Popularity of Languages

Popularity of Languages

Guido van Rossum

Over the years, hundreds of computer and programming languages have been created. Anyone can create a programming language. Python, now a hugely popular language was created by Guido van Rossum (picture left) in 1989 as a hobby to keep him busy over Christmas.

Sometimes new languages are created to provide perceived or actual improvements over an older, existing language. Sometimes new languages are created by one company to complete with another company. Sometimes new languages are created to be an open-source alternative to a propriety, vendor owned/specific language. Sometimes new languages many be created to provide something inherently new to programming and software development.

As new languages are created and introduced, some gain popularity. Others, over time, lose popularity as newer languages are more heavily adopted. Some languages, such as Cobol, may not be popular for new developers, but are still heavily used in existing systems. A December 5, 2015 Mashable article indicated: "'Some 23 of the world's top 25 retailers, 92 of the top 100 banks, and the 10 largest insurers all entrust core operations to Cobol programs running on IBM mainframes,' says Deon Newman, vice president, IBM."

Calculating the popularity of programming languages is not easily done. The Tiobe Programming Index is a web site that ranks them based on such factors as number if programmers using it, courses offered in it, and search engine results.

December 2018 Tiobe Results

  1. Java
  2. C
  3. Python
  4. C++
  5. Visual Basic.NET
  6. C#
  7. JavaScript
  8. PHP
  9. SQL
  10. Objective-C
  11. Delphi/Object Pascal
  12. Assembly
  13. MATLAB
  14. Swift
  15. Go
  16. R
  17. Ruby
  18. Perl
  19. Visual Basic
  20. PL/SQL
  21. Groovy
  22. SAS
  23. Dart
  24. COBOL
  25. D
  26. Scratch
  27. Fortran
  28. ABAP
  29. Scala
  30. Lua
  31. Prolog
  32. Lisp
  33. Ada
  34. Rust

September 2018 Tiobe Results

  1. Java
  2. C
  3. Python
  4. C++
  5. Visual Basic.NET
  6. C#
  7. JavaScript
  8. PHP
  9. SQL
  10. Objective-C
  11. Delphi/Object Pascal
  12. Assembly
  13. MATLAB
  14. Swift
  15. Go
  16. R
  17. Ruby
  18. Perl
  19. Visual Basic
  20. PL/SQL
  21. Groovy
  22. SAS
  23. Dart
  24. Cobol
  25. D
  26. Scratch
  27. Fortran
  28. ABAP
  29. Scala
  30. Lua
  31. Prolog
  32. Lisp
  33. Ada
  34. Rust

August 2018 Tiobe Results

  1. Java
  2. C
  3. C++
  4. Python
  5. Visual Basic.NET
  6. C#
  7. PHP
  8. JavaScript
  9. SQL (added to list)

February 2018 Tiobe Results

  1. Java
  2. C
  3. C++
  4. Python
  5. C#
  6. Visual Basic.NET
  7. PHP
  8. JavaScript
  9. Delphi/Object Pascal
  10. Ruby
  11. SQL
  12. Visual Basic
  13. PL/SQL
  14. Assembly
  15. Swift
  16. Perl
  17. Go
  18. MATLAB
  19. Objective-C

June 2015 Tiobe Results

  1. Java
  2. C
  3. C++
  4. C#
  5. Objective-C
  6. Python
  7. Visual Basic.NET
  8. PHP
  9. JavaScript
  10. Delphi Objective Pascal