Book Sales Show C# up and Java down
December 8th, 2005Compared to last year, book sales on C# has increased 16% while Java has dropped 4% according to O'Reilly Radar. That is an interesting piece of trivia.
The analysis also explains that every November there is a dip in sales due to the US holiday (Thanksgiving). Since the Ready Launch for .NET 2.0 happened that month I would guess that C# book sales have increased more than the 16% rate since then.
There is also the factor that much of my most useful reading has come directly from developers at Microsoft maintaining blogs as well as writing useful articles on MSDN. Java also has bloggers and articles, but there is a slight difference between .NET and Java online content. When I dig into articles on ADO.NET or ASP.NET I find articles which apply directly to what I am doing. When I read up on Java for database or web development I have to pick through the content to find something for the exact set of frameworks I am using. So that may lead to Java developers depending more on books instead of online articles since books can go into greater detail in a specific area. Online articles typically target a very specific area instead of a combination of technologies.
December 9th, 2005 at 2:21 pm
So, since there are at least 5 times more Java than C# developers, that means C# will overtake Java as the most popular language by...
Year 2005: Java 100 C# 20
Year 2006: Java 96 C# 23
Year 2007: Java 92 C# 27
Year 2008: Java 88 C# 31
Year 2009: Java 85 C# 36
Year 2010: Java 82 C# 42
Year 2011: Java 78 C# 49
Year 2012: Java 75 C# 56
Year 2013: Java 72 C# 66
Year 2014: Java 69 C# 76
Yay, that is sooo fast!
December 9th, 2005 at 2:40 pm
Mats,
Don't forget that a very large portion of the Microsoft developers are still using VB 6 and Microsoft has put a focus on .NET 2.0 to bring those developers up to VB.NET 2.0.
I also do not understand your numbers. If C# went up 16% and Java went down 4% that is a 20% difference. That gives Java just less than 4 years according to your logic. If you count VB.NET you have even less time. But I doubt Java will go away suddenly, nor would I want it to.
I feel that if the Java community does not properly embrace JSRs, implement them and integrate their use quickly in IDEs like Eclipse and IDEA then the .NET community will continue to attract developers away from Java. The implementations in .NET are supported very well in the tools in the .NET IDE despite a few shortcomings which I find to be frustrating. The Java IDEs still appear to be lacking, especially where Web/JSF support is concerned.
I simply cite these statistics because I believe the renewed competition .NET 2.0 presents will cause the Java community to better evaluate what is working and where they should focus their efforts.
December 13th, 2005 at 9:25 pm
Book sales figures are not necessarily good indication of the popularity of the language as there are many different ways of obtaining the necessary knowledge, at least with Java. From my own experience, I used to buy Java books a lot when I first learnt Java. Now I can obtain better Java knowledge easily and costless from various open source resources and articles. So why bother buying those 'unleashed' or 'bible' books? My interpretation is, the Java community has easier access to various open source and learning resources resulting in less dependency on books.
December 16th, 2005 at 2:59 am
I agree with Clifford. Up until about 4 years ago, I bought lots of Java books, but I hardly buy any these days. When I go to a bookstore and snoop through the Java books, I just don't find many with much compelling new information. My old books provide the basic foundation, and I look to the web to get the latest Java info. It's especially bad with Swing - most of the new Swing books simply seem to be updated editions of old Swing books.
December 16th, 2005 at 9:47 am
I think book sales can only indicate actitivity among developers new to Java. I have only purchased one Java book this past year, and that was so I could better understand Tomcat 5 which has many new features I hope to leverage.