This is the second day of my participation in the November Gwen Challenge. Check out the details: the last Gwen Challenge 2021
TIOBE has released its list of programming languages for November 2021. Python remains at the top of TIOBE’s ranking in November, followed by C and Java, while PHP, which has been popular for years, is about to be knocked out of the top 10.
It is reported that TIOBE index list has been started for more than 20 years. During this time, PHP, known as the “master of web programming”, has remained in the Top10 of the list. More recently, however, the list has shown that PHP’s position in the top ten is “in jeopardy” as it faces a lot of competition.
“It’s not that PHP is’ dead ‘,” explains Paul Jansen, CEO of TIOBE Software. “There are still a lot of small and medium businesses that rely on PHP.”
The language wars have been going on ever since the second programmer was born.
Every time you get into a debate about which language is the best, the phrase “PHP is the best language” is greeted with laughter. It has become an unspoken meme among programmers.
Just as recently as I started to learn Kotlin, the process of getting started is compared to Java, just as I started to learn Java compared to C. Comparing is probably a characteristic cultivated by nature for human beings over thousands of years. By comparing, we can differentiate the unknown things from the known things, so as to bring the unknown closer, which is conducive to familiarizing, learning and mastering.
Different languages differ from one another in terms of syntax, features, advantages, disadvantages, scenarios and limitations. The background of birth, the conditions at that time, people’s cognition is also different.
The basic premise is that it needs to be under the same conditions.
This is often an easy factor to overlook. Careful observation shows that the parties who usually fight for the language are basically arguing with reason, and there is nothing wrong with the reasoning of each party, but the unified conditions cannot be guaranteed, and in fact, it is relatively difficult to achieve. For example, it’s a development language that’s high performance, low cost to learn, cross-platform, all kinds of things and it’s not as good as when another language was born, when applications took off, when the language you’re speaking didn’t even exist. Like basketball friends must have heard the comparison between Kobe Bryant and Jordan, if Jordan is put in the league now how, Kobe Bryant put Jordan in the league then how, in fact, this comparison itself does not meet the basic premise — unified conditions.
Furthermore, the same condition can also be divided into specific conditions A and B. It is possible that this language is better in condition A, but not as good as another language in condition B. There are specific issues and specific scenarios involved. Therefore, the comparison conditions have to be specific to specific scenarios and conditions. The difficulty here is that the problem to be solved is made up of multiple specific scenarios and specific conditions.
So everyone stopped arguing and began to conclude that the development language should not be a problem, and started to focus on the problem to be solved, even though the problem was dynamic.
This is progress. Different languages are suitable for different scenarios, and the optimal solution can be obtained for specific problems. Thus, the development of languages on the contention of a hundred schools of thought, flowers bloom. They say in philosophy class that human cognition is a spiral.
It can’t help but wonder, as technology evolves, will there be a language that can unify the world in the future?
In many cases, a new language can solve the problems in the original scene well (otherwise, a new language will be introduced), but due to historical reasons or migration costs, the price comparison is generally cautious. However, new businesses will be bold to try, because there is no historical burden, such as client development Flutter. Given a little time, this situation will not prevent one language from uniting the world.
Without a common language, what would get in the way?
Why is there a unified development language within the company’s internal teams, and why are Google and Apple pushing for new languages Kotlin and Swift?
Different circumstances, different forces.
I personally believe that the evolution of technology can improve efficiency, and the primary productivity will eventually offset the forces brought by non-technical factors. For example, simultaneous interpretation in human communication, low code in development, machine learning, AI and other explorations are all aimed at liberating productivity and improving efficiency.
If technology makes it possible for speakers of different languages to communicate without barriers, is it possible for computers to understand their conversations and automatically program them to do what they want?
Is this process, between people, between people and computers, in multiple languages or in one language? As it happens, the language is also called “PHP”, so “PHP is the best language in the world again”.