popularity

Before XML became a standard and given all its shortcomings, what made XML so popular?

Yes XML is human readable but so is comma delimited text and properties files. XML is bloated, hard to parse, hard to modify in code, plus a ton of other problems that I can think about with it. My questions is what are XML's most attractive qualities that has made it so popular???? ...

Why does everyone like jQuery more than prototype/script.aculo.us or MooTools or whatever?

It seems that jQuery has taken the throne for JavaScript frameworks and I was wondering exactly why. Is there a technical reason for this or is it just that they have evangelists? I have been really happy with using Prototype myself. Should I use jQuery for my next project? ...

How does a website build popularity?

So, my question is how do people get the word out that their website or blog exists? Do blogger invest in ads? Is is just through word of mouth? Or searching Google? I'm just curious how does a website build it's popularity. Do you just put your website up on the web and hope people find it? I know you can make your site SEO friendly, cr...

Why isn't PostgreSQL as widespread as MySQL?

I'm currently developing a pretty big project, and I'm considering open source databases to use. One of the main factors I consider is support, and it seems like there is not much support/community for PostgreSQL compared to MySQL, even though MySQL seems like a much less fully featured product than PostgreSQL. Should this fact shape m...

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

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? ...

Is the SO tag ordering a good representation of programming language popularity?

Is the SO tag ordering a good representation of programming language popularity? My first guess would be that it's not and that it's largely populated by fans of Jeff (who would probably be .Net biased) and fans of Joel (who may be more C/C++ biased among others). Is there a way to get unbiased programming language popularity stats? ...

Language Popularity for Greenfield?

Are there any good metrics of which programming languages are most popular for greenfield development, i.e. development that is not significantly constrained by legacy code? IMHO this is the most meaningful definition of popularity, since it tells you what people are choosing when their choices are relatively unconstrained by choices ma...

Why LDAP is not popular ?

We start to use LDAP and I wonder why LDAP is not that popular? I read that it has faster reads than database, however slower writes. EDIT: Its the first time i use LDAP and i have been programming in enterprise for sometime now. That is the reason why i thought its not popular, plus i never heard about it at school. ...

What is the most popular web programming language?

I have seen various statistics on language popularity based on search engine results, number of books published, open source projects developed, etc. but none of them is specific for web development (on the server side). Almost all of them shows Java, C and C++ as the most popular. I wonder how PHP, which was created explicitly for web d...

Implementing a visitor counter

I am a newbie and developing a website using ASP .Net 2.0 with C# 2005. I would like to add a facility to count the no. of visitors to my website. I have collected the basic informations to add this feature using Global.asax. I have made modifications to Web.config by adding the line "" under system.web section. I am using a table to k...

Why does Scala have very little enthusiasm about it?

I've noticed over time that Clojure users have nothing but massive enthusiasm for the language. Yet it seems most Scala users don't even really care too much for the language. A few people have told me "It's better than having to use Java.". I'm not sure why Clojure has so much enthusiasm about it yet Scala has hardly any. It ruins any m...

Are there any popularity / usage statistics available for the Free RCS/SCM/VCS systems?

Are there any surveys anywhere which report on number of projects and/or people using the assorted Free version control systems? Also interesting is if a similar survey was one over time, to see how things have changed. Obviously, it's hard to measure this sort of thing completely accurately, but it should still be possible to get reas...

Whats the most popular Linux distro for a USB flash drive?

I want to put Linux on a USB flash drive in order to run some extension to Pure Data that aren't support for Windows. Is there a particular distro that everyone is using for Linux on a flash drive? ...

Most useful jQuery plugins

Which are the most useful jQuery plugins you have used. List out one per answer(to rank the best plugins individually), and describe what it does as well. BlockUI - Can block certain elements (or the whole page) during ajax requests. Form Plugin JQueryUI JQuery Validation TableSorter Taconite ...

What are the popular, contemporary uses for Perl?

What are the popular, contemporary uses for Perl? Edit I should have been more specific. I was wondering more on the large scale (popular) what people are using Perl for rather than what it could be used for on the individual level. ...

Popularity Algorithm

Hi, I'm making a digg-like website that is going to have a homepage with different categories. I want to display the most popular submissions. Our rating system is simply "likes", like "I like this" and whatnot. We basically want to display the submissions with the highest number of "likes" per time. We want to have three categories: ...

Why is SCTP not much used/known

I recently checked out the book "UNIX Network Programming, Vol. 1" by Richards Stevens and I found that there is a third transport layer standard besides TCP and UDP: SCTP. Summary: SCTP is a transport-level protocal that is is message driven like UDP, but reliable like TCP. Here is a short introduction from IBM DeveloperWorks. Honest...

How can I get the most popular words in a table via mysql?

I've got a table with a BLOB collum. What I want to do is get it to be able to pick out words and list them in order. For example if it contained: Bob Smith likes cheese but loves reading Charlie likes chocolate milk Charl loves manga but also likes cookies Then I would get likes loves as a result... is this possible and if so h...

What is the status of ColdFusion today?

This may seem like flamebait, but I can assure you it is not intended to be. Having spent the last 10 years in the web business, I had heard of ColdFusion, but hadn't personally witnessed anyone using it, especially in recent years. My impression was that its heyday had passed. Recently I started doing business with a company that was...

How do you measure the popularity of a programming language?

Hi, Following on from this question, I am interested in finding out how you could measure the popularity of any and all programming languages. As professional developers, we need to be aware of the trends in the software industry - what languages will employers be looking for in the coming few years, and we should be proficient in. Al...