Thread: C is back on top

  1. #1
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    C is back on top

    Hi,

    just noticed on tiobe that the world of programming did a full circle in last two decades. C was the #1 language 25 years ago, and now it came back on top, pushing Java to the second place. C# is stagnating, C++ is slowly going out of fashion. It all comes down to scripting or C.

    TIOBE Programming Community Index for April 2010

    "April Headline: C programming language back at number 1 position!"
    Last edited by idelovski; 04-08-2010 at 12:18 PM.

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    So where are all the job offers which aren't riddled with object gobbledygook and "must have 10 years experience in something Microsoft just belched out last month"?

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    Registered User VirtualAce's Avatar
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    C# is trending upwards b/c more people are beginning to use it which means former C++ studios are using C# or a mixture of C#, C++/CLI, and C++. I do not see from that data that C++ is going out of fashion.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bubba View Post
    I do not see from that data that C++ is going out of fashion.
    Well, I said slowly and you should have followed the link on C++.

    And C# should have been above 10 points because everybody is supposed to learn it these days and is used for both desktop and web development.
    Last edited by idelovski; 04-09-2010 at 01:50 AM.

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    spurious conceit MK27's Avatar
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    The weird one in there is obj-C, which shot up 2300% since last year. At that rate, everything will be in obj-C eventually.

    Just think, 10 years ago:

    #1 Java
    #2 Visual Basic
    #3 Perl
    Last edited by MK27; 04-09-2010 at 11:52 AM.
    C programming resources:
    GNU C Function and Macro Index -- glibc reference manual
    The C Book -- nice online learner guide
    Current ISO draft standard
    CCAN -- new CPAN like open source library repository
    3 (different) GNU debugger tutorials: #1 -- #2 -- #3
    cpwiki -- our wiki on sourceforge

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    Registered User VirtualAce's Avatar
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    And C# should have been above 10 points because everybody is supposed to learn it these days and is used for both desktop and web development.
    Another blanket statement with no facts. Why should everyone be learning it - what if they don't develop for the desktop or for the web?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bubba View Post
    Another blanket statement with no facts. Why should everyone be learning it - what if they don't develop for the desktop or for the web?
    What do you mean no facts? C# is used for both desktop and web development unlike most other languages on that list and therefore it should have been much more popular than it actually is.

  8. #8
    spurious conceit MK27's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by idelovski View Post
    What do you mean no facts? C# is used for both desktop and web development unlike most other languages on that list and therefore it should have been much more popular than it actually is.
    All of the top 8 (except maybe PHP) can and are used for both desktop and "web development", and most of the top 15. Server side web dev can be done in any language, and last time I checked C# is useless client side. Then it's worth remembering that most servers are actually linux or unix servers and C# is an MS technology. Who cares about a language that provides yet another server side interface (there is already more than plenty of that) and some Windows only GUI libs?

    Usefulness is not the criteria anyway. I've seen numbers of people waxing eloquent about the elegance and usefulness of Haskell, yet it isn't even in the top 50. The criteria is (apparently) actual use.
    Last edited by MK27; 04-09-2010 at 05:53 PM.
    C programming resources:
    GNU C Function and Macro Index -- glibc reference manual
    The C Book -- nice online learner guide
    Current ISO draft standard
    CCAN -- new CPAN like open source library repository
    3 (different) GNU debugger tutorials: #1 -- #2 -- #3
    cpwiki -- our wiki on sourceforge

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    The Right Honourable psychopath's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by MK27
    The weird one in there is obj-C, which shot up 2300% since last year.
    Not that odd, considering the influx of iPhone (and now iPad) developers.
    M.Eng Computer Engineering Candidate
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    Robotics and graphics enthusiast.

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    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by psychopath View Post
    Not that odd, considering the influx of iPhone (and now iPad) developers.
    And probably expect it to grow even more: Apple takes aim at Adobe... or Android?
    Originally Posted by brewbuck:
    Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

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    OK, so I tried to interpret what I considered to be common view of C#'s role in modern world. I was under impression that it is a much more used language, yet it isn't. Good thing I only spent few weeks with it when I went through some .net & C# book by Petzold.

    I know one can write web applications in C, but not many regular guys are doing it. Same thing with desktop applications for example in Ruby. But OK, what I meant was that C# was designed and massively used for both web and desktop development. Maybe not that massively as I thought, but still...

    Next time I think I'm stating someone else's views I'll put them in quotes, like: because "everybody is supposed to learn it" these days. I need to be more careful.

  12. #12
    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by idelovski View Post
    OK, so I tried to interpret what I considered to be common view of C#'s role in modern world. I was under impression that it is a much more used language
    Well, consider the scale of the whole thing. A 6th place probably still means maybe a couple million of programmers doing C# worldwide.

    Next consider the language really only took a serious turn with Visual Studio 2005 and .Net 2.0, which makes it a newcomer in comparison to all its direct "competitors"

    Next consider the long term graph (2nd graph) that shows it's the only language of the top 10 showing a steady increase over time.

    Next consider the fact this is the only language of the top 10 (along with Visual Basic) not formally adopted by multiple platforms, which does limits its scope. So 6th it's still a good position to be in.

    Next consider this is a sister language, with its sibling being VB.Net, which dilutes its adoption. If instead you look at it from the perspective of the .Net Framework development environment, you'll soon realize .Net is far more reaching. Probabling placing both languages in 5th or even 4th place...

    EDIT:
    Finally consider the top 2 languages. These are high profile languages, responsible for developing drivers, operating systems, GUIs, games and with an historical significance in many business types. Their usual single development environments are composed by tenths, sometimes hundreths, of programmers. They are too primary open source choices which results in them being far easier to account for with the TIOBE's index methods:

    The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, Yahoo!, Wikipedia and YouTube are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that the TIOBE index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.
    Last edited by Mario F.; 04-09-2010 at 07:48 PM.
    Originally Posted by brewbuck:
    Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

  13. #13
    spurious conceit MK27's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by idelovski View Post
    I know one can write web applications in C, but not many regular guys are doing it. Same thing with desktop applications for example in Ruby. But OK, what I meant was that C# was designed and massively used for both web and desktop development. Maybe not that massively as I thought, but still...
    I'm sure that is the intent with C# and it does get MS level billing/promotion, which if you say something enough you might eventually make it true

    Vis, web applications in C: Apache is in C and it is the #1 server side web app in the world. Also important to consider is that apache modules are also (almost always) written in C. If you read up on the "11 phases of the apache request" cycle, you'll start to realize all the things you can do with that and where stuff like CGI and PHP came from (those are written in C, they are apache modules). I would imagine there is any number of not publicly released, "in house" modules in use and development anywhere and everywhere, and those would be mostly in C too.

    Vis, desktop apps in Ruby: This is a more tenuous guess based on the fact that I will whip up small (not publicly released, in house) utilities in perl/ncurses -- if it takes me a couple of days and it saves me and people I work with a noticeable amount of time on a daily basis with some chore, it's totally worth it. And I would assume, totally common.* Those are not "production level" code and would take 5-10 times as long to rewrite "optimally" in C/C++ (and in the context of their actual use, that would be an irrelevant difference). But it still counts as programming and there is probably a lot of it done in the interpreted scripting languages (perl, ruby, python), all of which have well developed GUI libraries too, which I don't think those are just simply for kids/hobbyists/shock value.

    * heck, it could even be that most new desktop applications are of this sort, just you will never hear of them because they aren't public.
    Last edited by MK27; 04-10-2010 at 07:54 AM.
    C programming resources:
    GNU C Function and Macro Index -- glibc reference manual
    The C Book -- nice online learner guide
    Current ISO draft standard
    CCAN -- new CPAN like open source library repository
    3 (different) GNU debugger tutorials: #1 -- #2 -- #3
    cpwiki -- our wiki on sourceforge

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