Re: Number of postings to comp.lang.* newsgroups.

[Tore Lund <tl001@sn.no>]

Dan Stubbs wrote:
> 
> The following is the number of postings (for all time) to the "top
> twenty" groups in comp.lang.*. I don't believe there is any special
> significance to this list, but believe it is as interesting as most
> "top n" lists.
> 
> +------+-------+-----------------------------+
> | rank | #posts| language in comp.lang.*     |
> +------+-------+-----------------------------+
>     1.  133,135   comp.lang.c++
>     2.  125,582   comp.lang.basic.visual.misc
>     3.  105,277   comp.lang.c
>     4.   73,312   comp.lang.pascal.delphi.misc
>     5.   53,962   comp.lang.perl.misc
>     6.   37,853   comp.lang.tcl
>     7.   32,553   comp.lang.asm.x86
>     8.   31,080   comp.lang.ada
>     9.   31,055   comp.lang.pascal.delphi.atabases
>    10.   30,505   comp.lang.basic.visual.databae
>  +-----+--------+-----------------------------+
>    11.   29,540   comp.lang.smlltalk
>    12.   28,053   comp.lang.pascal.borland
>    13.   25,400   comp.lang.basic.misc
>    14.   24,925   comp.lang.clipper
>    15.   22,224   comp.lang.fortran
>    16.   20,590   comp.lang.javascript
>    17.  19,770   comp.lang.java.programmer
>    18.   18,968   comp.lang.postscript
>    19.   18,089   comp.lang.basic.visual.3rdparty
>    20.   14,074   comp.lang.cobol
>  +-----+--------+-----------------------------+

Pardon the expression, Dan, but this "Top Twenty" is nutty in the
extreme. Some groups have existed for years, while others are brand new,
so this list tells us next to nothing about present turnover for the
different groups.

Moreover, if the popularity of different languages or topics is to be
measured, one ought to group together all the Java-groups and all the
Basic-groups, and one should probably do the same for a host of other
languages. Comp.lang.asm.x86 should clearly be grouped with
alt.lang.asm, since both groups mostly deal with 80x86 programming.

Admittedly, the question of grouping is rather thorny, since e.g. much C
programming is discussed in comp.os.ms-windows.* and other places. But
some attempt at grouping should still be made.

We know that you mean it well and that you yourself may not be
responsible for the "Top Twenty". But whoever made it would be able to
make a far more interesting statistic by submitting it to some
elementary arithmetic beforehand.
-- 
Tore Lund <tl001@sn.no>