Have 43 Things?
43things.com is a social networking, web 2.0 site that allows you to create lists of your goals in life and share it with the rest of the world. Why you’d want to do that is up to you, but this kind of application allows one to observe some interesting derivative things and behavior. For one, you can compare roughly how much more popular some goals are compared to others.
For example, I see in my list that there are close to 1,000 other users who would like to learn mandarin as I would, but only seven others would like to learn nihonggo. One may make a case from this about which goal is more worthwhile than the other but I suspect this won’t be more rewarding than a parlor game. But what’s wrong with a parlor game? It’s fun, simple, and, well, it’s just a parlor game! So I did a bit of playing around and listed among my goals: learn Java, learn C#, learn Ruby on Rails, learn .NET*, learn PHP, and learn Groovy. I hit save on each of these, and went to my “six things.”
The numbers:
- Learn Java - 617
- Learn Ruby on Rails - 1,284
- Learn PHP - 1,380
- Learn .NET - 118
- Learn Groovy - 8
- Learn C# - 537
Again, I’d like to say that I’m treating this (and you should too!) like a parlor game and nothing more. Not because I’m a scaredy-cat (even though I am) and I’m afraid of getting flamed (this too), but because really, there’s nothing to flame about. This is hardly scientific and serves no direct technical benefit of one way or other. Also, note that these results signify desire rather than accomplishment.
That being said, there’s no reason we can’t have some fun, yes? *wink wink*
From the results above we can see that RoR and PHP are roughly at the same level, getting about 1,300 “aspirants.” Next is Java and C# with about 600, then lagging far behind are .NET and Groovy, with about a hundred, and less than ten, aspirants, respectively. Interestingly, there are about half as many 43things.com users wanting to learn Java as RoR or PHP — and given that Java is like, old (a teenager really — nearly thirteen — but that’s old for programming languages), that’s quite fascinating. Conversely, with .NET and C# about half as old as Java, it’s already got fewer aspirants**.
On the subject of age — the results show us that PHP is quite hot! It’s just about as old as Java, but its numbers are even slightly ahead that of the new kid on the block, RoR. A lot of the reason for this may lie in the fact that PHP is one of the most, if not the most, popular module in the most popular web server, the Apache web server.
So there’s our parlor game. Head on over to 43things.com and try out its features and see if you can come with your own parlor game. *wink wink*
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* Yes, .NET is a framework, not a language.
** On 43things.com only
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