Ruby and Python
Tim O’Reilly writes that sales for Ruby books have increased a mind-blowing 1552% over the last 2 years while Python managed an jump of around 20% in the same period. What’s particularly significant is that the big spike in the sales graph for Ruby occurred slightly after the time Ruby on Rails hit the mainstream. Tim postulates that RoR has been the primary driving force behind the meteoric rise of Ruby among developers/geeks and I fully agree with him.
I think part of the reason for the mass adoption as put across by a comment, rightfully pointed out the influence Martin Fowler, Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas have on the general programmer populace. Not to take anything away from either Ruby or RoR, the mindshare that these 3 Agile Leaders command is quite considerable. After all, I was intrigued enough by Fowler’s lovenotes for Ruby to check it out.