Winter is icummin in, Lhude sing Goddamm - Ezra Pound
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Mind your language
ACCORDING TO the latest numbers from the Tiobe index, the C programming language is back in pole position after a four-year hiatus.
C is a perennial favourite and according to Tiobe has enjoyed a marketshare of between fifteen to twenty per cent for almost a decade.
However, this recent gain, according to Tiobe, has more to do with other languages than it does with C, and not least of all Java falling out of favour.
"Java has a long-term downward trend. It is losing ground to other languages running on the JVM. An example of such a language is JavaFX script that is now approaching the top 20," said the firm.
Java is in second place behind C, and is followed by C++, PHP and Visual Basic. The rest of the top ten is made up of C#, Python, Perl, Delphi and Javascript, in order of popularity.
Tiobe said that its list should be used as a guide for developers looking to ensure that they are on top of their skills, and can be used to make strategic decisions before starting to build a new software system.
Languages making big gains include Objective C, which shot up from forty-second place in April 2009 to eleventh in the latest study, and Go, which is a new entry at number fifteen. µ
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Does not the graph show the biggest and only gains are for, in increased share order, C#, PHP, Python and JavaScript, with everyone else in decline ..... with decline heaviest in the order Perl, Java, VB, C++, Delphi and C.
Ergo the hierarchy advantage now is .....
C#
PHP
Python
JavaScript
C
Delphi
C++
VB
Java
Perl
The TIOBE list is based on searches for help and classes taken. It is not based on projects completed and shipped.
Studies have shown for years that most C++ and C projects are never shipped profitably and even when they are, there are years of follow up bugs. Go look it up. Now the same is being shown for Java. They are the path to failure. C++, C and Java victims are constantly searching for help, taking classes and wondering why their code doesn't work. The parade of failure is endless.
By contrast, when you ask a COBOL programmer to do something, he does it and it works. The same is true of FORTRAN, LISP and APL. These projects get finished and work. There are COBOL and FORTRAN programs that have been in daily use for decades and have proven rock solid. If you want to win, copy the winners, not the crowd.
Basically there are two kinds of people that earn money programming. The real programmers and the programmers wannabe.
Looks like we have nearly equal numbers of said categories, since the real programming languages show up mixed in the first places with those languages that fool you into thinking that you're programming, like Java or Visual Basic.
If you're into programming, and really want your product to be as fast, reliable and useful as possible, you would avoid OO like death, unless you're more concerned about following those stupid academic theories or just want to make your code look elegant.
See, web applications, database inserts and updates, that's not programming, that's scripting at best. That's no better than writing a recipe for a cake. But the CPU is not an oven (unless you've got a Prescott, ha).
Nevertheless, you know, things like memory pointers, direct hardware control, recursive algorithms, etc, are just too much for these so-called "programmers"...
TIOBE does a very useful job, but it does have very definite limitations. It gives us a better impression of the state of fashion than the actual levels of investment in different languages. For example, believe it or not, there is still a lot of business-critical COBOL being written! And many vital realtime applications are written in Ada. Those languages are about as unfashionable as you can get, and therefore they are hardly ever discussed or even mentioned. But they still do the jobs they were created for.
Another important point is that Java, to some extent, is being supplanted by other langauges that run on the JVM and by specialized Java variants.
That said, C is admirably simple and concise - you can use it in various ways, but in one role it is almost a 2.5G (midway between assembler and compiler). If you want to keep firmly in touch with the metal, it's far better than Java and other higher-level languages.
Just look around your desk, your kitchen, or the office. There's an insane number of things around that have some sort of embedded controller in them. Not to mention all the equipment involved in manufacturing and other robotics stuff.
Last time I was browsing a job board, nearly every second ad was along the lines of "senior C developer". However, this might also reflect the fact that finding *good* C devs is difficult, so the ads probably hang around for longer than your average SharePoint or similar ones.
"Modern" C is also often done in a psuedo-object-orientated way with structs and the like. There's nothing to stop object-orientated concepts from being used in vanilla C. It just doesn't exactly do anything to assist such a venture :)
on Cnet for more then two years
http://download.cnet.com/windows/interpreters-and-compilers/?tag=mncol%3bpop
Really great compiler, doing amazing things, the best diagnostics, unholly fast compilation, Windows programming, multithreading, OpenGL, natively mix with C/C++ code and, take a chair, HTML can be also natively mixed with the Fortran code !
I don't disagree with you. I tinker about with Arduino microprocessor boards, which are programmed in C.
I just find it hard to believe that the number of people programming embedded devices can really tilt the figures that much!
Although having said that, I did use to work with a C programmer who looked on my object orientated use of common/shared objects and code reuse as "cheating". Even when his work always took him longer, and contained more bugs, he still couldn't see the advantage!
C is well suited to embedded applications and most OO languages are not at all suitable so it is far from incredible that programmers choose to use it.
I would not write a GUI in C if I could write it in an OO language but I would write realtime embedded software especially if it needed to be dependable in C in preference to C++ and most of the other languages are non-starters.
Obviously, since Fortran was left off, the results cannot be taken seriously.
There are various fields that give preference to different languages. A high level scripting language or multi-platform language like Java are going to be differently aligned in the field than C.
C is actually one of the requirements for lot of engineering degrees and its use is going to be more likely found in robots and purpose built devices, in which there is less interaction with end users. No need to have extensive browser or cross platform GUI support when it's so inherently tied to HW specs.
IMHO. The use of Objective C is increasing due to the fact that iPhone apps must be written with it. About a year ago I found there was only a single book on the language and that was so slanted toward Mac OS that it was, for the most part, useless for windows/linux/unix developers.
It's incredible that in this day and age such a large number of programmers haven't embraced OO programming. When I saw the title I thought "Oh they mean C, C++ and C# all together", but no.
What on earth are they writing? The thought of writing a windows interface without objects just makes me shudder!
Good to see Delphi still plodding along, I've always been very fond of Delphi.
Pundits have been predicting the death of JAVA for years now. NO one is going to build web/business apps. in C at any time. JAVA will continue to be the language of choice for enterprise dev. for a long time. JAVA marketplace will be fragmented by other languages such as Scala and Groovy that run on JAVA JVM.