Assessment of popularity among modern, application scripting languages

Table for analysis

criteria	JavaScript	Perl	PHP	Python	VBScript	Ruby	ColdFusion	TCL	REXX	Groovy	Lua	AppleScript	MIVA	REBOL
by webpage order
Tizag tutorial	#1	#3	#2		#6
GNU LAMP tutorial		#1	#2
by mention
Ousterhout article	+	+		+	+			+	+
Google Directory		+		+										+
Benchmarks Game	+	+	+	+		+		+	+	+	+			+
Prechelt article		+		+				+	+
Rosetta Stone article	+	+		+		+		+
Steve Goldberg article	+	+			+			+	+
Dafydd Rees article	+	+		+		+		+
Garth Gillespie article	+	+	+	+			+	+
Erik Wrenholt article	+	+	+	+		+		+			+	+
c2 article	+	+	+	+	+	+		+	+	+	+	+		+
gbdirect pitch		+	+		+
Web Scripts Directory	+	+	+
SWiK	+	+	+	+		+				+	+
ITSTH	+	+	+								+
Mikkonen article	+	+	+	+		+
Answers.com	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+
Tejas Software	+	+	+	+	+	+		+	+			+
Keg-1	+	+	+	+	+	+		+	+		+		+
Programming	+	+		+		+			+
TOTAL COUNT (19 rows)	16 => #2	19 => #1	12 => #4-5	15 => #3	7 => #8-9	11 => #6	2 => #13-14	12 => #4-5	9 => #7	4 => #10-12	7 => #8-9	4 => #10-12	2 => #13-14	4 => #10-12
count of sites [2-08]
Google Directory	600	926	1,427	468	27	273	218	113	225	29	35	30	55	145
dmoz folders	556	849	1,350	422	19	239	206	104	191	30	34	29	51	128
TOTAL COUNT (2 rows)	1,156 => #3	1,775 => #2	2,777 => #1	890 => #4	46 => #14	512 => #5	424 => #6	217 => #9	416 => #7	59 => #12-13	69 => #11	59 => #12-13	106 => #10	273 => #8
Google count
SL + ...	395,000	460,000	594,000	383,000	194,000	341,000	120,000	202,000	28,200	47,600	103,000	62,600	9,930	8,230
TOTAL COUNT (1 row)	=> #3	=> #2	=> #1	=> #4	=> #7	=> #5	=> #8	=> #6	=> #12	=> #11	=> #9	=> #10	=> #13	=> #14
by # jobs [2-17-08]
Simply Hired	31,028	25,564	12,859	6,678	3,863	3,941	2,591	2,157	331	219	154	46	33	2
MySpace	30,880	25,430	12,810	6,646	3,845	3,925	2,591	2,147	329	219	153	86	33	2
Dice.com	6,773	5,629	2,451	1,458	849	761	455	415	82	21	35	9	1	0
Monster.com	5,000	4,289	2,471	1,148	869	637	462	363	69	20	26	12	13	0
CareerBuilder.com	3,372	2,100	1,556	529	444	351	257	120	33	13	35	4	0	0
HotJobs	1,932	2,178	1,328	753	161	260	86	262	19	4	5	5	9	0
CyberCoders	246	135	177	44	4	52	26	6	0	2	0	0	0	0
TOTAL OF JOBS (7 rows)	79,231 => #1	65,325 => #2	33,652 => #3	17,161 => #4	10,035 => #5	9,927 => #6	6,468 => #7	5,470 => #8	863 => #9	498 => #10	408 => #11	162 => #12	89 => #13	4 => #14

Notes on table derivation

The following are the next most common scripting languages to consider adding to this table. Nearly all are obscure, however, and some may not be true, modern, application scripting languages. The number of reference links appearing after each language below is a very rough indication of how often that language is mentioned on web sites about scripting languages (but appearnce of links and link usage is inconsistent here, so far).

• ActionScript [7]
• AutoIT
• Awk [3] [8] [9]
• Batch [8]
• BeanShell [1]
• Befunge [1] [2]
• Brain [1]
• ch
• CobolScript [8]
• C-SMILE [1]
• Curl [8]
• DINO [1]
• Dook [1]
• Dylan [1] [8]
• E [8]
• E4X [6]
• Erlang [11]
• Euphoria [8]
• Expect [3]
• Frontier [8]
• Ghostscript [10]
• Guile [3] [8] [9]
• Haskell [11]
• Hecl [6]
• ICI [8]
• Icon [11]
• Io [8] [10] [11]
• IPTSCRAE [4]
• JavaFX
• JScheme
• JScript [1] [4]
• JudoScript
• Lasso [4]
• Linden (= LSL)
• Monad
• Moto [8]
• Nasal
• NQL [1]
• Pike [8] [11]
• Pliant [8]
• Pop-11 [1]
• Profan [1] [2]
• R [8]
• Rhino
• ROPE [6]
• Scriptease
• ScriptX
• S-lang [8] [11]
• Simkin [1]
• Slate [1]
• SLEEP [6]
• SMALL [1]
• SMX [4]
• thinBasic [4]
• Transcript [8]
• twill
• VBA [1] [9]
• Visual DialogScript [8]
• Water [8]
• Wise [5]
• XEXPR
• XOTcl [1] [8]
• XSLT [4]

The types of "scripting languages" excluded from this table are:

• old scripting languages
  • JCL: "Modern scripting languages such as Tcl and Perl are a far cry from early scripting languages such as JCL."
• higher order languages (and their variants) not dedicated to scripting
  • C
  • C#
  • COBOL
  • CAML
    • OCAML [10] [11]
  • Java
  • LISP: "Paul also laments that LISP is not the scripting language for any existing system, save Emacs."
    • SBCL [10] [11]
    • Scheme [1] [11]
    • Common LISP
    • elisp / Emacs LISP [8] [9] [10]
  • Prolog
  • Smalltalk [9] [11]
• shell scripts: "Shell scripts have some affinities with application scripting languages but their history is distinct and their influence has been more widespread. . ."
  • ash
  • bash
  • busybox
  • csh
  • ksh
  • rc
  • sh
  • tcsh
  • zsh
  • MS-DOS .BAT [9]
  • Windows .CMD [9]
• technologies/frameworks/infrastructures
  • AJAX: "(Ajax), on the other hand, is a set of technologies -- Asynchronous JavaScript and XML -- that work together to deliver a more dynamic user experience."
  • ASP: "One unique feature of ASP is that it lets you choose your favourite scripting language, be it JavaScript or VBScript. . ."
  • FrontPage Extensions: "Not a scripting language in it's own right, but they do offer some basic CGI interaction on sites so they are worth a mention."
  • JSP: "The writers of the JavaServer Pages specification did not define a requirement that Java be the scripting language for a JSP page."
  • Ruby on Rails: ". . .Ruby On Rails isn't a scripting language, its a framework that would be better compared to Catalyst. . ."
• web browser graphics languages (and their extensions)
  • HTML
  • DHTML
  • XML
  • XSLT
  • CSS
  • SVG
  • Greasemonkey: "Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of DHTML ("user scripts") to any web page to change its behavior."
• protocols/standards/specifications
  • CGI: "Common languages for CGI programming are Perl, C, Java and Visual Basic."

The job searches for the table were done by a single keyword only, therefore keywords with additional meanings (e.g., "groovy", "ruby", "python", "ajax") probably pulled in some unrelated, non-IT jobs. Some person names (e.g., Rebol) and company names (e.g., MIVA) will also be pulled in occasionally. The keywords are assumed to be spelled correctly on the job sites (e.g., "ColdFusion" and not "Cold Fusion"). The default settings (e.g., distance, job type, field) are always used on the searches.

Conclusions

The conclusions are clear cut:

• The ranking of scripting languages by frequency of mention doesn't match very well the ranking of those languages by the number of available jobs.
• There is a clear-cut ranking of which scripting languages are most in demand by employers. See the table below.

The discrepency of rankings in the top three scripting languages is interesting, with respect to jobs vs. sites. This could suggest that enthusiasm is unusually high for PHP, since PHP ranks #1 in the number of sites, but only #3 in the number of jobs. All other scripting languages generally have the number of jobs proportional to the number of sites. Or it could reflect the maturity of the languages JavaScript and Perl, that such commonplace languages don't need many tutorial sites.

References

Articles

Lists only

Webpages with only lists/tables/graphs

Tutorial collections

Folders

Job sites

Definitions of "scripting language"

Language comparisons

Specific languages