Sorry for the catchy phrase/title.

I find TIOBE a lot of fun, largely because we usually can say that
it's a pretty bad way to measure anything. With per-monthly huge
changes in the "interest" - I mean, these are not really realistic
now are they?

But ... all the criticism aside, I think that TIOBE, plotted over
the longer range, narrowed a bit, +/- 2 percent or so, actually
should be somewhat close to the "real" data, whatever that is.

In this context, probably people being interested in the given
language, and possibly also using that language (primarily, though
of course people can use lots of different languages at the same
time, like combine C and python or C++ and ruby).

Here is the link to TIOBE:

  http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

Snapshot February 2017, just the relevant ones, that is the
"scripting" family of programming languages:

  5     Python     4.043%
  6     PHP        3.072%
  7     JavaScript 2.872%
 10     Perl       2.171%
 11     Ruby       2.153%

There are also some other sites; google rank chart, well, the
trends.

Also not ideal for my search terms, due to some terms being unrelated
to programming, but I think the overall trend may be somewhat
similar:

  https://trends.google.com/trends/explore#q=Ruby%20...

The latter chart also has a somewhat similar trend, with python
gaining the most, PHP losing a little bit, javascript growing
slowly but steadily. Ruby being about constant, and perl losing
a tiny bit - in about the last 6 months or so.

So I think that, from within the "scripting" families, perhaps
we can learn a bit what python does better. I do not know
python reallyso I have no real idea. One difference may be the
docs, python probably has better ones, but I don't think that
this can be the only explanation.

Anyway, there is another reason why I mention the above.

I think that the "scripting" programming languages fill just about
the same niche. Someone else wrote this on his blog some years ago
and I agree. While there are many individual differences, I think
that in the long run, the family of scripting languages up there,
is very, very similar. We can also include lua and R. And actually,
I kind of did that - just summing up the above.

That way we reach about .. 16% or so. Hmmmm.

Can this be a fair and accurate distribution or estimate?

Java alone at TIOBE sits at 16.676% so I think we can assume that
there must be a whole army of Java hackers right?

I mean, 16% is not bad at all. Perhaps we could also count swift
and nim to it, partially, even though they are not quite scripting
languages; but at the least nim has a "scripty" touch and swift
also has a semi-scripty touch. Also crystal - it has a ruby-like
syntax though it is compiled. Elixir too.

But even then... we can reach here... 20% or so?

Are the "scripting" languages so bad or are the compiled languages
just so much more prevalent and dominating?

It would be kind of nice to compare the trend, say, in 3 years and
see whether anything has changed. Or at the least I find it
interesting, no idea if anyone else does find this interesting. :)