Every since I started investigating the popularity of programming languages by looking at their usage on Github and StackOverflow I have wanted to improve on the original scatter-plot.

A couple month ago I experimented with a slope-graph, and did some basic cluster analysis to determine popularity tiers from the language. I liked the tiers, but the visualization seemed to muddle things more than enhance them. I actually really like the simplicity of the original scatter-plot, but I wished I could get more information on the trends in languages from the chart.

I have been toying with this for a few weeks, and am finally ready to add this project to The Lab. This new visualization is much closer in content to the original, but in this new version you can explore interactively. Along with being able to see more clearly where languages are in the chart, it also shows individual trends among the languages. Of course, I have only been collecting data for a few weeks, so there are not many distinct trends yet.

Screen Shot 2013-04-29 at 10.27.22 AM.png

The chart updates weekly, and if people are interested in the data for their own experimentation just ping me and I can get it to you. Also, I am always open to suggestions on how to make these kinds of visualizations clearer, so if you have ideas let me know.