First off, Their List is not at all a measure of language supportability, or anything more than:

an indication of the popularity of programming languages.

So how do they measure this? Well:

The ratings are based on the world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors.

This has massively favours corporate-backed languages (note Java's at the top). They judge "skilled engineers" by people that are certified. How many people here are "Perl Certified?" now compare that to how many people here are "skilled engineers." See where I'm going? Having a corporation backing a language is very, very different than having it be well supported.

Perl is infinitely better supported than Java. Why? Because it's open. If Sun goes bankrupt or gets in extremely bad financial position and starts looking for any possible source of revenue, Java's in trouble, big trouble. I trust Sun as far as I can throw a Sun Fire 15k server, which isn't far. Perl doesn't have this problem (neither do a whole bunch of other languages mind you).

In reply to Re: "Are You Working With Endangered Languages?" by Anonymous Monk
in thread "Are You Working With Endangered Languages?" by dws

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