Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

["Ulf Wiger (TN/EAB)" <ulf.wiger@ericsson.com>]

Oliver Bandel wrote:
> Zitat von Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com>:
> 
>> The number of people searching for OCaml on Google has sky-rocketed since
>> Microsoft's announcement that they are productizing F#:
>>
>> http://www.google.com/trends?q=f%23%2Cocaml&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
> 
> 
> Well, I can't see any sky-rocketing there.
> Also I found no absolute numbers of requests on that page.

Google Trends only shows relative trends, but you can
try find different references, in order to find your
bearings:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=f%23%2Cocaml%2Cerlang&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

http://www.google.com/trends?q=f%23%2Cocaml%2Chaskell&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

http://www.google.com/trends?q=f%23%2Cocaml%2CC%23&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

(So, F# has climbed up to about the level of Erlang, which is
also on a rise, but there's some way to go before catching up
with Haskell, and compared to C#, interest is relatively zero).

Of course, you have to think about alternative meanings of
your search terms (e.g. Haskell County, the Erlang-B formula,
the musical chord F#, ...), but I've assumed these to be
insignificant, at least for Haskell and Erlang trends.
But still, working with the tool for a while can help you
build some intuition:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=C%2B%2B%2CJava%2CC%23&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

Playing around with it a while back, I got the distinct
feeling that interest in functional languages is stirring
somewhat, while C++, Java, UML are on a slow but steady
decline (by this measure).

When you start finding blog entries claiming that F# sucks
because someone picked it up and tried some solution that
works really well in C++, python or ruby, then you are
really starting to find a new audience. ;-)

BR,
Ulf W