This is part of a series intended to create a comprehensive Programming Language Popularity Score.

See: What is Language Popularity & OdinJobs Popularity Decision Variables to know more about our intent and methodology.

We will analyze the popularity of Php, Perl, Python and Ruby's in the corporate world.

If you want to learn a new language, and your intent is to make a living out of it, then you definitely  need to know what is popular in the corporate world and what will increase your job prospects.

Corporate Popularity (Programming Language Popularity Variables revisited):

Jobs advertised is a good indicator of how many companies use a particular language. I have seen some comparison of jobs advertised but all of them tend to be a snapshot from one source. There are two problems, one "snapshot" and two "one source".

What if companies using Perl advertise more in November than companies that use Ruby and you got your snapshot in November.
What if companies using Perl advertise heavily in source A than companies that use ruby

These what ifs are eliminated from the analysis, if we use an average posting over a longer period of time, and if we use jobs from multiple sources. OdinJobs is an unique position to provide us with this. OdinJobs – the IT job search engine collects jobs from all the sources and has the largest collection of IT jobs (shameless plug).

Check out Perl Jobs, Php Jobs, Python Jobs, Ruby Jobs to get an idea of the sources that OdinJobs indexes.

OdinJobs provides us an average job posting for the last 12 months from multiple sources including corporate websites, job boards and blogs.

    Perl, Php, Python and Ruby - Comparing Job Trends 

                                    

                                     

Jobs that require Perl average 11,000 a month, 3 times more than Php. Ruby averages 980 jobs a month.

Table: Avg Monthly Job Posting
   

	Avg. Monthly Job Postings
Perl	11,000
PHP	3,300
Python	2,250
Ruby	980

Comparing Perl, Php, Python and Ruby Jobs in Fortune 1000 Companies

 

                  
                                    

                                    

Jobs in Fortune 1000 companies roughly follow the same ratio as the general population. 

Our Verdict: 

In the Corporate Popularity Category, the Winner is: PERL.

PHP and Python are second and third but their demand is fairly close to each other.

Ruby needs some catching up to do in the corporate world.

My 3 cents: Perl has been around for a longer time than the others. It is well entrenched in the Unix environment, so, I was not surprised to see the demand for Perl outstripping PHP by a factor of three. Personally, I was surprised to see the demand for Python so close to PHP.

This is just one category in our comprehensive Programming Language Popularity Score. My next post will look at Talent Availability. 

This is part of the "What Makes a Programming Language Popular" series where we compare Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby. See

• Whats More Popular in the Corporate World
• Who Earns More
• How Many Developers Are There
• Support Resources Comparison
• Open Source Projects Comparison
• Book Sales to Predict Adoption & Retention
• Perl Jobs Python Jobs Ruby Jobs PHP Jobs 

 

 

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