Popularity of Programming Languages on Arch Linux | Hacker News Reader

Popularity of Programming Languages on Arch Linux

pkgstats.archlinux.de

22 pointsShadonototra27 comments

I use the `rustup` package instead of the `rust` package to manage a local installation of rust. This graph seems to show installations of the `rust` package, but I don't think that accounts for `rustup`. `rustup` is recommended on Rust's own website ( https://www.rust-lang.org/learn/get-started ) and some users may have installed `rustup` via the bootstrap script instead of from Arch's own package repository. So I guess there's some additional variables that may not be accounted for regarding `rust`.

EDIT: Try this: https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/compare/packages#packages=dmd,...

I have never heard of pkgstats before. When it requires someone to manually install a telemetry package, I can’t imagine that it’ll be in any way representative of the wider user base.

I expect you’d get more interesting and representative results from processing logs from one of the more popular download mirrors. I have no idea if any of those are shared publicly.

I don't understand what this is saying, primarily because I don't believe there exists any Linux distro where C isn't a dominant language for packages to be written in. Also, what's dmd? The D programming language is all that comes to mind, but the abbreviation doesn't seem to work.

dmd is the original D compiler, Digital Mars D (Digital Mars being Walter Bright’s company).

Ah, so. Thanks.

According to this: C is at 87%.(I’m using gcc as a proxy for c/c++)

https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/fun

Just some misleading chart. "Misleading" is probably too mild.

What is misleading about it? it's raw stats

for starters because it excludes most languages. Add Python to the url at the top and it dwarfs everything else

More importantly though, trying to count programming languages by installations of individual packages doesn't make sense for languages that have multiple tool chains or are simply being installed by some other means.

script/curl based installations are extremely popular for rust (rustup), haskell (stack), clojure (leiningen) etc...

I didn't include gcc/clang/python and some others because they are preinstalled in most distributions, so the data wouldn't be interesting

Best way to learn and correct mistakes is to be aware of them, thanks for your input, it's pretty obvious now indeed

It's raw stats of some selected languages.

I believe, this statistic does not say anything about what language Arch packages are written in, but rather what languages Arch users really use for their work.

Where's Python?

EDIT: Oh I could edit the URL to add it. [0]

[0] https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/compare/packages#packages=dmd,...

Further edit: My post was downvoted? Why!?

Here's the same graph[1] using just 'python' instead of 'python2' and 'python3'. I don't think the latter tag is used much.

Anyone know how to get C and C++ to show up on the graph?

edit: it's 'clang', 'gcc' and 'llvm'[2]

[1] https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/compare/packages#packages=dmd,...

[2] https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/compare/packages#packages=clan...

Thanks - I did add "python" to it but forgot to refresh the page so got befuddled then added python2/3 instead.

I've no idea why the original poster decided to be so... selective.

I didn't include python/c++ or some others because they already ship with most distributions so the data is not useful

Your post is entitled "Popularity of Programming Languages on Arch Linux"

Not including Python seems odd.

Perhaps the title should have been something different.

It's interesting to see zig building up steam and surpassing nim at the end. I haven't used either language yet but find them both exciting for different reasons, but it's interesting to see zig's growth. Andrew Kelley has really done a phenomenal job at fostering a close-knit and positive community and I hope nothing but the best for them. It seems like zig came onto the scene right when a subgroup of programmers, myself included, are discovering a passion for getting back to the basics and visiting pure C again for their personal projects.

I also wonder how many of these might not be using zig directly but using it for it's awesome cross-compiler features.

nodejs outshadows all of these[1] (though rust is closer than I expected), yet is not included. I wonder why... it seems like the fact that JS is wildly popular is some sort of dirty secret in the industry.

[1]: https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/compare/packages#packages=dmd,...

I added sbcl to the list and eliminated go; looks like rust surpasses it in 2016

For a second I imagined this world where dotnet was the GME of hacker langs. The colors are so similar between some of those items...

Why is it, that golang is this popular? Is it only among arch users?

Go did a great job at targeting programmers of scripting languages like JavaScript and promised them more power. That was my path to being introduced to native programming and from there I moved on to things like C++/C. But I still use Go every once in a while because it's a fun language and a nice break from the complexity of C++.

Any ideas what caused the spike then drop of go packages?

Rust drops at the same time. I don't use Arch, so I can only guess it was something related to the way Arch was distributing the packages. Maybe they fell behind or something?

gcc and clang too https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/compare/packages#packages=clan... seems it must be something idiosyncratic to Arch.

I use arch and I don't have the rust package installed. In it's stead, I have the rustup package installed. As the rust project recommends the use rustup to manage multiple possible installed versions of rust, my guess is that most arch users only install rustup.

I'm not sure if the values for rust on this graph account for the rustup package.

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