Searches tell us something about take-up of a language, even if not overall usage. I did a plot of the big four dynamic languages (Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby). This showed the Perl and PHP were both being searched for less. However, despite the fanfare about Ruby, with the Rails framework, there is no sign of a proportional increase in searches for Ruby. So where are those that were using Perl and PHP going, if they are declining? Not Java, it would appear, since that would also appear to be getting less searches. C# or .Net? Nope, one is steady and the other shows a slight drop.
In fact, I’m finding it near impossible to find any programming language on Google Trends with a rising trend. Clearly, programmers must be a dying breed, or they are doing less searches, anyway. So what does that mean? If we don’t want to believe that less programming is happening overall and just that searches are happening less, then it would suggest that those with declining trends are not declining so steeply, and that those with steady trends are actually rising in usage. There still seems to be something of a gap between the falling and rising. Then, I Am Not A Statistician.
