Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jrib 2051 days ago
> third most important programming language

not going to debate that, but I'm curious, what do you rank as #1 and #2?
1 comments
phkahler 2051 days ago
The tiobe index lists Java and C in those spots.
link
webmaven 2051 days ago
> The tiobe index lists Java and C in those spots.

That list is ranking languages by current popularity, though, rather than 'importance'.

I'd define 'importance' as more along the lines of "amount of havoc created if all software written using that language were broken/deleted at once".

link
govg 2051 days ago
Wouldn't languages like COBOL rank pretty highly because a lot of legacy banking systems are written in that?
link
webmaven 2048 days ago
Yes, but frankly, C would still cause more havoc because even if the mainframes somehow continued to run, they would still be effectively inaccessible over any network.
link
fermigier 2051 days ago
Python is number 2 now, according to https://www.techrepublic.com/article/python-overtakes-java-t... :)

We should not give too much importance to this, but the fact is that Python is now ranked consistently #1, #2 or #3 in sufficiently many rankings to consider it seriously.

link
dkarlovi 2051 days ago
That's fair, I guess.
link