Python is TIOBE's programming language of the year 2018

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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):

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I’m surprised Java is still on second place on RedMonk. Is it really still this popular ?

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There is some degree of inertia built into the system when it comes to rankings. A large degree of the popularities may relate to maintenance of the existing base of software. A good measure of the trends in popularity may be the last column in the TIOBE index, which measures the change over the past year. In that column, Python is highest at +3.62%, and that is how it was chosen as programming language of the year 2018. Also note that on PYPL the last column, the trend, rates Python at +5.2 %, which is the highest among all the languages.

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Wow, that’s amazing! Also noticed the big jump of Typescript described at TIOBE site:

TypeScript (#167 to #49)

Due to the big use at web development as Angular as example.

Anyway, I am looking into Dart Language as it’s at 23 position and hope it keeps rising because it’s use at web, mobile and server thanks to Google Development. :slight_smile:

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