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The current state of Perl 5 for Python fans:

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Perl 5: I'm not dead!

TIOBE: 'Ere! 'E says 'e's not dead!

Internet: Yes he is.

Perl 5: I'm not!

TIOBE: 'E isn't?

Internet: Well... he will be soon-- he's very ill...

Perl 5: I'm getting better!

Internet: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment.

TIOBE: I can't take 'im off like that! It's against regulations!

Perl 5: I don't want to go off the chart....

Internet: Oh, don't be such a baby.

TIOBE: I can't take 'im off....

Perl 5: I feel fine!

Internet: Well, do us a favor...

TIOBE: I can't!

Internet: Can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won't be long...

TIOBE: No, gotta get to Reddit, they lost nine today.

Internet: Well, when's your next round?

TIOBE: Next year.

Perl 5: I think I'll go for a walk....

Internet: You're not fooling anyone, you know-- (to TIOBE) Look, isn't there something you can do...?

Perl 5: I feel happy! I feel happy!

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But seriously, Perl 5.30 just came out in May. It's not dead yet.




TIOBE is not a relevant barometer, it's just the number of searches and hence a noisy metric. Look at https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/. It indicates that the popularity of C and Java halved between 2016 and 2018 and then made a dramatic recovery, doubling in less than a year. It would be absurd to suggest that there was a real world change to the usage/popularity of these two languages corresponding to this.

A better metric is the activity on stackoverflow and github, which is what RedMonk use. That's much more stable. Java and C have both been #2 and #9 since 2015. https://redmonk.com/rstephens/files/2019/03/toptwenty-2019-0...


Even then I'm surprised to see Lua fall off the table, and Go's stagnation seems kinda odd.

Given how much lua is used as an embedded language in Games, Databases, Servers, etc. I feel I've only seen it's usage increase.

Go I can see as "appearing more popular then it is due to HN" but even then I feel like clis/networking tools have been using Go more and more.


Its usage has increased, but so has the usage of other languages. Its drop in popularity is relative to its share of all users.

If Alice has two apples and Bob has three apples, Bob has 60% of the apples. But if Alice gets four more apples and Bob only gets one, Bob has only 40% of the apples, despite having more than he did before.

It's the same with TIOBE's popularity index.




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