Re: Fearing the demise of Perl

Both Python and Java have gained on Perl since January 2000. I might consider switching to another language if this trend persists.

Please do - it's always important to let others decide what's good for you. Here's another table that might help you pick a better language than Perl:

           Jan  2000    Jan  2001    Jan  2002    Jan  2003    Jan  20
+04
   Ruby    1720 (100)   2670 (155)   5440 (316)  16500 (959)  20900 (1
+215)
    PHP   15400 (100)  20100 (130)  37400 (242)  66200 (429) 130000 ( 
+844)
 Python    3850 (100)   6870 (178)   8760 (227)  11400 (296)  25400 ( 
+659)
   .NET   64600 (100)  86200 (133) 107000 (165) 142000 (219) 230000 ( 
+356)
   Java   33300 (100)  37500 (112)  45100 (135)  56700 (170) 103000 ( 
+309)
   Perl   10700 (100)  13700 (128)  14900 (139)  18500 (172)  31700 ( 
+296)
    C++   17500 (100)  19200 (109)  22200 (126)  30700 (175)  35700 ( 
+204)
   UNIX   20500 (100)  23500 (114)  24500 (119)  29000 (141)  36800 ( 
+179)
      C  120000 (100) 137000 (114) 153000 (127) 172000 (143) 187000 ( 
+155)
   Lisp    2330 (100)   2450 (105)   2420 (103)   2980 (127)   3600 ( 
+154)
  shell    8510 (100)   8580 (100)   8870 (104)  10500 (123)  12300 ( 
+144)
  BASIC   78200 (100)  84900 (108)  93600 (119) 101000 (129) 111000 ( 
+141)
  Forth   13500 (100)  14700 (108)  14900 (110)  16400 (121)  18100 ( 
+134)
Haskell     713 (100)    634 ( 88)    787 (110)    937 (131)    917 ( 
+128)
 Eiffel     529 (100)   1700 (321)   1680 (317)   1740 (328)    656 ( 
+124)
    Ada    4680 (100)   4660 ( 99)   4640 ( 99)   5430 (116)   5000 ( 
+106)
 Scheme   19900 (100)  22500 (113)  22400 (112)  22200 (111)  20200 ( 
+101)
  Cobol    2530 (100)   2270 ( 89)   2340 ( 92)   2310 ( 91)   2420 ( 
+ 95)
 Pascal    5480 (100)   4260 ( 77)   4590 ( 83)   5220 ( 95)   5140 ( 
+ 93)
FORTRAN    5080 (100)   3770 ( 74)   4130 ( 81)   3830 ( 75)   3740 ( 
+ 73)
[download]

The code that generated this:

#!/usr/bin/perl
   
use strict;
use warnings;
   
use LWP::Simple qw /$ua get getprint/;
   
my @years  = (2000 .. 2004);
my @months = qw /January/;
my @langs  = qw /Perl Python Java C C++ Ruby PHP Cobol BASIC FORTRAN F
+orth
                 UNIX Lisp Scheme Haskell shell .NET Pascal Ada Eiffel
+/;  
  
my %info;
  
$ua -> proxy (http => "http://XXXX:XXXX/");
$ua -> agent ("Mozilla/8.0");
    
foreach my $lang (@langs) {
    my $l = $lang;
       $l =~ s/(\W)/sprintf "%%%02x" => ord $1/eg;
    foreach my $year (@years) {
        foreach my $month (@months) {
            sleep 2;
            my $query = lc "q=$l+programming+%22$month+$year%22";
            my $url   = "http://www.google.nl/search?$query&hl=en";
            my $text  = get ($url) or do {
                warn "Failed to get $lang/$month/$year\n";
                next;
            };
            print STDERR ".";
            unless ($text =~ m!Results \s+ <b>\d+</b>\s*-\s*<b>\d+</b>
+ \s+
                               of \s+ about \s+ <b>([\d,]+)</b>!x) {
                warn "Failed to parse $lang/$month/$year\n";
                next;
            }
            my $count = $1;  
            $count =~ s/,//g;
            $info {$lang} {$year} {$month} [0] = $count;
            $info {$lang} {$year} {$month} [1] =
                $info {$lang} {$years [0]} {$months [0]} [0] ?
                100 * $info {$lang} {$year} {$month} [0] /
                      $info {$lang} {$years [0]} {$months [0]} [0] : -
+1;
        }
    }
    print STDERR "\n";
}
                
print " " x 9;
foreach my $year (@years) {
    foreach my $month (@months) {
        printf "  %3s  %4d  " => substr ($month, 0, 3), $year
    }
}
print "\n";
             
foreach my $lang (sort {$info {$b} {$years [-1]} {$months [-1]} [1] <=
+>
                        $info {$a} {$years [-1]} {$months [-1]} [1]} @
+langs) {
    printf "%7s ", $lang;
    foreach my $year (@years) {
        my $w = $year >= 2004 ? 4 : 3;
        foreach my $month (@months) {
            printf "%7d (%${w}d)" => @{$info {$lang} {$year} {$month}}
+; 
        }
    }
    print "\n";
}

__END__
[download]

Abigail

Comment on Re: Fearing the demise of Perl Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: Fearing the demise of Perl by diotalevi (Canon) on May 21, 2004 at 15:05 UTC
From the department of useless statistics I bring you the same data, normalized by year. Mostly it shows C taking a nose dive, .NET in ascendency, BASIC going south as well, PHP and Java getting more hits and then (after removing that skewing data from the table) there's the rest of the bunch which C++ and Unix mostly stable, Scheme going south, Perl and Python going up, a big jump in Ruby. Removing that further skewing data from the table I see Forth followed by Shell. Removing those I now see Ada, Pascal, Fortran, Lisp, Cobol, Eiffel, and Haskell. Jan-00 Jan-01 Jan-02 Jan-03 Jan-04 Ruby 0.009968946 0.014930408 0.030569005 0.090978178 0. +08826915 PHP 0.124473722 0.142748192 0.24053793 0.381514413 0.56 +3973769 Python 0.027797541 0.045729874 0.052380546 0.0611646 0. +107890331 .NET 0.536289141 0.627473124 0.69779191 0.824626015 1 Java 0.274300876 0.270345981 0.291124937 0.325979318 0. +446246686 Perl 0.085133631 0.095815673 0.092718756 0.102669777 0. +135359983 C++ 0.142051209 0.136148307 0.140677866 0.173988531 0.1 +52801033 UNIX 0.167161905 0.167681094 0.15578827 0.164050671 0.1 +57597321 C 1 1 1 1 0.812508721 Lisp 0.015074788 0.013317103 0.010728387 0.011942968 0. +012836612 shell 0.066802822 0.058269657 0.053103217 0.055903381 0 +.050770894 BASIC 0.650124298 0.617939956 0.609757379 0.584948235 0 +.481128785 Forth 0.108570281 0.103148879 0.092718756 0.090393598 0 +.076060416 Haskell 0.001540123 0 0 0 0.001138028 Eiffel 0 0.007817198 0.005866779 0.004694177 0 Ada 0.034744833 0.029523488 0.025313212 0.026265177 0.0 +18940979 Scheme 0.162139766 0.160347887 0.141991814 0.124299235 +0.085216967 Cobol 0.016748834 0.011997125 0.010202808 0.008026283 0 +.007691503 Pascal 0.041441019 0.026590206 0.024984725 0.025037559 +0.019551416 FORTRAN 0.038092926 0.022996935 0.021962644 0.016911898 + 0.013447049 [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: Fearing the demise of Perl by hardburn (Abbot) on May 21, 2004 at 12:33 UTC
Why go to all the work of querying Google when `my $use_factor = int rand 20000;` would get you just as valid an answer? ---- send money to your kernel via the boot loader.. This and more wisdom available from Markov Hardburn.	[reply] [d/l]