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TIOBE Index for December

2023
December Headline: C# on its way to become programming language of
the year 2023
Yes, I know, we have been here before. At the end of 2022, it looked like C# would
become the programming language of that year. But at the final moment, C++ took the
title unexpectedly. This year we are a bit surer that C# is going to win. It gained +2.38%
in 1 year, whereas its closest contenders Fortran and F# only gained +0.64% and
+0.48% respectively. It might look a bit strange that most of the top 20 languages lost
popularity in 2023. So what happened? The answer lies in the long tail, where all the
small languages reside. Those are all moving up a bit and are getting closer to the big
languages. To illustrate this: one year ago the number 50 language had a score of
0.14%. The current number 50 language has a score of 0.24%. Anyway, we are all
curious to see which language will become the programming language of the year! --
Paul Jansen CEO TIOBE Software

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.

Dec 2023 Dec 2022 Change Programming Ratings Change

Privacidade - Termos

Language
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1 1 Python 13.86% -2.80%

2 2 C 11.44% -5.12%

3 3 C++ 10.01% -1.92%

4 4 Java 7.99% -3.83%

5 5 C# 7.30% +2.38%

6 7 JavaScript 2.90% -0.30%

7 10 PHP 2.01% +0.39%

8 6 Visual Basic 1.82% -2.12%

9 8 SQL 1.61% -0.61%

10 9 Assembly 1.11% -0.76%

language

11 21 Scratch 1.08% +0.41%

12 26 Fortran 1.07% +0.64%

13 12 Go 1.03% -0.12%

14 14 MATLAB 0.93% -0.02%

15 23 Kotlin 0.92% +0.34%

16 16 Delphi/Object 0.92% +0.07%

Pascal

17 15 Swift 0.82% -0.09%

18 20 Rust 0.80% +0.12%

19 17 Ruby 0.77% -0.04%

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20 11 R 0.72% -0.53%

TIOBE Programming Community Index

Source: www.tiobe.com
30

20
Ratings (%)

10

0
2005 2010 2015 2020

Python C C++
Java C# JavaScript
PHP Visual Basic SQL
Assembly language

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
tpci@tiobe.com. Please also check the overview of all programming languages that we
monitor.

Position Programming Language Ratings

21 Prolog 0.70%

22 D 0.69%

23 COBOL 0.68%

24 SAS 0.68%

25 Classic Visual Basic 0.68%

26 F# 0 67%
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26 F# 0.67%

27 (Visual) FoxPro 0.61%

28 Ada 0.57%

29 Perl 0.55%

30 VBScript 0.47%

31 Dart 0.47%

32 Julia 0.46%

33 Transact-SQL 0.45%

34 Objective-C 0.43%

35 Lua 0.41%

36 Scala 0.41%

37 X++ 0.37%

38 TypeScript 0.36%

39 Lisp 0.34%

40 Haskell 0.31%

41 ML 0.31%

42 Forth 0.31%

43 Scheme 0.31%

44 ABAP 0.28%

45 Awk 0.28%

46 Logo 0.27%

47 PL/SQL 0.26%

48 CFML 0.25%

49 PowerShell 0.24%

50 ActionScript 0.24%

The Next 50 Programming Languages

The following list of languages denotes #51 to #100 Since the differences are relatively
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The following list of languages denotes #51 to #100. Since the differences are relatively
small, the programming languages are only listed (in alphabetical order).

4th Dimension/4D, ABC, Algol, Apex, ATLAS, AutoLISP, Bash, Boo, Carbon, CIL, CL
(OS/400), Clipper, Clojure, Curl, Eiffel, Elm, Erlang, GAMS, Groovy, Icon, Inform, Io, J#,
LabVIEW, Ladder Logic, LiveCode, Maple, Modula-2, MOO, MQL5, NATURAL, Nim,
OCaml, OpenEdge ABL, PostScript, Pure Data, Q, Racket, Ring, RPG, Smalltalk, Snap!,
Solidity, SPARK, SPSS, Tcl, VHDL, Wolfram, X10, Zig

This Month's Changes in the Index

This month the following changes have been made to the definition of the index:

Ivo Balbaert suggested to add the Mojo language to the TIOBE index. Mojo meets all
criteria. It debuts at position #174. Thanks Ivo.
Dynosaur CORAL 66 was proposed by Lloyd Adams. It is not that popular anymore,
but it meets all criteria to be listed. CORAL 66 entered the TIOBE index at position
#257 out of 280.

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 average positions for a
period of 12 months.

Programming Language 2023 2018 2013 2008 2003 1998 1993 1988

Python 1 4 8 6 11 24 22 -

C 2 2 1 2 2 1 1 1

C++ 3 3 4 3 3 2 2 4

Java 4 1 2 1 1 18 - -

C# 5 5 5 8 9 - - -

JavaScript 6 8 9 9 8 21 - -

Visual Basic 7 18 - - - - - -

PHP 8 7 6 5 6 - - -

SQL 9 88 - - 7 - - -
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SQ 9 88

Assembly language 10 13 - - - - - -

Ada 24 31 22 20 16 16 7 3

Objective-C 27 12 3 41 48 - - -

Lisp 30 29 14 17 15 10 8 2

(Visual) Basic - - 7 4 5 3 3 7

There are 2 important remarks here:

There is a difference between "Visual Basic" and "(Visual) Basic" in the table above.
Until 2010, "(Visual) Basic" referred to all possible dialects of Basic, including Visual
Basic. After some discussion, it has been decided to split "(Visual) Basic" into all its
dialects such as Visual Basic .NET, Classic Visual Basic, PureBasic, and Small Basic,
just to name a few. Since Visual Basic .NET has become the major implementation of
Visual Basic, it is now called "Visual Basic".
The programming language SQL was added to the TIOBE index in 2018 after
somebody pointed out that SQL is Turing Complete. So although this language is very
old, it has only a short history in the index.

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

2022 C++

2021 Python

2020 Python

2019 C

2018 Python

2017 C
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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++

Bugs & Change Requests

This is the top 5 of most requested changes and bugs. If you have any suggestions
how to improve the index don’t hesitate to send an e-mail to tpci@tiobe.com.

1. Apart from “<language> programming”, also other queries such as

“programming with <language>”, “<language> development” and “<language>
coding” should be tried out.
2. Add queries for other natural languages (apart from English). The idea is to
start with the Chinese search engine Baidu. This has been implemented
partially and will be completed the next few months.
3. Add a list of all search term requests that have been rejected. This is to
minimize the number of recurring mails about Rails, JQuery, JSP, etc.
4. Start a TIOBE index for databases, software configuration management

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systems and application frameworks.

5. Some search engines allow to query pages that have been added last year. The
TIOBE index should only track those recently added pages.

Am I allowed to show the TIOBE index in my

weblog/presentation/publication?

How may I nominate a new language to be added to the TIOBE

index?

I would like to have the complete data set of the TIOBE index. Is
this possible?

Why is the maximum taken to calculate the ranking for a grouping,

why not the sum?

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