[E-Lang] programming language popularity according to prgjobs.com

[Mark S. Miller]

At 06:52 PM 10/18/2001 Thursday, Paul Snively wrote:
>on 10/18/01 12:17 PM, Zooko at zooko@zooko.com wrote:
>
>> Good hack!  Bring a measuring tape and save time.  Also, computer book
>> publishers thoughtfully make page count correlate highly with value.
>
>Hmmm. I'm not sure I agree with this. Herb Sutter's "Exceptional C++" is,
>AFAICT, mandatory reading for C++ programmers, and weighs in at a svelte 199
>pages, being about a quarter-inch thick. Similarly, Alexandrescu's "Modern
>C++ Design" is 300 pages sans appendix, and about a half-inch thick. IMHO,
>both are better books than Meyers' rightly-well-regarded "Effective C++" and
>"More Effective C++," and they're thinner. And all of these books are orders
>of magnitude better than 90% of the dreck that's out there just on C++, let
>alone any other computer book category.

I don't think Zooko was referring to value to the readers, but rather value 
(expected profit) to the publishers.

In any case, that's not quite how I came up with shelf space.  Rather, I was 
thinking about the tradeoff of the bookstore.  How can they allocate their 
scare shelf space to maximize their revenue?  Surely this is based on book 
sales and expected book sales.

Book sales (actual and expected) should, in turn, be a great leading 
indicator of future language popularity, because it says where people are 
investing their learning time.


        Cheers,
        --MarkM