This post from the Daily Python URL shows some major changes in how a “top programming languages” poll (which are not only subjective, but pointless, still…) changed when a different subset of people got word of the poll.
The basics being, reasonably clueful people who are doing interesting fast-moving things are not doing .NYET development. They may be hope for the future yet. However it’s coming out of very small corners of RDU and California — or so it seems. Still, I smell hope.
As a sidenote, I am amused at the mentioned 2001 poll that included “NT4″ which is about as sensical in a programming language poll, say dishwashers or ferrets.
I gave Python and Lua high marks (the latter of which will be your super-fast game-and-app embedded language of choice), along with pretty good marks to Ruby (though people will discover it’s the same as Python soon enough). C obviously isn’t going anywhere either, though I predict C++ is on it’s way out (with it’s overcomplexity and not much added gain, rightfully so). The usual DHTML web tech is obviously important too. They key to this is for universities to stop being one-language diploma-mills and actually inspire students to be creative, think, and make their own choices. Then, slowly, ingrained infrastructure will start to wisen up, opening the tide for people to write the kind of code they want to write using the tools they want to write them in. The age of programming languages that fight the programmer (or in the case of VB6, treat them like a total idiot) will come to an end. It has to.
As much as I’d like to see a resurgence in Lisp/Scheme/Haskell/etc, I prefer pragmatism and will take my combo Swiss-Army-Knife/Hammer/Paintbrush anyday. Though functionalness is still interesting, no doubt.
