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by dropofwill 1259 days ago
Not sure what list you’re referring to, but I would expect to find Python and Scala in it, maybe OCaml or Haskell depending on the criteria.

Personally I think it causes more problems in interpreted languages, a lot of those disappear with a compiler with thoughtful error messages like Scala.

3 comments

> Not sure what list you’re referring to, but I would expect to find Python and Scala in it, maybe OCaml or Haskell depending on the criteria.

Surely neither OCaml nor Haskell are in the top 20 of any "Most Used Programming Languages" list.

Maybe of undergrads at a French university :)
A common list people have in mind is TIOBE: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

I will give you that for highly specialized domains, those lists would look different (eg in some niche OCaml would be high while Rust would be low, or R high where C++ is lower down the list) , but it is telling that Scala comes in at #32 when compared to other languages that, I think, occupy a similar problem space.

Of course, Python is #1 on the TIOBE list (and have had a strong showing for years), which I ascribe to the overall productivity and wide application domain fit. So, whether or not white space is objectively bad (for any language or only some languages), it hasn’t detracted so much from Python’s popularity.

> A common list people have in mind is TIOBE

https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/stop-citing-tiobe/

Tiobe at a time had Visual Basic ahead of JS, let’s just ignore it.
OCaml isn't indentation sensitive, BTW.