Language Market Survey

[Mark S. Miller]

At 05:31 PM 11/19/98 , Jim McCoy wrote:
>
>>The proportion of books ... good leading indicator of future proportions.
>
>An interesting posit, but your data does not fit the query.  You are
>considering shelf space, which is highly dependant on the number of
>available titles, ... 

[+] True.
Jim's observation suggests splitting my hypothesis in two:

1) books sold is a good leading indicator of what languages will be big
2) shelf space is a good indicator of books sold.

#2 is indeed weak, but #1 remains interesting.

>Better data would come from asking the
>bookstores for a general breakdown of titles sold.

[?] Any idea who to ask, or how to get this information?


>That there are tons of C++ and Java titles is not surprising given how
>wacked out the language syntax is and how difficult it is to accomplish
>anything in the language.
>...
>For example, there have
>probably been more copies of Larry Wall's Camel (Perl) book sold than any
>single C++ book.

[#] Perl wins my prize for most whacked out syntax since Hypertalk.
csh's substitution rules come in a close second