January Headline: Python is TIOBE''s programming language of the year 2018!
The Python programming language has won the title "programming language of the year"! Python has received this title because it has gained most ranking points in 2018 if compared to all other languages. The Python language has won 3.62%, followed by Visual Basic .NET and Java. Python has now definitely become part of the big programming languages. For almost 20 years, C, C++ and Java are consistently in the top 3, far ahead of the rest of the pack. Python is joining these 3 languages now. It is the most frequently taught first language at universities nowadays, it is number one in the statistical domain, number one in AI programming, number one in scripting and number one in writing system tests. Besides this, Python is also leading in web programming and scientific computing (just to name some other domains). In summary, Python is everywhere.
Other interesting positive moves of 2018 are MATLAB (#18 to #11), Kotlin (#39 to #31), Rust (#46 to #33), Julia (#47 to #37) and TypeScript (#167 to #49). The following languages had a hard time in 2018: Ruby (#11 to #18), Erlang (#23 to #50), F# (#40 to #64) and Alice (#26 to #66). Let''s do one prediction for 2019: Kotlin will enter the top 20. We see a fast adoption in the industrial mobile app market of this language.
IMPORTANT NOTE. SQL has been added again to the TIOBE index since February 2018. The reason for this is that SQL appears to be Turing complete. As a consequence, there is no recent history for the language and thus it might seem that the SQL language is rising very fast. This is not the case.
The TIOBE Programming Community index is an indicator of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. Popular search engines such asGoogle, Bing, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube and Baidu are used to calculate the ratings.It is important to note that the TIOBE index is not about the best programming language or the languagein which most lines of code have been written.
The index can be used to check whether your programming skills are still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what programming language should be adopted when starting to build a new software system. The definition of the TIOBE index can be found
here.
Jan 2019Jan 2018ChangeProgramming LanguageRatingsChange
11Java16.904%+2.69%
22C13.337%+2.30%
34
Python8.294%+3.62%
43
C++8.158%+2.55%
57
Visual Basic .NET6.459%+3.20%
66JavaScript3.302%-0.16%
75
C#3.284%-0.47%
89
PHP2.680%+0.15%
9-
SQL2.277%+2.28%
1016
Objective-C1.781%-0.08%
1118
MATLAB1.502%-0.15%
128
R1.331%-1.22%
1310
Perl1.225%-1.19%
1415
Assembly language1.196%-0.86%
1512
Swift1.187%-1.19%
1619
Go1.115%-0.45%
1713
Delphi/Object Pascal1.100%-1.28%
1811
Ruby1.097%-1.31%
1920
PL/SQL1.074%-0.35%
2014
Visual Basic1.029%-1.28%
TIOBE Programming Community IndexSource: www.tiobe.com
Other programming languages
The complete top 50 of programming languages is listed below. This overview is published unofficially, because it could be the case that we missed a language. Ifyou have the impression there is a programming language lacking, please notify us at
tpci@tiobe.com. Please also check the
overview of all programming languages that we monitor.
PositionProgramming LanguageRatings
21Groovy1.016%
22SAS0.962%
23Dart0.758%
24Scratch0.665%
25D0.579%
26COBOL0.491%
27ABAP0.478%
28Scala0.466%
29Fortran0.438%
30Lua0.399%
31Kotlin0.379%
32Lisp0.364%
33Rust0.360%
34LabVIEW0.345%
35Transact-SQL0.336%
36Prolog0.325%
37Julia0.296%
38Logo0.292%
39Ada0.283%
40Scheme0.274%
41Haskell0.218%
42Ladder Logic0.214%
43Apex0.195%
44PowerShell0.174%
45Awk0.164%
46PL/I0.154%
47Bash0.153%
48Clojure0.150%
49TypeScript0.149%
50Erlang0.148%
The Next 50 Programming Languages
The following list of languages denotes #51 to #100. Since the differences are relatively small, the programming languages are only listed (in alphabeticalorder).
(Visual) FoxPro, ABC, ActionScript, Alice, AutoLISP, BBC BASIC, bc, Bourne shell, C shell, CL (OS/400), CoffeeScript, Common Lisp, Crystal, cT, Elixir, F#, Forth, Hack, Icon, Inform, Io, J, Korn shell, LiveCode, Maple, Mercury, ML, Modula-2, Monkey, MOO, MQL4, MS-DOS batch, NATURAL, OCaml, Occam, OpenCL, OpenEdge ABL, Oz, PostScript, Q, Ring, RPG, S, Solidity, SPARK, Standard ML, Tcl, Vala/Genie, VBScript, VHDL
This Month''s Changes in the Index
This month the following changes have been made to the definition of the index:
Andrew Vaz suggested to add WebAssembly (also known as wasm) to the TIOBE index. WebAssembly meets all criteria and thus has been added. The language enters the TIOBE index at position 192 in the TIOBE index. Thanks Andrew!
There are lots of mails that still need to be processed. As soon as there is more time available your mail will be answered. Please be patient.
Very Long Term History
To see the bigger picture, please find below the positions of the top 10 programming languages of many years back. Please note that these are average positions for a period of 12 months.
Programming Language2019201420092004199919941989
Java121114--
C2122111
C++3433223
Python475102021-
Visual Basic .NET511-----
C#657830--
PHP7645---
JavaScript888719--
SQL9--6---
Ruby10101022---
Objective-C1134045---
COBOL252015113918
Lisp28131614862
Pascal1991414965314
Programming Language Hall of Fame
The hall of fame listing all "Programming Language of the Year" award winners is shown below. The award is given to the programming language that has the highest rise in ratings in a year.
YearWinner
2018
Python
2017
C
2016
Go
2015
Java
2014
JavaScript
2013
Transact-SQL
2012
Objective-C
2011
Objective-C
2010
Python
2009
Go
2008
C
2007
Python
2006
Ruby
2005
Java
2004
PHP
2003
C++
Bugs & Change Requests
This is the top 5 of most requested changes and bugs. If you have any suggestions how to improve the index don''t hesitate to send an e-mail to
tpci@tiobe.com.
Apart from "<language> programming", also other queries such as "programming with <language>", "<language> development" and "<language> coding" should be tried out.
Add queries for other natural languages (apart from English). The idea is to start with the Chinese search engine Baidu. This has been implemented partially and will be completed the next few months.
Add a list of all search term requests that have been rejected. This is to minimize the number of recurring mails about Rails, JQuery, JSP, etc.
Start a TIOBE index for databases, software configuration management systems and application frameworks.
Some search engines allow to query pages that have been added last year. The TIOBE index should only track those recently added pages.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q: Am I allowed to show the TIOBE index in my weblog/presentation/publication?
A: Yes, the only condition is to refer to its original source "www.tiobe.com".
Q: How may I nominate a new language to be added to the TIOBE index?
A: If a language meets the criteria of being listed (i.e. it is Turing complete and has an own Wikipedia entry that indicates that it concerns a programming language) and it is sufficiently popular (more than 5,000 hits for +"<language> programming" for Google), then please write an e-mail to
tpci@tiobe.com.
Q: I would like to have the complete data set of the TIOBE index. Is this possible?
A: We spent a lot of effort to obtain all the data and keep the TIOBE index up to date. In order to compensate a bit for this, we ask a fee of 5,000 US$ for the complete data set. The data set runs from June 2001 till today. It started with 25 languages back in 2001, and now measures more than 150 languages once a month. The data are available in comma separated format. Please contact
sales@tiobe.com for more information.
Q: Why is the maximum taken to calculate the ranking for a grouping, why not the sum?
A: Well, you can do it either way and both are wrong. If you take the sum, then you get the intersection twice. If you take the max, then you miss the difference. Which one to choose? Suppose somebody comes up with a new search term that is 10% of the original. If you take the max, nothing changes. If you take the sum then the ratings will rise 10%. So taking the sum will be an incentive for some to come up with all kinds of obscure terms for a language. That''s why we decided to take the max.
The proper way to solve this is is of course to take the sum and subtract the intersection. This will give rise to an explosion of extra queries that must be performed. Suppose a language has a grouping of 15 terms, then you have to perform 32,768 queries (all combinations of intersections). So this seems not possible either... If somebody has a solution for this, please let us know.
Q: What happened to Java in April 2004? Did you change your methodology?
A: No, we did not change our methodology at that time. Google changed its methodology. They performed a general sweep action to get rid of all kinds of web sites that had been pushed up. As a consequence, there was a huge drop for languages such as Java and C++. In order to minimize such fluctuations in the future, we added two more search engines (MSN and Yahoo) a few months after this incident.
