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From: gray@njal.ml.csiro.au (Randall Gray)
Subject: Re: Language "ranking" based on posts to users groups
In-Reply-To: dlyon@ipacific.net.au's message of 17 Dec 1995 11:45:42 GMT
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Umm ... "questions, bugs and problems" ... What about *answers*? :-)

Since I can do little else, I assume that this is actually something
like gross numbers of postings (without filtering).  The question that
springs to mind is "What do numbers of postings indicate?".  Certainly
related to number of people subscribed to various newsgroups.
Probably related to the "difficulty" of learning the language and
propensity of the language towards bugginess.  Probably related to
penetration of the language into university/college/school courses.

IMHO none of these *actually* has anything to do with *best* -- all it
really indicates is the rough proportion of bandwidth consumed.

"Best" really means "whatever gets the job done efficiently", and on
that score you pick the tool for the job.  

Also IMHO Polylingualism is the only way to go.  Of course we all have
our favourite languages, but who am *I* to say that COBOL is a heap
of parrot droppings just because it is utterly useless for the sorts
of programs I have tended to write?


-- 
___________________________________________________________________
Randall Gray	gray@ml.csiro.au        CSIRO Division of Fisheries
