For anyone wondering which programming language to learn next a good starting point is the TIOBE Programming Community Index for January 2009. The listing shows the most commonly used programming languages and obtains its information from Google, MSN, Yahoo! and YouTube.
It also compares the current popularity of the programming language with its popularity at the same time a year ago. From all of this the programmer can get a good idea of which programming language will be most appropriate.
The Top 5 Programming Languages
There has been no real change in the actual languages in the top 5 - just some minor movements within the group:
- no change at number one, with 19.022% of all programmers using it, it's Java
- again no change, with 15.931% usage it's C
- up from 5 - C++ (10.116%)
- down from 3 - Visual Basic (9.161%)
- down from 4 - PHP (8.882%)
There are, of course, no surprises here and so (to keep ahead of the game) it might be worth looking at the languages currently climbing the charts.
The Risers
It's worth breaking the risers into two groups:
- those with a high percentage of users
- those with a low percentage of users
That said, even the higher percentages are still quite low:
- up to 6 from 8 C# (5.609%)
- up to 9 from 10 JavaScript (3.360%)
The remainder all have less than one percent usage:
- up to 15 from 18 Pascal (0.661%)
- up to 16 from 20 Logo (0.632%)
- up to 18 from 28 ABAP (0.537%)
- up to 20 from 21 ActionScript (0.455%)
Having seen which languages are coming in the next step is to see which languages are going out.
The Fallers
The fact that any language has fallen is not necessarily because they're becoming less popular - any movement downwards is much more likely to have been to make room for any the risers:
- down to 7 from 6 Python (4.731%)
- down to 8 from 7 Perl (4.303%)
- down to 10 from 9 Delphi (3.303% )
- down to 12 from 14 D (1.022%)
- down to 13 from 12 PL/SQL (1.006%)
- down to 14 from 13 SAS (0.797%)
- down to 17 from 15 COBOL (0.579%)
- down to 19 from 17 FoxPro/xBase (0.477%)
Again there are no surprises with the list and so the only category left is the non-movers.
Non-movers
There is only one non-mover - at number 11 it's Ruby with 3.149%.
Summary
The TIOBE Programming Community Index uses Google, MSN, Yahoo! and YouTube to estimate the popularity of programming languages. This is, of course, very useful for any programmer thinking of investing time and effort in a new language.
The index shows that there are no real surprises in the world of programming and that each of the old favorites - C, C++, Delphi, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby and Visual Basic - are all safe bets, but it may be worth looking at some of the up and comers such as ABAP, ActionScript and Logo.
Sources
TIOBE Programming Community Index for January 2009
Mark Alexander Bain - Mark Alexander Bain is a writer, Mo Bro and consultant for all aspects of software development at dsquared. He has also written regularly ...
