Python’s popularity surges as a mainstay language

Python was the biggest gainer in the Tiobe index of language popularity in 2018, rising by 3.62 percentage points from January 2018 to January 2019, with a rating of 8.294 percent for this month.

Python is the most-frequently-taught first language at universities now, says the software quality sevices vendor. It leads in the statistical, artificial intelligence, systems tests, and scripting domains. And it’s leading in web programming and scientific computing, Tiobe says.

Tiobe’s index is based on a formula examining searches on languages in search engines such as Google, Bing, and Wikipedia. The formula assesses the number of skilled engineers, courses, and third-party vendors pertinent to a language.

Established languages such as Java, C, C++, and Visual Basic.Net also saw gains year-to-year. Mainstream languages are getting stronger in general, giving smaller languages less chance for adoption, says Paul Jansen, Tiobe’s CEO.

The January 2019 Tiobe index saw the rise of languages such as Matlab, rising from 18th place a year ago to 11th place this year, and Kotlin, rising from 39th place to 31st place. Rust rose from 46th place to 33rd place while TypeScript jumped from 167th place to 49th place. Matlab is becoming popular in the automotive industry while TypeScript is viewed as a safer alternative to JavaScript.

Tiobe predicts Kotlin could enter the Top 20 this year, with customers asking for it and willing to pay for support. Tiobe is seeing fast adoption of Kotlin in the industrial mobile app market.

On the down side, Ruby dropped from 11th place to 18th place year to year while F# dropped from 40th place to 64th place. Tiobe has no explanation for these drops.

The Tiobe Top 10 for January 2019

Tiobe’s Top 10 languages were as follows:

1. Java, with a rating of 16.904 percent
2. C, at 13.337 percent
3. Python, at 8.294 percent
4. C++, at 8.158 percent
5. Visual Basic.Net, at 6.459 percent
6. JavaScript, at 3.302 percent
7. C#, at 3.284 percent
8. PHP, at 2.68 percent
9. SQL, at 2.277 percent
10. Objective-C, at 1.781 percent

The PyPL Top 10 for January 2019

The rival PyPL Popularity of Programming Language index, which analyzes how often language tutorials are searched on Google, has Python dominating its ranks. The PyPL Top 10 is:

1. Python, with a 25.95 percent share
2. Java, at 21.42 percent
3. JavaScript, at 8.26 percent
4. C#, at 7.62 percent
5. PHP, at 7.37 percent
6. C/C++, at 6.31 percent
7. R, at 4.04 percent
8. Objective-C, at 3.15 percent
9. Swift, at 2.56 percent
10. Matlab, at 2.04 percent