The following was quoted from TIOBE Index on January 6, 2019:
TIOBE Index for January 2019
January Headline: Python is TIOBE’s programming language of the year 2018!
The Python programming language has won the title “programming language of the year”! Python has received this title because it has gained most ranking points in 2018 if compared to all other languages. The Python language has won 3.62%, followed by Visual Basic .NET and Java. Python has now definitely become part of the big programming languages. For almost 20 years, C, C++ and Java are consistently in the top 3, far ahead of the rest of the pack. Python is joining these 3 languages now. It is the most frequently taught first language at universities nowadays, it is number one in the statistical domain, number one in AI programming, number one in scripting and number one in writing system tests. Besides this, Python is also leading in web programming and scientific computing (just to name some other domains). In summary, Python is everywhere.
Note that the TIOBE language of the year designation is not synonymous with the first place ranking in popularity. Rather, it is based on what language increased the most in the share of the percentages over the past year. The current (January, 2019) top three TIOBE rankings were:
1 Java 16.904% +2.69%
2 C 13.337% +2.30%
3 Python 8.294% +3.62%
According to TIOBE:
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.
Another site that rates the popularity of programming languages is PYPL PopularitY of Programming Language.
As of January, 2019, their top three rankings were:
1 Python 25.95 % +5.2%
2 Java 21.42 % -1.3%
3 Javascript 8.26 % -0.2%
According to PYPL:
The PYPL PopularitY of Programming Language Index is created by analyzing how often language tutorials are searched on Google.
RedMonk also rates programming language popularity. The first ten on their list in their most recent rankings from The RedMonk Programming Language Rankings: June 2018 were:
1 JavaScript
2 Java
3 Python
4 PHP
5 C#
6 C++
7 CSS
8 Ruby
9 C
9 Objective-C
Note that there is a tie in ninth place.
Rating the popularity of programming languages is a complex task, and opinions vary on how it is best to do this. See IEEE Survey Ranks Programming Languages.
POLLS (Please vote):