[jamesbritt]

... not using it to back his own argument.

Are you sure? Seems to me he referenced TIOBE as a counter to the claim that Java ruled the Web, and wondered where Wired was getting their data, since the TIOBE data contradicts Wired's claim.

Let’s look at some numbers.

The TIOBE Programming Community Index shows us information regarding the relative popularity of languages. Java is high up there, Ruby also features. Scala and Clojure just don’t have enough people using them yet to break the top 20 which still includes COBOL, pilloried by all as an abomination to work with.

As of today Scala gets a mention at number 42 with 0.3% share.

This is unfair though, these numbers are not segmented by industry. We really need to look at numbers for web sites only.

Before we leave these numbers though it is interesting to point out that the Java ranking is very obviously trending downwards in the TIOBE index.