Fortran returns to top 20 TIOBE index

Advocacy
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I have just discovered that the data used for the plot on the page https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/fortran/ are hard coded in the source of the page (lines 225-226), in that format (JSON?):

    series: [
    	{name : 'Fortran',data : [[Date.UTC(2001, 5, 30), 1.41], [Date.UTC(2001, 6, 30), 1.31], [Date.UTC(2001, 7, 30), 1.46], [Date.UTC(2001, 8, 28), 1.40], [Date.UTC(2001, 9, 26), 1.32], [Date.UTC(2001, 10, 28), 1.29], [Date.UTC(2001, 11, 31), 1.23], [Date.UTC(2002, 0, 30), 1.23], [Date.UTC(2002, 1, 27), 1.27], [Date.UTC(2002, 2, 29), 1.27], [Date.UTC(2002, 3, 29), 1.28]...

The rank is not included, just the ratings (%). And be careful, I think the months are numbered from 0 to 11! (seems strange as the days are going up to 31…)

In the April index, Fortran is 20th with 0.59%.

122

In the May 2023 TIOBE index Fortran is 19th with ratings=0.78%.

But what is interesting is that this month there is a comment about it:

In other words, it is almost impossible to hit the charts as a newbie. On the contrary, we see that golden oldies revive. Take for instance Fortran, which is back in the top 20 thanks to the growing demand for numerical computational power. So, if you have just invented a brand new language, please have some patience! – Paul Jansen CEO TIOBE Software

6 Likes
123

TIOBE is 100% correct, as long as Fortran is in the top 20. When it is not in the top 20, then it is not correct. :slight_smile:

7 Likes
124

It seems you have invented the Fortran-lang-TIOBE-index-quality-metric :grin:. It is a logical and has rather improved for a few years, as the .true. value now occurs a few months each year.

2 Likes
125

I dunno who said this, but the TIOBE measures “noise”. That’s it. So if every university freshman and sophomore needs Fortran during the year for whatever reason, it bumps the rating up.

Whether or not Fortran is popular boils down to projects and companies using it. @certik is right from another post that we need to listen to people’s grievances about Fortran and take them seriously and address them somehow. Which, in turn will see Fortran actually being used more and become popular rather than its popularity being just a mirage generated by search engine noise.

3 Likes
126

@Aurelius_Nero of course, I 100% agree with you. We are just joking in this thread, we all know that TIOBE is not perfect, some people even say there is no value on it, even worse than random. Just noise.

Well, there is one real value in TIOBE: right now it is giving Fortran very good advertisement, and Fortran needs it.

3 Likes
127

Yes, concerning the bottom of the Top20, I think we are in the noise (with the meaning of signal theory). I would say that that part of the Index works like a buzzometer: it measures the noise (the buzz) we make (concerning Fortran it could even be named a bozmeter :grin:).

Being in the noise does not mean there is no signal. Fortran could oscillate around the 70th position. But it oscillates now around the 20th or 25th. I like to consider (or is it just wishful thinking?) that this evolution is due to the great work that is done by people here.

3 Likes
128

Of course this is due to us doing a great job! :slight_smile:

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129

Fortran on position #15 in June 2023, ratings 0.99%.

11 Likes
130

Fortran on position #11 in July 2023, ratings 1,25%.

6 Likes
131

All hail Fortran! Let’s go for Top 10.

7 Likes
132

Rankings other than Python, C, Java, C++, and C# are all “noise”, mostly meaningless.

But if readers here keep making every Fortran related activity or inquiry first a search in an engine used by Tiobe in its indexing and do this whenever they are working with Fortran - that is, as opposed to using bookmarks or saved links or downloaded documents or searching within the site (such as this one) for topics or older threads, etc. - does it boost the rankings of Fortran?

1 Like
133

I typically begin every search for knowledge by typing my question directly into Google. Chances are usually >>0 that someone else has considered my quandary before, and hopefully received a satisfying answer. When that is not the case… Resolution time for whatever issue skyrockets, as the solution will usually involve posting the question somewhere fishing for replies, and simultaneously searching for documentation that may or may not exist. If documentation does exist, and I find it, then it’s a matter of learning the documentation’s parlance and trying to reformulate my question to search for an answer there.

That said I don’t personally believe Tiobe index ratings really have any useful meaning at all. I guess they indicate what language people are typing into search engines about, but not much else.

134

Best rank since its comeback in April 2020. The previous best rank was #13 in August 2021.
We can notice that summer months are good for Fortran ranking. Is it a GSoC effect?

And our dear T. Rex :t_rex: is not alone anymore, its old friend COBOL is back too at the rank #20! (its icon is a Triceratops). Jurassic is coming back, by the way Wikipedia says: “The climate of the Jurassic was warmer than the present, and there were no ice caps.”

1 Like
135

Considering MATLAB is #10 with 1.26% ratings and Fortran has a 1.25% ratings, we were just unlucky!

136

I wonder if the fortran-lang efforts are “moving the needle” a little bit and we are seeing the effect of that? I would like to think so. I believe that Fortran having a logo, a website, an engaged online community (not Usenet), VSCode integrations, package manger, etc. has raised the profile of Fortran more than any of the minor updates the Fortran language committee has been releasing over the past decade or two.

9 Likes
137

The Google Trends plot for Fortran over the last 5 years is slightly downtrending, so I don’t think it’s that simple.

1 Like
138

Python with NumPy and SciPy is now a programming language with a good ecosystem for scientific programming and especially machine learning, and it is free. (As Octave, arguably a Matlab clone, has been for decades.) What is Mathworks doing to keep Matlab healthy? I see that they advertise. The back cover of Physics Today, the magazine sent to members of the American Physical Society, usually has a Matlab advertisement. For a few years it touted Matlab for deep learning, now it does so for AI :slight_smile:

139

Yeah, I have also noticed that summer months are good for fortran. Could it be related to college work in addition to GSoC that you mention?

1 Like
140

I listen to news on the local (Chicago) National Public Radio (NPR) station in my car. MathWorks advertises there too.