How to find out which is the most widely used programming tool for a given purpose?

Question

When considering tools I always try to go mainstream. In the case of Linux distributions there is DistroWatch.com

What about popularity of revision control systems: mercurial vs git vs ...?
Or even build systems: make vs Ant vs Jam vs SCons vs ...

How do you choose your tools when they have very similar functionality?

Answer 1

Compare the features and choose the product that best matches your requirements.

Wikipedia has extensive objective comparison of many software tools.

Answer 2

Well, you should do what you feel like, but choosing a tool based on popularity alone doesn't make sense.

Of course its good to have a well rounded tool, for support/community and sample availability gotchas know-how help/exposure if nothing else.

But in the end of the day, the one rule you should follow to choose a tool should be:

Does it do what I want to? (Meaning, first find out what it is you are trying to do)

Closely followed by: How easy is it for me to:

1. Do it
2. Deliver it
3. Support it
4. Maintain it

Check out "Dead Languages" reply here, it applies to your question in regards to programming languages and popularity

Answer 3

Time is always better spent learning a bit about a given tool than trying to decide which tool to use.

Knowing some sub-par tool very very well usually trumps barely knowing the best tool.

In a nutshell: spent as little time as possible deciding and as much time as possible learning.

My usual procedure: google -> wikipedia -> hacker news, stack overflow, friends. No more than an hour or two. Pick tool and dive in.

Answer 4

The answer changed a bit during edits..

For popularity ratings you can go to open source search engines and repositories and check out the submissions and activity rates per language: example is github

google trends helps me find how trendy something is .. inside and out of the programming world

Answer 5

I check what tools are available and what tools fulfill my requirement. Secondly which tool is easy and have wide community support.

Sometimes I evaluate tool myself to see which is good for my project.

Answer 6

Go to amazon.com and search for books about that technology. If there are less than 3 good books, it's probably too new. Also try a google search and see if there is a good size user community (people blogging about it, forums besides the one on the technology's home page, third party commercial support even if you will not be using it, etc.)

Answer 7

If find a technology (e.g. Git) and want to see what its rivals/alternatives are, I'll go into my Google search box (with Google Suggest turned on), and type in "[technology name] vs". Then Google suggest will give me alternatives. For example, if I search "git vs", I get:

git vs svn
git vs mercurial
git vs bazaar
git vs hg
git vs perforce

This doesn't help me decide, but it at least lets me discover alternatives.

There is a neat Yahoo research web app that does exactly what you want, but it's not heavily used:

http://versus.bix.yahoo.com/

Answer 8

Debian has popcon which can give a rough idea of what's hot and what's not. I pick my tools based on things I have read/heard and trying them out myself.

Answer 9

I find tool popularity I finished with a combination of the following:

• Google the competing tool names and check number of hits, possibly with some additional context to avoid unfair comparison: "make build tool" vs "scons build tool".
• Use Alexa to find out popularity of tool's homepage.
• Check out the Wikipedia.
• Check the existence of the books on the topic.