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Update: Just found this nice dynamic chart created by @casron.

There’s a trending topic for programmers on Twitter right now: #Code2009. The idea is that you tweet and list all of the languages and environments that you’ve worked in this year. Seems like a great, simple way to quickly reflect on your past year and plan for next year. (I also like @rjurney’s suggestion to review your Amazon purchases.)

But with all those people participating in the #code2009 fun, I quickly got the urge to analyze the data. I couldn’t find a quick way to throw a tag cloud together for a given twitter search, but I did find the Search Cloudlet Firefox plugin that did the trick. Here’s the results as of a few moments ago:

Shows up pretty much as expected, I guess! Javascript, of course, has become The World’s Most Popular Programming Language, according to Douglas Crockford. Ruby and Python continue to suck all the oxygen out of the room in terms of what the Cool Kids are using. SQL only makes sense, as most databases are still RDBMS, much to the chagrin of the NoSQL movement (of which I’m rapidly becoming affiliated.) Java’s got a strong showing, but where’s .NET and their “enteprisey” ilk? I guess their offices block Twitter traffic ::snicker::

This was just a quick-n-dirty exercise for fun, of course. I wouldn’t read too much into it, and I really wish the tag cloud would go much deeper as there are clearly many, many more languages that are being tweeted but not represented here. Still, it is interesting how social media is putting more data and potential metrics at our fingertips.

And this whole exercise begs the obvious question: What will your #Code2010 tweet look like a year from now?