The most popular programming languages in the world
According to the Tiobe Index for December 2018, Java, C, and Python are the most popular programming languages in the world.
Other popular languages include C++ and Visual Basic, which has reached an all-time high on the index.
Tiobe said Microsoft’s Visual Basic. NET is considered a “toy language” which is meant for people who are starting to learn programming.
For this reason, Tiobe said its high ranking is irregular, and expects the popularity of Visual Basic to decline in the future.
Tiobe has also included SQL within its rankings again, as it said the language now seems to be Turing complete.
The PYPL rankings showed Python at the top of its list, followed by Java and JavaScript.
December 2018 rankings
The top 10 programming languages for December 2018, according to the Tiobe Index and PYPL rankings, are detailed below.
|
December 2018
|
|||
|---|---|---|---|
| Tiobe Ranking | Change YoY | PYPL Ranking | Change YoY |
| Java | +2.66% | Python | +5.2% |
| C | +4.12% | Java | -1.1% |
| Python | +4.60% | JavaScript | +0.0% |
| C++ | +2.84% | C# | -0.4% |
| Visual Basic .NET | +4.66% | PHP | -1.3% |
| C# | +0.63% | C/C++ | -0.4% |
| JavaScript | +0.59% | R | -0.3% |
| PHP | +0.85% | Objective-C | -0.9% |
| SQL | +2.18% | Swift | -0.6% |
| Objective-C | -0.02% | Matlab | -0.3% |
Calculating the rankings
- PYPL – The more a language tutorial is searched, the more popular the language is assumed to be. The raw data comes from Google Trends.
- Tiobe – The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers worldwide, courses, and third-party vendors. Popular search engines are also used to calculate the ratings.