True, but ordinal position doesn't matter as much as absolute value, which tends to fall off according to a power-law distribution. For example, Python (#7) is tagged barely half as often. C (#18) is a third of that. Topic-based (instead of language-based) tags fare even worse. "Filesystems" has been used only 6K times, "storage" less than 4K. As someone interested in those areas, there's just not going to be much content for me - few answers to my own questions, even fewer opportunities to answer others'. When the density of interesting content falls below a decent threshold, my interest doesn't continue to decline linearly. It simply drops to zero. I suspect that's true for a lot of people working outside of the web/app/mobile space. SO is just not seen as a forum for them. It's a forum for a particular (common) kind of programmer, and everyone else feels like a bystander or gatecrasher.