[erlang-questions] What factors correlate with programming language popularity/adoption?

[Miles Fidelman]

Mark Allen wrote:
> In this very excellent blog post
>
>    http://www.pl-enthusiast.net/?p=235
>
> Michael Hicks summarizes some recent research into what makes certain
> programming languages popular and others less so.  It especially includes
> recommendations on how to improve adoption of functional programming
> languages.
>
>
One critical note:  The metric used was "The *six most popular 
languages* used in Sourceforge projects" - as opposed to, say, "lines of 
production code."  I expect that very little large-scale system 
development, or mission-critical system development, shows up on 
Sourceforge.

Not sure how to measure it, but I expect if one looked at MIS and 
Financial systems, one would (still) find a predominance of COBOL.
For mission-critical systems you'd probably find a lot of Ada in 
aerospace (can you say fly-by-wire?) and SCADA, and a lot of Erlang in 
telecom.

I expect that very different factors influence language selection for 
such applications.

Miles Fidelman

-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra