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Despite the fact that Objective-C only gained 0.08% last month, it has entered the top 10 for the first time. This is quite an achievement, especially if one bears in mind that only 13 different programming languages had a top 10 score since the start of the TIOBE index in June 2001. The main (and probably only) reason for Objective-C's popularity is that it is the only language in which you can write applications for the iPhone or iPad. From a programming language point of view, Objective-C (born in 1986) offers no new interesting features. 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!, Wikipedia 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.
Long term trendsThe long term trends for the top 10 programming languages can be found in the line diagram below. |
| Position | Programming Language | Ratings |
|---|---|---|
| 21 | Transact-SQL | 0.489% |
| 22 | ActionScript | 0.485% |
| 23 | Ada | 0.432% |
| 24 | COBOL | 0.431% |
| 25 | RPG (OS/400) | 0.415% |
| 26 | Bourne shell | 0.415% |
| 27 | Fortran | 0.415% |
| 28 | D | 0.397% |
| 29 | JavaFX Script | 0.395% |
| 30 | Logo | 0.386% |
| 31 | Haskell | 0.384% |
| 32 | S-lang | 0.374% |
| 33 | Tcl/Tk | 0.349% |
| 34 | NXT-G | 0.347% |
| 35 | FoxPro/xBase | 0.339% |
| 36 | Scratch | 0.339% |
| 37 | Alice | 0.331% |
| 38 | Forth | 0.307% |
| 39 | PowerShell | 0.303% |
| 40 | LabVIEW | 0.294% |
| 41 | Groovy | 0.280% |
| 42 | Prolog | 0.269% |
| 43 | Caml/F# | 0.253% |
| 44 | CL (OS/400) | 0.246% |
| 45 | Scala | 0.240% |
| 46 | Erlang | 0.233% |
| 47 | Smalltalk | 0.230% |
| 48 | ML | 0.229% |
| 49 | C shell | 0.224% |
| 50 | J | 0.223% |
The following list of languages denotes #51 to #100. Since the differences are relatively small, the programming languages are only listed (in alphabetical order).
ABC, Algol, APL, Applescript, Awk, Beta, cg, Clean, cT, Dylan, Eiffel, Euphoria, Factor, Falcon, Focus, Heron, Icon, IDL, Inform, Informix-4GL, Io, LabWindows/CVI, Lingo, LotusScript, LPC, MAD, Maple, Mathematica, MAX/MSP, Modula-2, Modula-3, MS-DOS batch, MUMPS, Natural, Occam, Oz, PL/I, Postscript, Progress, Q, R, Revolution, REXX, Sed, Seed7, SIGNAL, SPSS, VBScript, VHDL, XSLT
To see the bigger picture, please find the positions of the top 10
programming languages from 4, 10 and 25 years ago in the table below.
| Programming Language | Position May 2010 | Position May 2006 | Position May 2000 | Position May 1985 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Java | 2 | 1 | 5 | - |
| C++ | 3 | 3 | 2 | 10 |
| PHP | 4 | 4 | 31 | - |
| (Visual) Basic | 5 | 5 | 3 | 4 |
| C# | 6 | 7 | 21 | - |
| Python | 7 | 8 | 20 | - |
| Perl | 8 | 6 | 6 | - |
| Delphi | 9 | 10 | 11 | - |
| Objective-C | 10 | 45 | - | - |
The hall of fame listing all "Programming Language of the Year" award
winners is shown below.
| Year | Winner |
|---|---|
| 2009 | Go |
| 2008 | C |
| 2007 | Python |
| 2006 | Ruby |
| 2005 | Java |
| 2004 | PHP |
| 2003 | C++ |
| Category | Ratings May 2010 | Delta May 2009 |
|---|---|---|
| Object-Oriented Languages | 54.6% | -1.1% |
| Procedural Languages | 40.7% | +0.3% |
| Functional Languages | 3.2% | +0.4% |
| Logical Languages | 1.6% | +0.4% |
| Category | Ratings May 2010 | Delta May 2009 |
|---|---|---|
| Statically Typed Languages | 62.7% | +4.5% |
| Dynamically Typed Languages | 37.3% | -4.5% |
This month the following changes have been made to the definition of the index:
So far JavaFX Script was treated as a 100% logical language. Based on a discussion with Rowan Davies it is now 50% functional and 50% logical.
Robert Geva suggested OpenCL as new programming language to track. The OpenCL programming language was born at the end of 2008 and supports writing kernels that execute on OpenCL devices. OpenCL debuts at position 107 in the TIOBE index.
There are still lots of mails that need to be processed (especially after having been slashdotted once more recently). As soon as there is more time available your mail will be answered. Please be patient.
This is the top 3 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@.
Add queries for other natural languages (apart from English). The idea is to start with the Chinese search engine Baidu.
Apart from "<language> programming", also other queries such as "programming with <language>" should be tried out.
There is a bug in the calculation of the max of all entries in a language group.
A: A language is considered a programming language if it is Turing complete. As a consequence, HTML and XML are not considered programming languages. This also holds for data query language SQL. SQL is not a programming language because it is, for instance, impossible to write an infinite loop in it. On the other hand, SQL extensions PL/SQL and Transact-SQL are programming languages. ASP and ASP.NET are also not programming languages because they make use of other languages such as JavaScript and VBScript or .NET compatible languages. The same is true for frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, ColdFusion, Cocoa, and technologies such as AJAX. Finally, we have also excluded assembly languages, although Turing complete, because they have a very different nature.
Q: How are dialects of languages grouped?
A: Some languages are grouped together because they are very similar to each other. An example is the language entry Basic which covers Visual Basic, QBasic, Microsoft Basic, etc. VB.NET has been added as well to the Visual Basic entry because it is often referred to as Visual Basic. The ratings for a collection of languages is calculated by taking the maximum of all individual entries (not its sum!).
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 (pages that mention for instance both Visual Basic 6.0 and VB.NET). 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 (such as the xBase/FoxPro grouping), 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: Am I allowed to show the TIOBE index in my weblog/presentation/publication?
A: This is OK provided that you refer to its original source: www..
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 1,500 US$ for the complete data set. This might seem a lot of money but it is considered strategic data. The data set runs from June 2001 till today. It started with 25 languages back in 2001, and now measures more than 150 languages at least 10 times per month. The data are availabe in comma separated format. Part of the deal is that new data will be send to you for 1 extra year. Please contact sales@ for more information.
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.
Q: Why is YouTube used as a search engine for the TIOBE index?
A: First of all, YouTube counts only for 7% of all ratings, so it has hardly any influence on the index. YouTube has been added as an experiment. It qualified for the TIOBE index because of its high ranking on Alexa. YouTube is a young platform (so an indicator for popularity) and there are quite some lectures, presentations, programming tips and language introductions available on YouTube.
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