TIOBE Software, the coding standards company, has just ranked NXT-G as the 37th most popular programming language in the world. (Click on the above graphic for an enlarged view of the rankings).
The methodology for their rankings is imprecise, to say the least. But it supposedly serves as an indicator of the increasing/decreasing popularity of particular languages. See a description of TIOBE's ranking methodology
See TIOBE's complete rankings
5 comments:
Curious! I agree, not by any means a perfect way to rank things... but still interesting. At least in this ranking, NXT-G compares favorably to things like Alice, Forth, or FORTRAN (my how the mighty have fallen!). I wonder how much the number of questions a language raises biases the results (after all, it's based on search requests).
Two things I find particularly interesting: Robolab (with a significant footprint in the educational community) isn't even in the top 100, and NXT-G is within a factor of two of LabVIEW (the "parent" language). That's much, higher than I would have thought!
And if you look closely, Lua is in the top 20 - and there's a Lua programming environment for the NXT called pbLua... :-)
This brings up a question that I have always wondered about. We are calling the NXT's standard programming system "NXT-G", but where is it ever referred to by this name in the actual product (software, manual, etc)? I have always seen it referred to as just the "LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Software".
So, how or why would a normal user looking for help or resources on it search for "NXT-G"?
For that matter, when kids and parents talk to me about the product, before or after buying one, even "NXT" is rarely used. It seems "MINDSTORMS" is the main word they use to describe the kit...
Rick,
Interesting. But the term "most popular" in connection with this rating may be misleading: it's rather a rating referring to "number of google search requests". I don't think these two things are the same.
Actually, I don't consider this survey very useful: it simply tells us how many people are trying to find information on particular programming languages, for whatever reason.No more and no less.
Perhaps it just means that NXT-G is hard to use! :D
*hides from NXT-G geeks*
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