Comments on: 23 Programming Languages compared through their Amazon book sales

By: Bill Busen » Blog Archive » The Top 50 Code Bases

Bill Busen » Blog Archive » The Top 50 Code Bases — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 05:02:04 +0000

[…] Cangiano had a post I liked that did an estimation of programming language popularity by Amazon Rank of the bestselling corresponding book. OK, everybody that thinks of that as unscientific rather […]

By: Garry

Garry — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 13:33:32 +0000

Nice work

By: jdavid

jdavid — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

i think this is a great way to track the open market voltage/ pressure to learn a particular language. this also breaks down for overall pressure as a metric because some communities are better at documenting than others, this means that books are not as necessary in those situations. i think java, and .net have EXTREMELY strong existing communities that act as a cache mechanism and lower the pressure to buy a book. it would be great to somehow get a life time book sales for each topic to get an idea about the amount of “energy” spent consuming books of a given topic.

By: xen

xen — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This mean that Ruby is more complex language than python. To be smart and start developing on python you need only one book.

By: Azar

Azar — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Smalltalk number is surprising for me.

By: sigmond@comp.net

sigmond@comp.net — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Anyone in the programming world, should not find this mind blowing. Java has been the top language used in IT and has been for some time. Not surprised by Java Script sales either, since regardless of what back end you use, JavaScript is essential for Browser based development.

Ruby has generated quite a bit of excitement and after looking at it, I can understand why. Plus it is kind of the new kid on the block.

C# is a little bit of surprise, beating out C/C++ but this is probably due to the fact it is new. Although the pure MS shops are in to it, not much excitement outside the pure MS camp.

Unfortunately, not many new developers are bothering to learn C and C++, except game developers. Sad, since these languages are essential for low level work.

As far as Delphi, it is on its last legs and has been for some time. This language has the problem of being totally proprietary and unfortunately, offers zero outside of Windows fat client type development. Who is really doing fat client development these days? Very few.

By: null

null — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Not really part of the discussion, but there are many SQL implementations that are turing complete. Kirill needs to stop bashing on such an article that brought noticed to another way of looking at things, albeit incomplete and far from comprehensive. Nice article.

By: Esther Schindler

Esther Schindler — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This is fun, except that unfortunately it’s ultimately meaningless.

Amazon rankings have some general meaning, but only in a vague sense. The rank is only for today, not as a reflection of “since the beginning of time.” So if 50 people rushed out to buy a copy of Down to Earth REXX (which I think is a fine idea, since it’s my husband’s book), overnight it would shoot up in the Amazon rankings by… well, maybe it would move into the top million. Or, more to the point, if 50 people bought Head First Java today it would knock the JavaScript book out of the top spot. That’s not an unlikely scenario; JavaOne can shift sales, for example, as can a local Java user group meeting where the author speaks.

The other issue is exactly what is being measured. One might argue that the need for an explanatory book is representative of a combination of: (a) a language’s complexity (i.e. if it’s easier to use it doesn’t require a lot of training), (b) a language’s online documentation and communities, (c) its age, (d) its current fandom (some people do buy computer books just to learn about something, the way I buy cookbooks from which I’ll never use a single recipe), (e) the “bibleness” of one given title for a particular language, causing a huge percentage to buy THAT book at the expense of others (the C book being a perfect example), and several other criteria that I haven’t thought of.

Incidentally, I’ve continued to be fascinated by the assumption that @C++@’s age means that it’s dusty and irrelevant. Anytime in the past five years that I’ve published an article about @C++@ (at any pub for whom I worked) it has always been immensely popular.

–Esther
senior online editor, CIO.com
and currently Amazon Reviewer #580

By: Chris Smith

Chris Smith — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Regarding Kirill’s comment, I have the feeling that there will be a lot of widely used “not quite” Turing-complete languages in the near to mid future. If they do what you need, the lack of Turing completeness is not a drawback at all. Non-Turing-complete languages can overcome Rice’s theorem, and so can sometimes be analyzed, and possibly transformed, more easily by software. More sophisticated compilers can make this a big advantage.

By: Chris Smith

Chris Smith — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Another thing that distorts the list is price. I wonder whether the “10 minutes” book being popular for SQL really reflects developers not learning SQL… or if it reflects the price tag ($11.55) in comparison to other books on the list.

So the best scoring languages here will be those with: (1) lots of interest, (2) no “canonical” online sources, and (3) cheap books.

Still, popular languages certainly do figure in there.