Toiby; #14 an rising

[Bill Baxter]

Jeff Nowakowski wrote:
> BCS wrote:
>> It's a informal scoring system, Also while it may not indicate 
>> anything it may well generate interest in D.
> 
> In other words, it's shallow marketing bullshit.  It's sad to see so 
> much fixation on this in the D community.

fixation?  Have you noticed that every time the numbers get posted the 
poster usually uses the phrase "grain of salt"?

Everyone's well aware that it's not a very accurate measure of 
programming language popularity.  But it is an objective measure.  If 
you have a better one please do share.

Programming languages live and die by the network effect.  Even if 
you've got the greatest language in the world, if you're the only one 
who uses it, it's pretty useless.  TIOBE gives a vague gauge of how much 
the network effect is working for different languages.  The 
month-to-month variations of one slot or two up or down are obviously 
meaningless.  But the fact that D is in the top 20 and has been for a 
while, and that Scala is not, says something to me.

But you have to take it with a grain of salt.

--bb