The Popularity of Perl in 2015
A year ago I've published an article called The Popularity of Perl in 2014
It contained a list of sites with their Alexa ranking and a few site with information from their Google Analytics.
This is an updated version of that report for January 2016.
Highlights:
- PerlMonks is now more popular than perl.org.
- PerlMaven is now in the 4th place.
- perl6.org moved up the 9th place
The Popularity of Perl
There are many ways to measure the popularity of a programming language. We are going to look at 3 measurements here:
- Perl Weekly subscribers
- Alexa
- Google Analytics of search.cpan.org, blogs.perl.org, MetaCPAN, and Perl Maven
Perl Weekly
The Perl Weekly website itself does not get a lot of visitors. What is interesting there is the number of subscribers. It grew from 4,156 on 1 January 2013 to 5,103 on 31 December 2013, to 5,645 on 31 December 2014, and to 5,927 on 31 December 2015. It's Google+ page was circled by 4,066 people on 1 January 2014, 4,874 on 1 January 2015, and by 5,045 people on January 2016. (I don't seem to have the number from the beginning og 2013.)
These numbers are, of course, more indicative to the popularity of the Perl Weekly, than that of Perl.
Alexa
The Alexa rankings provide a proximate ranking of web sites. It has big and strange fluctuations, but lacking more exact data, it can be a good indicator for the relative popularity of web sites.
Ordered according to their position on 1 Jan 2016.
Perl
| site | 15 Jan 2013 | 1 Jan 2014 | 1 Jan 2015 | 1 Jan 2016 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| cpan.org | 10,222 | 8,807 | 14,428 | 23,132 |
| perlmonks.org | 21,521 | 21,273 | 26,500 | 25,771 |
| perl.org | 18,634 | 14,772 | 21,893 | 28,302 |
| perlmaven.com | 679,764 | 199,901 | 99,531 | 87,591 |
| metacpan.org | 143,975 | 73,877 | 69,477 | 95,279 |
| munin-monitoring.org | 106,196 | 89,993 | 129,329 | 166,561 |
| twiki.org | 158,640 | 125,646 | 160,519 | 172,169 |
| bugzilla.org | 94,309 | 91,851 | 148,722 | 182,114 |
| perl6.org | 956,529 | 1,597,330 | 970,857 | 231,040 |
| otrs.org | 187,82 | 130,611 | 327,586 | 277,734 |
| perl.com | 189,149 | 200,674 | 271,028 | 301,739 |
| dadamailproject.com | 153,316 | 135,448 | 357,760 | 322,546 |
| perlmeme.org | - | 204,513 | 275,253 | 346,090 |
| site | 15 Jan 2013 | 1 Jan 2014 | 1 Jan 2015 | 1 Jan 2016 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| webgui.org | 420,044 | 669,840 | 542,179 | 507,279 |
| strawberryperl.com | 421,282 | 354,047 | 406,097 | 526,210 |
| foswiki.org | 440,926 | 379,461 | 421,097 | 528,648 |
| perltricks.com | - | 910,000 | 421,194 | 539,408 |
| mojolicio.us | 614,109 | 515,543 | 335,675 | 551,125 |
| perlgeek.de | 1,244,368 | 476,736 | 398,956 | 584,578 |
| template-toolkit.org | 535,891 | 407,008 | 483,630 | 622,442 |
| perl-community.de | 465,767 | 259,690 | 623,151 | 674,163 |
| pm.org | 382,919 | 447,865 | 765,765 | 681,008 |
| perlide.org | 941,509 | 799,919 | 763,733 | 733,524 |
| perlfoundation.org | 403,687 | 820,284 | 895,179 | 868,221 |
| modernperlbooks.com | 646,809 | 552,230 | 1,173,818 | 948,062 |
| www.perlfect.com | - | 351,860 | 427,574 | 992,570 |
| perl-begin.org | 851,904 | 3,236,437 | 1,194,368 | 1,059,210 |
| perldancer.org | 612,468 | 566,055 | 723,862 | 1,207,023 |
| 1,341,985 | 4,497,852 | - | 1,232,354 | |
| cpantesters.org | 553,281 | 265,792 | 344,731 | 1,243,869 |
| catalystframework.org | 679,637 | 447,718 | 563,539 | 1,399,517 |
| dwimperl.com | - | - | 1,759,392 | 2,001,871 |
| perlhacks.com | 4,922,207 | 1,440,058 | 1,640,884 | 2,110,479 |
| perl6maven.com | - | - | 7,301,179 | 4,153,084 |
| perlnews.org | 2,604,882 | 954,340 | 4,221,820 | 4,254,371 |
| perl-tutorial.org | 1,260,631 | 1,814,361 | 4,126,720 | 4,417,830 |
| www.misc-perl-info.com | - | 597,487 | 963,995 | 5,199,525 |
| perlbuzz.com | 1,155,833 | 752,738 | 2,714,571 | 5,803,133 |
Google Analytics
Google Analytics provide a much more accurate measurements of number of visitors and page-views. I have access to the data of several major, and a few smaller Perl-related sites.
Number of pageviews
| Site | December 2013 | December 2014 | Annual change | December 2015 | Annual change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPAN total | 2,183,610 | 1,940,160 | -11.2% | 1,516,152 | -21.9% |
| search.cpan.org | 1,758,977 | 1,363,260 | -22.5% | 1,053,618 | -22.8% |
| metacpan.org | 424,633 | 576,900 | 35.8% | 462,534 | -19.9% |
| perlmaven.com | 116,574 | 250,970 | 115.0% | 302,648 | 20.5% |
| blogs.perl.org | 59,524 | 72,465 | 22.0% | 53,379 | -26.4% |
| strawberryperl.com | 40,606 | 40,547 | 0.0% | 38,931 | -4.0% |
| padre.perlide.org | 27,585 | 27,705 | 0.0% | 27,042 | -2.4% |
| dwimperl.com | 10,942 | 10,221 | -6.6% | 9,400 | -8.1% |
| perldancer.org | 9,916 | 9,172 | 0.0% | 6,847 | -25.4% |
| perl6maven.com | 1,561 | 3,983 | 155.0% | 3,604 | -9.6% |
| advent.perldancer.org | 6,667 | 9,938 | 50.0% | 1,967 | -80.3% |
Number of sessions
| Site | December 2013 | December 2014 | Annual change | December 2015 | Annual change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPAN total | 837,856 | 771,615 | -7.9% | 616,434 | -20.2% |
| search.cpan.org | 700,382 | 597,417 | -14.8% | 472,519 | -21.0% |
| metacpan.org | 137,474 | 174,198 | 27.0% | 143,915 | -17.4% |
| perlmaven.com | 84,810 | 184,000 | 116.0% | 201,418 | 9.4% |
| blogs.perl.org | 44,195 | 52,012 | 18.2% | 39,727 | -23.7% |
| strawberryperl.com | 31,690 | 31,329 | 0.0% | 29,843 | -4.8% |
| padre.perlide.org | 10,333 | 11,360 | 9.7% | 10,119 | -11.0% |
| dwimperl.com | 7,813 | 7,368 | -6.5% | 6,691 | -9.2% |
| perldancer.org | 5,214 | 5,388 | 0.0% | 4,085 | -24.2% |
| perl6maven.com | 846 | 1,445 | 70.0% | 1,608 | 11.2% |
| advent.perldancer.org | 3,568 | 4,421 | 25.7% | 1,257 | -71.6% |
Number of users
| Site | December 2013 | December 2014 | Annual change | December 2015 | Annual change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPAN total | 485,503 | 449,333 | -7.5% | 355,268 | -21.0% |
| search.cpan.org | 403,164 | 357,156 | -11.5% | 277,861 | -22.3% |
| metacpan.org | 82,339 | 92,177 | 12.2% | 77,407 | -16.1% |
| perlmaven.com | 59,728 | 117,082 | 98.3% | 116,869 | -0.2% |
| blogs.perl.org | 31,859 | 36,494 | 14.1% | 27,834 | -23.8% |
| strawberryperl.com | 27,337 | 26,408 | -3.3% | 25,420 | -3.8% |
| padre.perlide.org | 8,531 | 9,559 | 11.7% | 8,162 | -14.7% |
| dwimperl.com | 6,638 | 6,784 | 1.5% | 6,147 | -9.4% |
| perldancer.org | 4,027 | 4,074 | 0.0% | 3,232 | -20.7% |
| perl6maven.com | 680 | 1,169 | 72.0% | 1,149 | -1.8% |
| advent.perldancer.org | 2,138 | 2,180 | 0.0% | 880 | -59.7% |
CPAN total is metacpan.org+search.cpan.org
Data from perl.org and perl.com
See the report from last year.
Data from Stack Overflow
Number of Perl questions by year at StackOverflow
| Year | Number of questions |
| 2012 | 8,394 |
| 2013 | 11,230 |
| 2014 | 10,370 |
| 2015 | 7,794 |