[kozikow]

> Even though it is probably the most practically used functional language. Scala have 30th place on Tiobe index, while Erlang have 42th: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/tiobe_index.

[music]

I find it very interesting that Scheme beat out extremely fashionable languages like Rust and Go, not to mention Clojure didn't even make the first 50. I would expect Lisp and Prolog at the tail end of any such list.

[runT1ME]

Yes, but it is #14 Redmonk's rankings:

https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2015/07/01/language-rankings-6-1...

[ChemicalWarfare]

I'd venture to guess that once you start scanning github and to a lesser degree stackoverflow, the scale gets tipped away from the "enterprise applications" where Java reigns supreme.

[jeremiep]

Are there people who actually take Tiobe seriously?!

That seems like a very dangerous thing to do to me.

[incepted]

Tiobe is consistent with pretty much any other measuring approach (job boards, github, stack overflow, etc...), so yes. It's a pretty reliable indicator.

[jeremiep]

These are all based on popularity and online activity which are terrible indicators for a lot of application domains.

They give you a rough head count yet you have absolutely no idea what percentage of them are actually good programmers you'd want to hire.

Usually the more popular something is, the more you need to weed out bad candidates as well; its kind of killing the popularity argument.

If you pick a technology based on its popularity or visible activity you're only making it much easier for your competitors to crush you really.

I can only refer to pg's Beating the Averages at this point: http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

[incepted]

You are missing my point.

Their methodology matters little when their findings are consistent with a lot of other sources that use different methodologies.

All these sites agree on the general brackets that these languages belong to. Until this stops being true, I'll keep accepting TIOBE as a reasonable indicator of language popularity (along with a bunch of other sources).

[pmarreck]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

Has no relevance to actual language quality, potential or value.

If this wasn't the case, then no language would ever pass, or fall behind, another language in popularity.

Popularity is a reflection of already-realized value. That's all.

[incepted]

When trying to assess popularity, measuring "ad populum" is exactly the right metric (hint: look at the root of the word).

[pmarreck]

Ah, I thought he was making a different argument, my bad.

Still, "most practically used" may not equal "most used"