Trends in programming languages and others

Original link: [http://blogs.msdn.com/alexbarn/archive/2006/08/03/688219.aspx](http://blogs.msdn.com/alexbarn/archive/2006/08/03/688219.aspx)

Original author: Alex Barnett

Tim O'Reilly's post on book sales is about to lose a lot of interesting data and trends due to the release of the Nielsen BookScan report, which ranks the top 3000 computer books (meaning: not only O'Reilly but many others in the U.S. are selling books).

Yesterday's post still contains some vivid and interesting data. The post discusses trends in the programming language market over the past three years (pay particular attention to the parts I've bolded):

"I wrote yesterday that the rise of Ruby and JavaScript **is driven by the move towards Web 2.0 applications** (I really don't know how else to translate this sentence, so please bear with me). In these graphs, it's also worth noting the long, slow decline of Java and C/C++, as well as the continued growth in market share of C#. You can see the sharp increase in Ruby after Rails was introduced, and you can also see the reversal of PHP's fortunes when book sales indicate that web developers seeking rapid development languages have moved to Ruby on Rails (and Microsoft's ASP.NET technology stack)."

From **'ASP.NET on a Roll'? (Q1 2006 vs. Q1 2005 comparison)**:

"Amid all the buzz about Ruby on Rails and AJAX, few people noticed Microsoft's genuinely impressive step into the web development space. Based on book sales data, it appears that ASP.NET 2.0 is catching fire, as ASP-related book sales increased by 53% during the same period a year ago. By contrast, PHP declined by 3%, and JSP dropped by 25%."

Of course, the data here does not represent the full picture (just one reason: it only covers the U.S.), and there are more data points available for market research (sales figures from vendors, independent surveys, etc.). However, book sales data provide an excellent indicator for tracking trends.

Here are some additional valuable highlights:

Selected from **State of the Computer Book Market, Q2 2006, Part 2: Category Winners and Losers**:

- C# book sales have consistently outperformed Java, with unit sales growing by 49%, compared to a 10% decline for Java.

- Microsoft's new version of SQL Server continues to drive book sales, increasing its market share to 86%.

- ASP.NET is also performing well, achieving a market share of 61%.

- Books related to SQL show a strong trend of continuous growth, indicating an increased focus on databases in today's application development.

Given my role in the data programming team, databases have sparked a lot of special interest for me (the Database roll-up numbers, much like the Ruby/ASP.NET/PHP data mentioned earlier):

"Looking at the upward trend in databases, we once again see the strength of SQL Server, the decline in Oracle book sales, and the strange resilience of PostgreSQL, even though MySQL remains a much larger category overall."

From **State of the Computer Book Market, Part [...]**