[dkhenry]

So if the point of this article is to say that we shouldn't buy into hype then I agree. However to try to claim that the Tiobe represents anything close to an accurate portrayal of programming language popularity is nonsensical. also this idea that web hype and the "Real World" don't match up is flawed. Most things get web hype because they are doing things in this real world.

[bigbob]

Agreed. TIOBE is only a part of gauging a language's popularity. TIOBE looks at the results of search engines regardless of the recency of the search results. So older languages will obviously have more sticking power. I like to look at current job offerings, google trends, and book trends along with TIOBE when gauging a language's popularity.

[guelo]

TIOBE might not be accurate but I think we can say it is "close to accurate" based on the fact that it agrees with known trends such as the recent iOS related rise of Objective C, or the long slow decline of Perl.