scripting language vs. developer community size

[Dan Kegel]

Ariel Rios wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 14 Jan 2001, Dan Kegel wrote:
> 
> > I'm sure this has been discussed a zillion times but I'd like to bring it up again:
> >
> > Requiring that all high-level Gnucash code be in Scheme might be
> > restricting the number of developers able to contribute to it.
> Why?

Because there are very few people who know how to program in Scheme
compared to the number of people who know how to program in C, C++, Java, or Perl.

> > Here's a few quotes from the web in support of that theory
> > (found by searching for "scheme learning curve"):
> I don't see why quoting some web posts can be a good reason.

Fair enough.  Would it be more convincing to estimate the number of 
programmers using various languages by counting job listings for each language?

Searching on 'monster.com' ( a jobs database ) for 'scheme' in category
"computers: software" yields 46 hits, but these all seemed to be false
hits; none I looked at were related to the programming language Scheme.

Searching there in the same category for "java" yields over 1000 hits,
all of which appear to be valid.
The same goes for C and for Perl - Monster shows more than 1000 hits for each.

There appear to be far more jobs available for Java, C++, and Perl programmers than 
for Scheme programmers, and it seems reasonable to conclude that
Scheme programmers are a tiny minority among the programming community.
QED.

- Dan