Some respondents listed more than one language as being their most
prefered (even while evaluating the implementation for a single
langage).  Languages described as being favored:
CL         was favored 27 times (31%).
C++        was favored 13 times (15%).
C          was favored 13 times (15%).
ADA        was favored  9 times (10%).
SCHEME     was favored  8 times ( 9%).
Smalltalk  was favored  6 times ( 7%).
PROLOG     was favored  6 times ( 7%).
PERL       was favored  5 times ( 6%).
python     was favored  5 times ( 6%).
DYLAN      was favored  3 times ( 3%).
MERCURY    was favored  3 times ( 3%).
JAVA       was favored  3 times ( 3%).
MODULA-3   was favored  2 times ( 2%).
EIFFEL     was favored  2 times ( 2%).
SML        was favored  2 times ( 2%).
Pascal     was favored  2 times ( 2%).
SATHER     was favored  2 times ( 2%).
OBERON     was favored  1 times ( 1%).
MUMPS      was favored  1 times ( 1%).
SISAL      was favored  1 times ( 1%).
CLP        was favored  1 times ( 1%).
BETA       was favored  1 times ( 1%).
PL/I       was favored  1 times ( 1%).
HELIX-EXPRESS was favored  1 times ( 1%).
APPLESCRIPT was favored  1 times ( 1%).
CLEAN      was favored  1 times ( 1%).
HASKELL    was favored  1 times ( 1%).
ASM        was favored  1 times ( 1%).
CAML       was favored  1 times ( 1%).
XLISP-STAT was favored  1 times ( 1%).
ASSEMBLY   was favored  1 times ( 1%).
AMIGA-E    was favored  1 times ( 1%).
ICON       was favored  1 times ( 1%).
AWK        was favored  1 times ( 1%).
SH         was favored  1 times ( 1%).
QBASIC     was favored  1 times ( 1%).

Most preferred language:
CL         received 25 responses (29%).
C++        received  9 responses (10%).
ADA        received  7 responses ( 8%).
C          received  6 responses ( 7%).
PROLOG     received  5 responses ( 6%).
SCHEME     received  5 responses ( 6%).
SMALLTALK  received  5 responses ( 6%).
PERL       received  3 responses ( 3%).
PYTHON     received  3 responses ( 3%).
MERCURY    received  2 responses ( 2%).
MODULA-3   received  2 responses ( 2%).
SATHER     received  2 responses ( 2%).
XLISP-STAT received  1 responses ( 1%).
BETA       received  1 responses ( 1%).
AMIGA-E    received  1 responses ( 1%).
QBASIC     received  1 responses ( 1%).
JAVA       received  1 responses ( 1%).
HELIX-EXPRESS received  1 responses ( 1%).
PL/I       received  1 responses ( 1%).
SISAL      received  1 responses ( 1%).
PASCAL     received  1 responses ( 1%).
MUMPS      received  1 responses ( 1%).
OBERON     received  1 responses ( 1%).
EIFFEL     received  1 responses ( 1%).
DYLAN      received  1 responses ( 1%).

 Results for ALL-LANGUAGES:
          %programming  %delivering
UNIX            68          69
WINDOWS         43          49
MAC             30          36
AMIGA            6           5
SYMBOLICS        3           3
OS2              3           2
DOS              1           2
VMS              1           2
BEBOX            1           1
ATARI            1           1
CMS              1           1
UNKNOWN          0           0
VAX/VMS          0           1
REAL-TIME        0           1
NT               0           1
Room for improvement is seen in:
   Standards conformance              : 31%
   Speed                              : 45%
   Size of development environment    : 30%
   Application delivery               : 33%
   Calling other languages            : 47%
   Being called by other languages    : 46%
   Developement environment           : 45%
   GUI                                : 47%
Responses came from the following comp.lang newsgroups:
UNKNOWN    provided 56 of the responses (64%).
LISP       provided 13 of the responses (15%).
PYTHON     provided  4 of the responses ( 5%).
MISC       provided  3 of the responses ( 3%).
ADA        provided  2 of the responses ( 2%).
C          provided  2 of the responses ( 2%).
DYLAN      provided  2 of the responses ( 2%).
SMALLTALK  provided  1 of the responses ( 1%).
SCHEME     provided  1 of the responses ( 1%).
C++        provided  1 of the responses ( 1%).
PROLOG     provided  1 of the responses ( 1%).
SATHER     provided  1 of the responses ( 1%).
11% of responses appeared to be from educational domains, while
30% appeared to be from outside the US.
45% currently have a Common Lisp compiler.

 Results for CL:
          %programming  %delivering
UNIX            72          68
WINDOWS         36          44
MAC             40          36
SYMBOLICS       12          12
UNKNOWN          0           0
OS2              4           0
Room for improvement is seen in:
   Standards conformance              : 48%
   Speed                              : 28%
   Size of development environment    : 36%
   Application delivery               : 60%
   Calling other languages            : 68%
   Being called by other languages    : 60%
   Developement environment           : 24%
   GUI                                : 52%
Responses came from the following comp.lang newsgroups:
UNKNOWN    provided 11 of the responses (44%).
LISP       provided 10 of the responses (40%).
DYLAN      provided  2 of the responses ( 8%).
ADA        provided  1 of the responses ( 4%).
C++        provided  1 of the responses ( 4%).
24% of responses appeared to be from educational domains, while
36% appeared to be from outside the US.
96% currently have a Common Lisp compiler.

Results for C++:
          %programming  %delivering
UNIX            67          67
WINDOWS         56          56
MAC             22          33
BEBOX           11          11
ATARI           11          11
REAL-TIME        0          11
DOS              0          11
Room for improvement is seen in:
   Standards conformance              : 44%
   Speed                              : 33%
   Size of development environment    : 11%
   Application delivery               : 22%
   Calling other languages            : 56%
   Being called by other languages    : 78%
   Developement environment           : 67%
   GUI                                : 22%
 0% of responses appeared to be from educational domains, while
44% appeared to be from outside the US.
33% currently have a Common Lisp compiler.

 Results for ADA:
          %programming  %delivering
UNIX            71          86
WINDOWS         43          57
MAC             29          43
AMIGA           29          29
DOS             14          14
VMS             14          14
VAX/VMS          0          14
Room for improvement is seen in:
   Standards conformance              : 14%
   Speed                              : 43%
   Size of development environment    : 14%
   Application delivery               :  0%
   Calling other languages            : 29%
   Being called by other languages    : 29%
   Developement environment           : 57%
   GUI                                : 57%
Responses came from the following comp.lang newsgroups:
UNKNOWN    provided  6 of the responses (86%).
ADA        provided  1 of the responses (14%).
 0% of responses appeared to be from educational domains, while
14% appeared to be from outside the US.
14% currently have a Common Lisp compiler.

Results for C:
          %programming  %delivering
WINDOWS         67          83
UNIX            83          67
AMIGA           17          17
NT               0          17
VMS              0          17
MAC              0          17
Room for improvement is seen in:
   Standards conformance              : 33%
   Speed                              : 33%
   Size of development environment    : 50%
   Application delivery               : 33%
   Calling other languages            : 17%
   Being called by other languages    : 17%
   Developement environment           : 50%
   GUI                                : 33%
Responses came from the following comp.lang newsgroups:
UNKNOWN    provided  3 of the responses (50%).
C          provided  1 of the responses (17%).
MISC       provided  1 of the responses (17%).
PYTHON     provided  1 of the responses (17%).
17% of responses appeared to be from educational domains, while
 0% appeared to be from outside the US.
17% currently have a Common Lisp compiler.

 Results for PROLOG:
          %programming  %delivering
UNIX            80          80
WINDOWS         20          40
MAC             20          40
Room for improvement is seen in:
   Standards conformance              : 40%
   Speed                              : 20%
   Size of development environment    :  0%
   Application delivery               : 40%
   Calling other languages            : 60%
   Being called by other languages    : 40%
   Developement environment           : 40%
   GUI                                : 60%
Responses came from the following comp.lang newsgroups:
UNKNOWN    provided  3 of the responses (60%).
PROLOG     provided  1 of the responses (20%).
PYTHON     provided  1 of the responses (20%).
 0% of responses appeared to be from educational domains, while
20% appeared to be from outside the US.
80% currently have a Common Lisp compiler.

Results for SCHEME:
          %programming  %delivering
UNIX            100          100
WINDOWS         40          60
MAC             40          40
AMIGA           20           0
Room for improvement is seen in:
   Standards conformance              :  0%
   Speed                              : 100%
   Size of development environment    : 40%
   Application delivery               : 40%
   Calling other languages            : 60%
   Being called by other languages    : 40%
   Developement environment           : 60%
   GUI                                : 60%
Responses came from the following ...

read more »

I think this may qualify you for "most comprehensive, yet unscientific
study ever". Congradulations! Someone should call Guiness.

--
T.E.D.          


                |  URL  - http://www.iag.net/~dennison         |

 I've never seen a survey quite this skewed towards AI.  Common Lisp
tops C++ and C?  Prolog beating Perl and Python AND Smalltalk?  Right.  
I have yet to meet a second person who uses Prolog daily (the first was
an AI professor a while ago).

 - Chris

"What is CL?  Never heard of it unless this is a consistent typo of TCL"

Common Lisp I presume (now of course if you think that survey was
somehow representative, I have a bridge near by to sell :-)

   I have yet to meet a second person who uses Prolog daily (the first was
   an AI professor a while ago).

That makes me number two, I guess :-)

There are several smallish Prolog vendors, so apparently someone is
using it. The applications one hears about are usually natural language
processing, expert systems and constraint solving programs. There was
a paper about how Prolog was used to query the hordes of databases of
Boeing at ILPS'95 (databases distributed all across the company and so
on, of course).

Anyway, that doesn't mean that guy's survey was very scientific.
Self-selected population to be measured and all that.

                        Thomas
--
Thomas Lindgren, Uppsala University  

http://www.csd.uu.se/~thomasl/        

Copyright Thomas Lindgren, 1996. Distribution on Microsoft Network prohibited.

I have little doubt the situation is similar regarding Perl, Python,
Smalltalk, etc.  If you want to know how much a language is used, you
might want to examine, for example, the number and financial health of the
compiler vendors for that language.  If you are trying to satisfy your
ego, try a biased survey.

--

Motorola, Scottsdale, Arizona
Speaking for myself.

Then meet me, and I'm not an AI professor, but do have 33 years of
professional financial, banking, commercial and industrial computing in
three countries.   And lots of others.    PDC Prolog is my computing
companion.     PDC claims on their www page to have 300,000
installations.   They privately tell me that includes most of the
Fortune 500 (who, psst! seeing its value, claim it as their most potent
secret competitive weapon).

Prolog is very much alive.

Melbourne, Australia.

 Of course I didn't mean that Prolog is a sucky language or that no one
uses it.  All I said was that *I've* only known one person who has used
it.  Clearly that's a survey as biased as the one posted, but, like the
poster of that survey, I never claimed it was globally applicable :-)

 So, whatever language you enjoy, keep enjoying it....  it's not like it
negatively effects my life or anyone else's. :-)

 - Chris