Top 20 programming languages

ABC, Boo, Oberon, Occam, Scala, Yorick, Shakespeare, Chef ....I thought these were some wierd words straight out of some techno/psycho babble, but was taken by surprised to know that these are programming languages.

Anyways continuing...Got to know this site called Tiobe, which intrestingly, ranks the programming languages based on the world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors..Rankings are given out on a monthly basis. Here are the rankings for month of July..

Position July 2006	Position July 2005	Delta in Position	Programming Language	Ratings July 2006	Delta July 2005	Status
1	2		Java	21.853%	+2.19%	A
2	1		C	17.829%	-2.02%	A
3	6		(Visual) Basic	10.689%	+4.62%	A
4	4		PHP	10.350%	+1.18%	A
5	3		C++	9.779%	-1.28%	A
6	5		Perl	5.626%	-2.20%	A
7	7		C#	3.401%	+0.26%	A
8	8		Python	3.017%	+0.49%	A
9	9		JavaScript	2.108%	+0.33%	A
10	10		Delphi	2.037%	+0.30%	A
11	12		SAS	1.746%	+0.54%	A
12	13		PL/SQL	0.956%	-0.09%	A
13	35	22 *	Visual FoxPro	0.868%	+0.60%	A
14	18		Ada	0.548%	-0.20%	B
15	15		Lisp/Scheme	0.515%	-0.46%	B
16	21		Pascal	0.511%	-0.04%	B
17	30	13 *	Ruby	0.506%	+0.20%	B
18	33	15 *	ActionScript	0.484%	+0.20%	B
19	16		VB.NET	0.477%	-0.48%	B
20	11	9 *	COBOL	0.464%	-0.93%	B

Some intresting things I noticed are;

1) I don't work with any of the top 10 languages :(

2) Perl is rated below PHP.

3) Perl rating has slipped by one rank as compared to same month in year 2005.

4) Check Ruby-on-Rails...30 to 17!!!

So Perl, once mother of scripting languages, losing out?? I am no expert, so can't comment. But many have already started to sing elegy for Perl.. you can catch up with intresting article on this topic here , also check out the various links in the article. It would be sad if that happens.

PEW Bloggers survey

Recently there was a survery by PEW on blogging and bloggers and quite intresting results have emerged out of it..I found the following the most intresting.

77% of bloggers have shared their own artwork, photos, stories, or videos online, compared with 26% of all internet users.

77% bloggers creating and sharing content!!!..if you are wondering what's so special about this piece of statistics. Check the Bradley Horowitz's "content production pyramid".

and when we relate this pyramid to the facts like, in Wikipedia "10% people create 80% of content", we really understand the importance of creators and synthesizers for the wealth they create through there content. The survey statistics hint at the fact that bloggers are not just scribbling things on the web, but by blogging there experiences they are indirectly taking up the role of creators, synthesizers and creating content which can be consumed by rest of the community.

The pyramid also speaks of creators and synthesizers being consumers themselves and the survey says;

72% of bloggers look online for news or information about politics; by contrast, just 58% of all internet users do so.

other intresting facts include, most of the bloggers love to share content and receive feedback..

87% of bloggers allow comments on their blog and 41% of bloggers say they have a blogroll or friends list on their blog.

fore more interesting facts, you can read the compete report on the survey here

Calvin and Hobbes

funny thing happened today, we were discussing about Calvin & Hobbes comic strips and one of them commented saying

You see all the Calvin & Hobbes strips are written in upper case

For a min, I did not realize what he said....then it dawned upon me...Holy crap!! TRUE. I have read most of the strips, but I never ever "noticed" that all the words are in upper case. Gosh!! I must be suffering third stage of Short attention span syndrome :P

Nikon - 10.2 Megapixel DSLR

Nikon have come up with a new 10.2 Meg pixel DSLR which they are planning to release in the market in about 19 days from today. So to create buzz around this new camera, Nikon's advertising team has come up with, yes another teaser ad. You can watch the ad on there homepage

Now this is a typical teaser ad..We have set of flash screens and each screen screaming virtues of the camera like More power, more control, more versatile, more excitement and by the time you reach the last screen a incomplete image of the new camera evolves in the background and the last screen simply says

"integrating quality and affordability to meet the demands of passionate photo enthusiasts"

So we can expect some more interesting details of camera to be revealed as days go by.

Now why did Nikon go for a teaser ad for its latest offering and not a big bang ad campaign involving celebrities? As far as I can think it could be because of;

1) Advertising budget constraint
2) The new offering has nothing new which will earn back the big advertising spend.

though I don't think its budget constraint...We will never know the true reason.

This is not the first time I have seen a teaser ad. We had few good one like Microsoft doing it for there origami ultra-mobile PC, Purvankara with there "magic of Venice" campaign, few ok one like the sahara group doing it for there Amby valley project and few poor one like Kajol doing it for Marie, but if you ask me, the most effective ad I have seen is the Digen Verma teaser which literally pumped life back into Frooti. I still wonder what happened to that guy.

I personally don't think Nikon ad will have the same effect as the "Digen Verma", but what ever happens I will look forward for these 19 days to pass and hopefully at the end of it I will still wear the expression of "aha" and not "ah shucks".

Steve Balmer advertising for Windows 1.0

When I saw the "developer developer" stuff from Steve Balmer long back, I wondered what in the world possessed him so as to make him go berserk and run around on the stage like a hen fed to guillotine. But last week, when I saw a video of Balmer advertising for Windows 1.0, I realized that its not a acquired skill but his genetic makeup itself is as such.

Enjoy the video..




more madness..




Some more of it..

SKOAR Gaming Expo 2006

Thanks to Yogesh and his cousin, who is part of editorial team of Skoar, I happen to be at the Skoar Gaming expo 2006 this week end.

This was a Dream come true :) . I had never played on a Sony PSP. cool..

Eye-Toy on a Sony Playstation. I wonder how this is different from Nintendo's Wii.

HP Stall

Multi-player Lan setup of Quake 4, brings back memories of engineering college.

Laptop zone- they were playing RoadRash on all laptops, not sure what laptop capability they were planning to demonstrate by playing RoadRash








Windows Media center stall

Intel's stall showing off there latest Dual core preocessor.

What the hell are they doing at a computer game expo?

Kid's plan to demolish school

Kids hate school, especially if they are given homework on Friday. Check what this kid is out to do to her school and teachers. Really funny.


powered by ODEO

Art of Layoff

One more classic Guy Kawasaki post, "The Art of the Layoff". Lot of "Food for thought" for managers, who unfortunatly are the "chosen one" for distributing the dreaded pink slips. I liked his ideas of

1) Cut deep and cut once
Makes lot of sense, the problem with "trickling" down pick slips now and then is that you will not only get rid of non-performers, but also the good performers will leave because of sense of insecurity.

2) Share the pain
In a lay off, its not always the non-performers who are thrown to the guillotine, but may good performers are shown the door too. So during downtime, its good to do your bit to cut costs so that the chances of good employees being retained increase.

3) Provide support
Very true. Layoff can wreck a person, he will be in flux regarding his social and financial security. So I guess a bit of help from others in what ever way they could, would certainly aid to tide over the difficult times.

pretty good stuff, as usual.

July Bug fest

Recently I came across this blog which rants about browser bugs, tricks and hacks called Browser fun. The best part of the blog is that right now they are celebrating this month of July as "Month of Browser Bugs(MoBB)". As part of the celebration, they have decided to release one new bug present in MS Internet Explorer on every single day of july month.

I am not a techi guy when it comes to Browser technology, so was wondering..won't the "bad" guys use these exploits to there advantage..I guess blog authors have taken care of it when they say;

The hacks we publish are carefully chosen to demonstrate a concept without disclosing a direct path to remote code execution.

So 31 bugs in 31 days..pretty cool,now will MoBB change to YoBB? now when they can find 31, they can as well find 150 odd more for the rest of the days left in this year and am sure no one would be surprised if that happens.

Oracle and Asktom

Today one of colleague, who has just started with Oracle programming asked for resources on web, where he can get help incase he is struck. I suggested
AskTom.oracle.com. He questioned as to why it was a good site. He was convinced, when I sent this in my reply.

Tom you are doing a great job... Excellent
My personal thanks to you, I got help several times from these pages.

But why you are not taking new question?

Regards,
Syed



Followup:

i take new questions.

ask_tom@ASKUS> select trunc(timestamp), count(*)
 2  from WWC_ASK_SUBMITTED_QUESTIONS$
 3  where timestamp >= sysdate-20
 4  group by trunc(timestamp)
 5  order by 1;

TRUNC(TIM   COUNT(*)
--------- ----------
07-JUL-04          8
09-JUL-04         18
17-JUL-04          9
18-JUL-04          2
19-JUL-04         12
24-JUL-04          9
26-JUL-04          9

7 rows selected.

he wrote a query to answer "why you are not taking new question". Thats why its such a pleasure to browse this(his) site.
1) He is precise and gets to the point directly.
2) He gives proof for every claim he makes.
3) He provides very elegant solutions to most problems related to Oracle RDBMS.
4) He comes up with amazing analogies to help break down the complexities of some concepts/issues and make it easy for everyone to understand.

All I can say is go through the site and you will know why he is one of the very best when it comes to Oracle RDBMS.

Lance Armstrong and his journey back to life

Author: Lance Armstrong

Year: 2001

Publisher: Berkley Trade

Rating :

Make every obstacle an opportunity

If you are looking for some inspirational stuff to read over a week end, look no

I have read that I flew up the hills and mountains of France. But you dont fly up the hill. You struggle slowly and painfully up the hill and maybe, if you work very hard, you get to the top ahead of everybody else.

further than this book. Its brimming with courage, never-say-die attitude of one man who was diagnosed with triple cancer and was given 4% chance of survival and how he he took on sure death by its horns, fought against and lived to tell the story.

Its a awe-inspiring story of how when you go for the kill with all you have, every obstacle on your way becomes a opportunity. Its a story of how a person who had no hope himself, later became hope for others. Its a story of man who never gave up and showed that adversity is a entry door to better and beautiful life. Its

Cancer did not have to be a death sentence. It could be a route to a second life, an inner life, a better life.

story of a man who conquered Illness and hardships, which were all set to consume him and emerged triumph.

I asked myself why my victory has such a profound effect on people. Maybe its because illness is universal-we've all been sick, no one is immune-and so my winning the tour was a symbolic act, proof that you can not only survive after cancer, but thrive after it. Maybe, I am hope

Lance Armstrong’s life had everything, Happiness, Sadness, Tragedy, Victory, defeat and to put these kaleidoscope of intricately woven emotions in words, this book has done it extremely well. As you follow the book you will "feel" the pain when he suffers and you will feel the joy when he triumphs. Another aspect of the book that I like is the punch statements; you will find lot of them. Also there are lots of incidences that you will enjoy reading.

To conclude, this is a amazing book. Truly stuff of legends. Get one and read it, it’s worth it.

Update:
Routes and map of Tour de France are available here.