TIOBE Index for February 2019
February Headline: Groovy re-enters the TIOBE index top 20
The programming language Groovy has re-entered the TIOBE index top 20. This dynamically typed language that is compatible with Java entered the top 20 for the first time at the end of 2016. At that time it was pushed because scripts for the most popular Continuous Integration tool Jenkins are mainly written in Groovy. Now it is back. Apart from Jenkins also the build automation system Gradle, which is getting popular as well, is using Groovy for its scripting. In general more and more glue software is written in Groovy. Next to Groovy, it is also worth mentioning that Hack has entered the top 50 and TypeScript (temporarily) has fallen back to position 57 this month.
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 as Google, 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 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.
| Feb 2019 | Feb 2018 | Change | Programming Language | Ratings | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Java | 15.876% | +0.89% | |
| 2 | 2 | C | 12.424% | +0.57% | |
| 3 | 4 |  |
Python | 7.574% | +2.41% |
| 4 | 3 |  |
C++ | 7.444% | +1.72% |
| 5 | 6 | |
Visual Basic .NET | 7.095% | +3.02% |
| 6 | 8 | |
JavaScript | 2.848% | -0.32% |
| 7 | 5 | |
C# | 2.846% | -1.61% |
| 8 | 7 | |
PHP | 2.271% | -1.15% |
| 9 | 11 | |
SQL | 1.900% | -0.46% |
| 10 | 20 |  |
Objective-C | 1.447% | +0.32% |
| 11 | 15 | |
Assembly language | 1.377% | -0.46% |
| 12 | 19 | |
MATLAB | 1.196% | -0.03% |
| 13 | 17 | |
Perl | 1.102% | -0.66% |
| 14 | 9 |  |
Delphi/Object Pascal | 1.066% | -1.52% |
| 15 | 13 | |
R | 1.043% | -1.04% |
| 16 | 10 | |
Ruby | 1.037% | -1.50% |
| 17 | 12 | |
Visual Basic | 0.991% | -1.19% |
| 18 | 18 | Go | 0.960% | -0.46% | |
| 19 | 49 | |
Groovy | 0.936% | +0.75% |
| 20 | 16 | |
Swift | 0.918% | -0.88% |
Ratings (%)JavaCPythonC++Visual Basic .NETJavaScriptC#PHPSQLObjective-C200220042006200820102012201420162018051015202530Tuesday, Jan 6, 2015● Python: 2.613%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. If you have the impression there is a programming language lacking, please notify us at [email protected]. Please also check the overview of all programming languages that we monitor.
| Position | Programming Language | Ratings |
|---|---|---|
| 21 | PL/SQL | 0.815% |
| 22 | SAS | 0.717% |
| 23 | D | 0.635% |
| 24 | Lua | 0.557% |
| 25 | Dart | 0.540% |
| 26 | Fortran | 0.513% |
| 27 | COBOL | 0.511% |
| 28 | Scratch | 0.461% |
| 29 | Scala | 0.359% |
| 30 | ABAP | 0.337% |
| 31 | Lisp | 0.314% |
| 32 | Logo | 0.313% |
| 33 | Ada | 0.297% |
| 34 | Transact-SQL | 0.282% |
| 35 | Prolog | 0.279% |
| 36 | Scheme | 0.250% |
| 37 | Rust | 0.229% |
| 38 | Kotlin | 0.225% |
| 39 | Haskell | 0.208% |
| 40 | LabVIEW | 0.198% |
| 41 | Julia | 0.170% |
| 42 | Tcl | 0.152% |
| 43 | PostScript | 0.151% |
| 44 | Ladder Logic | 0.145% |
| 45 | PL/I | 0.143% |
| 46 | Hack | 0.139% |
| 47 | Erlang | 0.137% |
| 48 | Standard ML | 0.129% |
| 49 | RPG | 0.128% |
| 50 | Bash | 0.126% |
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 alphabetical order).
- ABC, ActionScript, Alice, Apex, APL, Awk, BBC BASIC, bc, Bourne shell, C shell, CL (OS/400), Clojure, Common Lisp, Crystal, cT, Elixir, Elm, EXEC, F#, Forth, Icon, IDL, Inform, Io, J#, Korn shell, LiveCode, Maple, ML, Modula-2, Monkey, MQL4, MS-DOS batch, NATURAL, OpenCL, OpenEdge ABL, Oz, PILOT, PowerShell, Processing, Q, Ring, S, Smalltalk, Snap!, SPARK, Tex, TypeScript, VBScript, VHDL
This Month's Changes in the Index
This month the following changes have been made to the definition of the index:
- 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 averagepositions for a period of 12 months.
| Programming Language | 2019 | 2014 | 2009 | 2004 | 1999 | 1994 | 1989 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Java | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 11 | - | - |
| C | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| C++ | 3 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 |
| Python | 4 | 7 | 5 | 10 | 25 | 21 | - |
| Visual Basic .NET | 5 | 12 | - | - | - | - | - |
| C# | 6 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 28 | - | - |
| PHP | 7 | 6 | 4 | 5 | - | - | - |
| JavaScript | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 18 | - | - |
| SQL | 9 | - | - | 6 | - | - | - |
| Objective-C | 10 | 3 | 36 | 45 | - | - | - |
| COBOL | 25 | 19 | 15 | 11 | 3 | 9 | 18 |
| Lisp | 28 | 13 | 16 | 14 | 10 | 6 | 2 |
| Pascal | 203 | 14 | 14 | 96 | 5 | 3 | 7 |
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.
| Year | Winner |
|---|---|
| 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++ |