https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og847HVwRSI

While not unsurprising, it was still fascinating watching Objective-C come out of nowhere to get in the list 25 years after it was first released.

On Thursday, 10 October 2019 at 16:32:44 UTC, Ethan wrote:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og847HVwRSI
>
> While not unsurprising, it was still fascinating watching Objective-C come out of nowhere to get in the list 25 years after it was first released.

Presumably the effect of a few opinionated decision makers in a way-too-big corporation with a shameless preference for closed ecosystems. Rightfully dropping into oblivion again by the looks of it [the language, not the corporation ;)].

On Thursday, 10 October 2019 at 16:32:44 UTC, Ethan wrote:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og847HVwRSI
>
> While not unsurprising, it was still fascinating watching Objective-C come out of nowhere to get in the list 25 years after it was first released.

Actually, it is surprising, because it is wrong. Assembler and BASIC was much larger in the mid 80s. 4GL should have a fairly strong presence in the late 80s. Etc.

It is most likely based on surveys of big corporations. Most programming happend outside of those.

On Friday, 11 October 2019 at 06:30:28 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> Assembler and BASIC was much larger in the mid 80s. 4GL should have a fairly strong presence in the late 80s. Etc.
>
> It is most likely based on surveys of big corporations. Most programming happend outside of those.

Do you have a source saying that those languages were more popular in the 80s / that most programming happened outside corporations?

On Thursday, 10 October 2019 at 19:17:03 UTC, kinke wrote:
> Presumably the effect of a few opinionated decision makers in a way-too-big corporation with a shameless preference for closed ecosystems. Rightfully dropping into oblivion again by the looks of it [the language, not the corporation ;)].

Not really oblivion.  You  still need Objective-C++ to interface gracefully with Swift, but yes, it is more of an interfacing tool than a productivity tool.

Anyway, NeXT wasn't a big corporation, but you are right that Jobs was opinionated. That said the dynamic aspects of Objective-C are suitable for GUI-development. And the big advertising point for NeXT was the OO GUI + hardware, so it made some sense as there were few available alternatives (Smalltalk perhaps).

It was kind of similar to Dart being plugged by Google for frontend development, not Go.

On Friday, 11 October 2019 at 06:50:38 UTC, Dennis wrote:
> Do you have a source saying that those languages were more popular in the 80s / that most programming happened outside corporations?

Do you need a source???

I happend to be alive in the 80s.  There is no way possible that Ada accounted for 43% of all programs written in 1986. Most programming clearly happened outside BIG corporations in the 80s, yes.

Github is a completely different dataset than these (presumably US biased) surveys and measures completely different behaviour.

On Friday, 11 October 2019 at 07:05:12 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> On Friday, 11 October 2019 at 06:50:38 UTC, Dennis wrote:
>> Do you have a source saying that those languages were more popular in the 80s / that most programming happened outside corporations?
>
> Do you need a source???

Well I don't _need_ a source, it's not an important question to me.
I was just wondering if you had one, since you saying "they're wrong, their data is biased" is a bit ironic when your own source is "personal experience", which is notoriously biased ;)

On Friday, 11 October 2019 at 07:40:27 UTC, Dennis wrote:
> source is "personal experience", which is notoriously biased ;)

I'm not sure if it is biased to say that the ocean is wet if you actually are standing in it.

Keep in mind that 1986 was the heyday of 8-bit computers, low on memory and diskette for storage in a blooming small business and a home computing market. Lots of small businesses were looking for ways to transfer their existing backoffice to computers, e.g. simple filing-cabinet-style databases or custom software.

No need for Ada, which you only needed to get US government contracts, like DoD projects. Besides even for US big corporations 43% in Ada sounds excessive. Might be that they just crossed off for which languages they had some project in, but not how many projects. Dunno. The stats in the video seems unreasonable all over the place.

Bascially, you cannot aggregate data in the way the author of the video has. It isn't sound. You don't get an apple-pie if you throw oranges into the mix.

On Friday, 11 October 2019 at 08:06:02 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> I'm not sure if it is biased to say that the ocean is wet if you actually are standing in it.

Being wet is not quantitative. A better analogy is you saying "the ocean can't possibly be 17 degrees Celcius on average, I'm standing in it and it feels warmer than that".

> Bascially, you cannot aggregate data in the way the author of the video has.

You can totally critisize the method, but you can't dismiss the results because they contradict your personal experience (which is at least as biased as whatever statistical methods the author used).

On Friday, 11 October 2019 at 08:06:02 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

> Bascially, you cannot aggregate data in the way the author of the video has. It isn't sound. You don't get an apple-pie if you throw oranges into the mix.

I agree, but it is still fascinating to see the rise of C, then Java and Python (we all know that, but visualization helps). And JS growing and shrinking and growing again, and PHP. It basically is the history of technology, and I recognize it especially from the 90ies onward as in internet > mobile devices. Objective-C could only become "big" because of Apple, but when I first saw Mac OS X, I knew they'd be big. A lot of people laughed and said "Oh, the shiny icons, all Mickey Mouse!" But Jobs did the job well. JS obviously succeeded due to the internet and the name that lived off Java.

Now, this begs the question: To which extent do PLs influence the course of technology (e.g. C in the 80ies) and to which extent does the demand / the market created by new technologies influence PLs and their use? It's a bit like the hen and the egg, ain't it?

If anything, the video depicts a changing world and society and PLs are just one indicator. I'd love to read a well researched book about it.