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

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 2013December 2014Annual changeDecember 2015Annual 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 2013December 2014Annual changeDecember 2015Annual 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 2013December 2014Annual changeDecember 2015Annual 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

YearNumber of questions
20128,394
201311,230
201410,370
20157,794

Visitors stats of Perl6.org

Perl6.org visitor stats