Was interested tonight how well Java (A language I know) is doing against other languages such as C# (One that I don't know). I'm also something of a Bash/Ksh and Perl buff so I was also interested in popularity indexes as well. I remembered earlier a site I had used to check for this.  I managed to locate it as just recently at:

http://www.tiobe.com/tpci.htm (TIOBE Software)

which rates language popularity on the web.

So I am glad (keeping in mind I'm a bit in favor of Java since it's a multi platform and this appears be working in it's favor well) to report Java is still a top pick around the globe which to me is good news, but to others likely disappointing news, though C# is showing higher, though very small, rate of increase of popularity over Java.

Interestingly Perl has dropped in popularity however I'm not surprised there. Most functionality in Perl can be done much easier using KSH/Bash and other alternatives like Python for Perl to be much good there, though I speak from limited experience here as well. Python appears also to be a more watertight language, IMHO, having written code in it a long time back.

However Python in 2004/2005 was very slow and did not appear ideal for large applications, it did have ease of use and development however which I found very appealing. Apparently the speed problems in Python were resolved in 2006 when I test drove the, at-the-time, new Python version and looked up speed comparisons online done between the two versions.

All of this is definitely something to think about when selecting Python over Perl and C# over Java.