[wolvesechoes]

These languages have origin in a different era, without Reddit, Twitter or HN to spam about them, do we cannot really compare adoption rates.

[pjmlp]

You can go into Usenet archives, and ads on digital copies from Byte, Computer Shopper, Dr. Dobbs, PC Techniques, The C Users Journal, The C/C++ Users Journal, Your Sinclair, Amiga Format, MicroHobby, Micromania, SoloProgamadores, Spooler,...

And see which compiler toolchains had more ads, articles submissions, or source code listings.

[wolvesechoes]

Yes, but then you are using two separate metrics to quantify the adoption, and that was my point.

What's the conversion ratio of 1 article in Dr.Dobbs to YT video or Twitter post by a dev-celebrity?

[kibwen]

No, this is silly. You can look at the availability and maturity of toolchains, the rate of release of projects written in that language, the rate of release of books and learning materials, the rate at which universities begin teaching the language, the volume of discourse devoted to that language in magazines and the online venues which did exist (e.g. Usenet), and crucially the declining metrics of all of the above for the direct competitors of that language.

[wolvesechoes]

> availability and maturity of toolchains

Pretty bad situation for Rust.

> the rate of release of projects written in that language

I guess back in 90s they didn't do grep clones every weekend, so Rust wins here definitely.

> the rate of release of books and learning materials

And what this data tells us?

> the rate at which universities begin teaching the language

Pretty bad situation for Rust.

> the volume of discourse devoted to that language in magazines and the online venues which did exist (e.g. Usenet)

But you need to normalize this volume against total volume of content out there produced every second, and then situation becomes complicated.

> crucially the declining metrics of all of the above for the direct competitors of that language

Why ignore job offerings?