Just today I read Sergio Pereira's post about the TIOBE index, which "gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages"

Its more like a shock really, to see how one's perception can often be so off base.  The gaps between #1 (Java), #2 (C) and C# at #8 is much broader than I would have ever guessed.  Although C# use (my current language of choice) is historically shown to be on the rise, the gap is still nonetheless surprising to observe and digest.

I am not that interested in analyzing this data, but I thought it would be worth to share the shock I felt when I saw the graph.