc. Yet, its not.

So the essence is that D has a issue keeping those new users 
interested beyond trying it out. This is something that i feel is 
ignored in a lot of these conversations.