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Programming Language Popularity – Part Two

October 24, 2009 in programming | Add a comment

I compiled some programming language popularity statistics in April and mentioned I’d update the results in 6 months, so here they are:

I made a number of Google searches of the forms below and averaged the results:

"implemented in <language>"
"written in <language>"

Language	# Results Apr 09	# Results Oct 09	Position Delta
C	1,905,500	16,975,000	0
C++	699,000	6,270,000	+1
Java	850,000	5,118,000	-1
PHP	680,000	5,083,500	0
Lisp Family¹	176,507	3,489,650	+3
Python	396,000	3,407,000	-1
Perl	365,500	3,132,500	-1
C#	349,700	2,125,000	-1
Scheme	86,450	2,100,000	+2
FORTRAN		1,621,000	N/A
JavaScript	102,700	1,163,000	-1
ML Family²	29,062	1,003,800	+3
(S)ML³	5,173	590,700	+12
Common Lisp	20,600	554,500	+5
Lisp	61,900	486,500	-2
Prolog	17,750	390,500	+4
Tcl	44,800	382,000	-3
OCaml	22,000	343,500	0
Arc	6,775	286,500	+4
Haskell	22,550	280,500	-4
COBOL		247,300	N/A
Ruby	99,650	227,000	-10
Io	1,760	198,500	+6
Smalltalk	9,105	187,500	-1
Erlang	22,285	161,700	-7
Forth	6,465	146,450	-1
Lua	13,065	131,800	-5
Caml	1,889	69,600	0
Scala	3,570	66,250	-2
Clojure	782	62,200	0

¹ combines Lisp, Scheme, Common Lisp, Arc & Clojure
² combines OCaml, (S)ML, Caml
³ summed separate searches for sml and ml

Tags: arc, c, clojure, erlang, forth, haskell, io, java, javascript, lisp, lua, ocaml, perl, php, python, ruby, scala, scheme, smalltalk, sml, tcl

TriFunc.org

July 22, 2009 in programming | Add a comment

I first became interested in functional programming when I was exposed to Python, Ruby & JavaScript a number of years ago. Since then I’ve looked into Arc, Clojure, Common Lisp, Haskell, Logo, ML & Scheme. I haven’t yet determined whether I’ll be more productive in any of them than I am with Ruby for developing web applications, but I do find them quite interesting.

After bumping into a number of local programmers who expressed an interest in functional programming, I thought it might be a good time to start a local group that focused on functional programming languages, so I did a couple days ago.

TriFunc.org is a group for programmers who are interested in functional programming languages and live near the Research Triangle area of North Carolina.

If you live in the area and have an interest in functional programming languages, feel free to dive in and start participating in the Google Group discussions. Once we reach a critical mass, I expect we’ll produce a meeting schedule, etc., but that will depend on where the group wants to take this.

Tags: arc, clojure, haskell, javascript, lisp, logo, programming, python, ruby, scheme, sml

Programming Language Popularity

April 21, 2009 in programming | 8 comments

Despite the numerous ways in existence to quantify programming language popularity, I thought I’d throw yet another one into the mix. I made a number of Google searches of the forms below and averaged the results:

"implemented in <language>"
"written in <language>"

I’m very curious to see how these stats change over time, so I’ve added a calendar item to recompute them in six months. Leave a comment if you’d like to add a programming language to the list, and I’ll update this article and it will be included in the recomputation six months from now.

Language	# Results
C	1,905,500
Java	850,000
C++	699,000
PHP	680,000
Python	396,000
Perl	365,500
C#	349,700
Lisp Family¹	176,507
JavaScript	102,700
Ruby	99,650
Scheme	86,450
Lisp	61,900
Tcl	44,800
ML Family²	29,062
Haskell	22,550
Erlang	22,285
OCaml	22,000
Common Lisp	20,600
Prolog	17,750
Lua	13,065
Smalltalk	9,105
Arc	6,775
Forth	6,465
(S)ML³	5,173
Scala	3,570
Caml	1,889
Io	1,760
Clojure	782

¹ combines Lisp, Scheme, Common Lisp, Arc & Clojure
² combines OCaml, (S)ML, Caml
³ summed separate searches for sml and ml
Update 4/23/09 added C#, Tcl per comment requests.

Tags: arc, clojure, common_lisp, erlang, forth, haskell, io, java, javascript, lisp, lua, ocaml, perl, php, python, ruby, scala, scheme, smalltalk, sml, tcl

jQuery in Action

January 20, 2009 in books, programming | 1 comment

I just finished “jQuery in Action” by Bear Bibeault and Yehuda Katz. It’s an excellent book on the jQuery JavaScript library. The book comes with a number of example labs to try out various jQuery/JavaScript techniques w/o having to write a lot of code.

There’s plenty of jQuery information online, but “jQuery in Action” easily paid for itself in saved time in getting me up to speed quickly. It’s nicely organized, well written and the editing/quality control seems to be higher than many tech books (although that bar isn’t very high!). It also has a brief, 20 page, tutorial on JavaScript that you may find helpful.

jQuery may not satisfy the zealots on comp.lang.javascript, but I’ve found it to be an excellent JavaScript library thus far, and I think this book was the fastest way to becoming proficient.

Tags: book, javascript, programming

2008 Programming Language Plan

January 17, 2008 in programming | 5 comments

I’ve learned a number of programming languages since I began programming 25 years ago. Earlier in my career, my choice of which programming language to learn was largely driven by external factors such as a class or job requirement, or the expectation of job demand in the future.

More recently I’ve enjoyed learning new programming languages both for the joy of learning something new, and for an increase in productivity.

While it’s true that no programming language is a silver bullet, I’ve found that the choice of programming language can provide a dramatic increase in productivity – much more so than many have asserted. The benefit can be direct, by allowing the creation of a solution to a particular problem with less time and effort than it would take using another language, or it can be an indirect by providing new ways to think about a solution.

Do you think language affects how we think?

The Past

In 1982, I spotted a Radio Shack Color Computer in a store window and immediately applied for a Radio Shack credit card which had a credit limit ($500) sufficient to purchase the computer which had 4K of RAM (I later upgraded to 16K) and no external storage (unless you count the ability to hook up a cassette recorder). Contrast the 16K RAM of that early machine with my current 2,097,152K RAM :)

That was the beginning of a life long interest in programming.

In the language list below, bold indicates a more significant professional involvement, and the year indicates when I first learned the language. I’ve also likely forgotten a few:

1982 – Radio Shack Extended Color BASIC
1983 – 6809e Assembler
1983 – Pascal
1984 – HP 48SX RPL
1984 – S/360 Assembler
1985 – COBOL
1985 – dBase III / Metafile
1985 – C
1985 – 8088/8086 Assembler
1986 – C++
1996 – Java
1997 – Perl
2002 – C#
2004 – Python
2005 – JavaScript
2006 – Ruby
2007 – PHP

The Present

Currently, I program primarily in Ruby, followed by JavaScript and the occasional PHP script. Ruby is the most productive programming language I’ve used thus far. The combination of power, pragmatism & pleasure in programming is hard to beat. If it also had performance, it would be a truly great language.

I’ve also begun learning Logo as I teach my daughter how to program. Logo is a great introduction to the Lisp family, so I hope to leverage it as I learn Scheme and Common Lisp later this year.

The Future

After completing the Logo course with my daughter, I plan on moving on to Scheme as I go through Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs which some have called the greatest computer science text ever written.

After Scheme I plan on learning Common Lisp which has the potential to replace Ruby as my primary programming language.

Beyond Logo/Scheme/Common Lisp, the following languages are of interest:

Haskell
Erlang
Lua
ML
OCaml

If you know of candidates for a future programming language, feel free to add it in a comment.

You may notice that Smalltalk is lacking from the lists above. Despite its prominence in programming language history, I currently don’t feel that Smalltalk is sufficiently better/different than Ruby to warrant an investment in learning it.

After focusing on object oriented for twenty years, I have more of an interest in the functional world of programming languages (and multiple dispatch is cool :) ).

Update: I was just over at Hacker News and saw something I’ve seen many times before. In a nutshell, some guy was stating that Paul Graham’s success with ViaWeb had little to do with his choice of programming language (Lisp) and more to do with him just being a good hacker. In other words, he could’ve written it in any language. I’m so glad Paul responded because his response confirms my thoughts on the matter:

What a weird situation. I keep trying to tell people Lisp is great, and they say, no, no, you guys were just really good programmers. But if I’m such a good programmer, why don’t they believe me?

Paul Graham has written a lot on Lisp and is one of the main factors in me becoming interested in Lisp (along with the fact that Ruby pulled a lot of good ideas from it), but the simple quote above communicates volumes IMO.

Tags: c, haskell, java, javascript, lisp, logo, programming, python, ruby

Functional Features in JavaScript on Firefox

October 7, 2007 in internet, programming | Add a comment

I was reading an article about adding code to JavaScript to make it more functional, and one of the blog commenters mentioned some built-in features that were added to JavaScript 1.6 & 1.7 on Firefox, so I checked out the links (see below) – very cool stuff.

Array methods
- indexOf
- lastIndexOf
- every
- filter
- forEach
- map
- some
Array & String generics
Generators & Iterators
Array Comprehensions
Block Scope w/ let
Destructuring Assignment
etc.

They won’t help if you have to target IE also, but it should be possible to conditionally include your own code to implement the ones that don’t require syntactic changes for pages loaded from IE. That would reduce network load for customers using Firefox.

New in JavaScript 1.6 (Firefox 1.5)

New in JavaScript 1.7 (Firefox 2.0)

Hopefully IE will catch up someday, but if not, I can see taking advantage of Firefox specific JavaScript enhancements for niche applications. Firefox is so easy to install, that it should be easy to convince customers to use it for certain custom applications.

Tags: browser, firefox, functional, javascript, programming

Logo, Ruby & JavaScript

August 31, 2007 in programming | 33 comments

I’ve been teaching my eldest daughter to program in Logo over the summer. Brian Harvey has posted PDF files for a set of excellent books on learning to program in Logo on his web site. The Berkeley version of Logo he’s produced is really excellent. It’s not just your typical turtle graphics language; it has arrays, macros, file processing, graphics, etc.

While perusing his site, I came across a tiny Logo program that demonstrates a little of its power. I was curious what it would look like in Ruby, so I ported it, then I had to see what it looked like in JavaScript.

The formatting is a little messed up due to Wordpress, but each of the three choices functions is 4 lines long.

If anyone wants to add other languages, that would be great!

See the sample page for example output.

Logo
to choices :menu [:sofar []] if emptyp :menu [print :sofar stop] foreach first :menu [(choices butfirst :menu sentence :sofar ?)] end choices [[small medium large] [vanilla [ultra chocolate] lychee [rum raisin] ginger] [cone cup]]

UPDATE 9/2/07: Got an even more concise solution from Brian Harvey:

to choices :menu
   foreach crossmap "sentence :menu "print
end

Ruby
def choices menu, sofar=[] if menu.empty?: puts sofar.join(' ') else menu[0].each {|item| choices(menu[1..-1], sofar + [item]) } end end choices [['small', 'medium', 'large'], ['vanilla', 'ultra chocolate', 'lychee', 'rum raisin', 'ginger'], ['cone', 'cup']]

JavaScript
function choices(menu, sofar) { if (emptyp(menu)) print(sofar); else foreach(menu[0], function (x) { choices(menu.slice(1), sofar.concat(x)); }); } choices([['small', 'medium', 'large'], ['vanilla', 'ultra chocolate', 'lychee', 'rum raisin','ginger'], ['cone', 'cup']], []);

I had to create a few helpers for the JavaScript version:
function emptyp(a) { return a.length === 0; } function print(list) { foreach(list, function (x) { document.write(x + ' '); }); document.write('<br />'); } function foreach(arr, f) { for (var idx in arr) { f(arr[idx]); } }

UPDATE: Use <pre> </pre> tags to allow easier formatting of code. Bummer, I just discovered that Wordpress strips the <pre> tags from normal users :( I’ll go ahead and wrap code with it as they come in, so if your comment looks bad at first, it’ll be cleaned up shortly.

Tags: haskell, javascript, lisp, logo, programming, python, ruby, scheme

Greasemonkey Script for Netflix Half Star Ratings

August 27, 2007 in internet, programming | 3 comments

I wrote an article back in May about a way to give half star ratings on Netflix. It had the advantage of working in any browser and not requiring any software installation, but it wasn’t very user friendly.

Since then, I’ve been doing a lot of JavaScript coding, so I thought I’d give Greasemonkey a try. I found a script here to give half-star ratings, but I didn’t care for the hover captions and JSLint pointed out a few issues, so I cleaned it up a little:

Code
// ==UserScript== // @name Netflix Half Stars // @description allows half star user ratings on Netflix // @include http://*netflix.com/* // ==/UserScript== // http://userscripts.org/scripts/review/8118 // Modified by Brian Adkins


if (!unsafeWindow.sbHandler) { return; }
var sbHandler = unsafeWindow.sbHandler;

sbHandler.sbOffsets = [8,18,27,37,46,56,65,75,84,94];
sbHandler.displayStrings[0.5] = ".5 stars";

sbHandler.displayStrings[1.5] = "1.5 stars";

sbHandler.displayStrings[2.5] = "2.5 stars";

sbHandler.displayStrings[3.5] = "3.5 stars";

sbHandler.displayStrings[4.5] = "4.5 stars";
sbHandler.sbImages[0.5] = new Image();

sbHandler.sbImages[0.5].src = sbHandler.imageRoot+"stars_2_5.gif";
for(var i = 2; i < 11; i++) {

  sbHandler.sbImages[i/2] = new Image();

  sbHandler.sbImages[i/2].src = sbHandler.imageRoot + "stars_2_" +

    (Math.floor(i/2)) + (i % 2 === 0 ? "0" : "5") + ".gif";

}
sbHandler.getStarCount = function (evt) {

  var x = unsafeWindow.getElementMouseCoordinate(evt, this.element);
  for(var ii = 0; ii < 10; ii++) {

    if(x <= this.sbOffsets[ii]) { return (ii + 1) / 2; }

  }

return 0; };

Installation

Save the JavaScript code with .user.js extension e.g. netflix_halfstar.user.js and then open that file in Firefox and Greasemonkey should prompt you to install it.

Tags: browser, firefox, javascript, movies, programming, utility

Douglas Crockford: Advanced JavaScript

May 17, 2007 in programming, video | Add a comment

Ok, last of the Douglas Crockford videos. These are definitely worth viewing if you program at all in JavaScript. The highlight for me was his presentation of prototypal and parasitic inheritance models and contrasting them with the pseudo-classical approach that is typically presented. I haven’t had time to analyze his approach in depth, but from a single viewing, his ideas certainly merit experimentation and seem to fit in more naturally to the JavaScript language.

I felt he did a good job of presenting natural ways of handling encapsulation, inheritance and code reuse while capitalizing on JavaScript’s strengths instead of trying to impose a class-based design onto the language. He also covered several ways of utilizing closures nicely.

function object(0) {
  function F() {}
  F.prototype = o;
  return new F();
}
newobject = object(oldobject);

var singleton = function () {
  var privateVariable;
  function privateFunction(x) {
    ...privateVariable...
  }
  return {
    firstMethod: function (a,b) {
      ...
    },
    secondMethod: function (c) {
      ...
    }
  };
}();

Object.prototype.later = function(msec, method) {
  var that = this,
      args = Array.prototype.slice.apply(arguments, [2]);
  if (typeof method === 'string') {
    method = that[method];
  }
  setTimeout(function () {
    method.apply(that, args);
  }, msec);
  return that;
};

Advanced JavaScript Part 1 of 3
Advanced JavaScript Part 2 of 3
Advanced JavaScript Part 3 of 3

Tags: javascript, programming

Douglas Crockford: Theory of the DOM

May 17, 2007 in programming, video, web design | Add a comment

Here’s a set of 3 videos by Douglas Crockford on the DOM that were in between his JavaScript and Advanced JavaScript presentations. Pretty basic material, but you may find a few helpful hints. A few comments:

Comment hack for JavaScript hasn’t been necessary for 10 years!
language=javascript has been deprecated
type=’text/javascript’ is ignored if you use the src attribute
remove any event handlers of a node before deleting it due to MS garbage collection incompetencies
avoid trickling, bubbling is where the action is

Theory of the DOM Part 1 of 3

Theory of the DOM Part 2 of 3

Theory of the DOM Part 3 of 3

Tags: browser, css, dom, html, javascript

« Older entries

javascript

Programming Language Popularity – Part Two

TriFunc.org

Programming Language Popularity

jQuery in Action

2008 Programming Language Plan

Functional Features in JavaScript on Firefox

Logo, Ruby & JavaScript

Greasemonkey Script for Netflix Half Star Ratings

Douglas Crockford: Advanced JavaScript

Douglas Crockford: Theory of the DOM

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