I think it must be stressed that the numbers represent popularity of use and availability of information on it on the web and nothing else. It can be misleading also, for instance all flavors of basic are grouped together:


Some languages are grouped together because they are very similar to each other. An example is the language entry Basic which covers Visual Basic, QBasic, Microsoft Basic, VB.NET, etc. The ratings for such a collection of languages is calculated by taking the maximum of all individual entries. Another example of a group of dialects is Delphi, Kylix and Pascal. Assembly languages are not grouped in the index because they differ so much from each other in our opinion that they are treated separately.


I think it is useful only for knowing how many references to a given language are out there, but not really for anything else. Look at Ada as an example, the number of government programs written in Ada cannot be computed there are so many. It is highly reliable and many sensitive systems use it. yet is considered a 'B' language and the webpage recommends that only 'A' languages be used for industrial, mission-critical software systems. Someone forgot to tell the government...

Still, it is helpful information to know where in the web world 'VFP' stands comparatively speaking. In addition, if I were just graduating with a degree and looking for the market in programming, it would sure point me in a certain direction!


>>This url rates computer languages:
>>http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index/index.htm
>>
>>VFP is on the list (that is good) but it is way down there (that is bad).
>>Has anyone ever seen this type of rating before? Any comments will be appreciated.
>
>Clipper is basically the same as VFP, according to that survey. So, how good is the survey?
>
>It also lists languages that are used in radically different domains, like Forth. It's like comparing apples to automobiles.