The TIOBE Programming Community index gives an indication 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. The popular search engines Google, MSN, Yahoo!, and YouTube are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that the TIOBE index is not about the best programming language or the language in 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.
Position Mar 2009 |
Position Mar 2008 |
Delta in Position | Programming Language | Ratings Mar 2009 |
Delta Mar 2008 |
Status |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 1 | Java | 19.797% | -1.69% | A | |
2 | 2 | C | 15.862% | +1.00% | A | |
3 | 5 | C++ | 10.357% | +1.08% | A | |
4 | 4 | PHP | 9.485% | -0.41% | A | |
5 | 3 | (Visual) Basic | 8.285% | -3.32% | A | |
6 | 7 | Python | 5.185% | +0.42% | A | |
7 | 8 | C# | 4.321% | -0.19% | A | |
8 | 10 | Javascript | 3.607% | +1.27% | A | |
9 | 6 | Perl | 3.419% | -2.79% | A | |
10 | 9 | Delphi | 2.710% | -0.09% | A | |
11 | 11 | Ruby | 2.601% | +0.74% | A | |
12 | 12 | D | 1.809% | +0.62% | A | |
13 | 13 | PL/SQL | 1.042% | +0.06% | A | |
14 | 22 | Logo | 0.964% | +0.65% | A- | |
15 | 14 | SAS | 0.796% | -0.15% | A | |
16 | 17 | Pascal | 0.733% | +0.29% | A-- | |
17 | 29 | ABAP | 0.638% | +0.49% | B | |
18 | 26 | RPG (OS/400) | 0.585% | +0.41% | B | |
19 | 21 | ActionScript | 0.481% | +0.17% | B | |
20 | 18 | Lua | 0.480% | +0.09% | B |
The long term trends for the top 10 programming languages can be found in the line diagram below.
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. If you have the impression there is a programming language lacking, please notify us at tpci@tiobe.com.
Position | Programming Language | Ratings |
---|---|---|
21 | COBOL | 0.464% |
22 | MATLAB | 0.458% |
23 | Lisp/Scheme | 0.452% |
24 | Falcon | 0.434% |
25 | FoxPro/xBase | 0.417% |
26 | Ada | 0.336% |
27 | Fortran | 0.323% |
28 | LabVIEW | 0.233% |
29 | PowerShell | 0.227% |
30 | Prolog | 0.213% |
31 | Erlang | 0.194% |
32 | Objective-C | 0.177% |
33 | Scratch | 0.174% |
34 | Haskell | 0.167% |
35 | Scala | 0.165% |
36 | Transact-SQL | 0.165% |
37 | ML | 0.159% |
38 | Alice | 0.150% |
39 | Awk | 0.148% |
40 | NXT-G | 0.148% |
41 | Focus | 0.143% |
42 | Groovy | 0.134% |
43 | Euphoria | 0.129% |
44 | Smalltalk | 0.128% |
45 | Progress | 0.123% |
46 | Bourne shell | 0.121% |
47 | CL (OS/400) | 0.108% |
48 | Tcl/Tk | 0.108% |
49 | Forth | 0.106% |
50 | Q | 0.104% |
The following list of languages denotes #51 to #100. Since the differences are relatively small, the programming languages are only listed (in alphabetical order).
Position Mar 2009 |
Position Mar 2004 |
Delta in Position | Programming Language | Ratings Mar 2009 |
Delta Mar 2004 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 1 | Java | 19.797% | -3.38% | |
2 | 2 | C | 15.862% | -3.07% | |
3 | 3 | C++ | 10.357% | -4.14% | |
4 | 6 | PHP | 9.485% | +1.85% | |
5 | 5 | (Visual) Basic | 8.285% | -0.07% | |
6 | 9 | Python | 5.185% | +4.17% | |
7 | 7 | C# | 4.321% | +2.08% | |
8 | 8 | Javascript | 3.607% | +1.54% | |
9 | 4 | Perl | 3.419% | -6.97% | |
10 | 10 | Delphi | 2.710% | +1.92% | |
11 | 24 | Ruby | 2.601% | +2.44% |
Year | Winner |
---|---|
2008 | C |
2007 | Python |
2006 | Ruby |
2005 | Java |
2004 | PHP |
2003 | C++ |
Category | Ratings March 2009 | Delta March 2008 |
---|---|---|
Object-Oriented Languages | 55.9% | +1.2% |
Procedural Languages | 39.7% | -2.9% |
Functional Languages | 3.3% | +1.5% |
Logical Languages | 1.1% | +0.1% |
Category | Ratings March 2009 | Delta March 2008 |
---|---|---|
Statically Typed Languages | 59.2% | +2.2% |
Dynamically Typed Languages | 40.8% | -2.2% |