C and Rust programming languages continue to rise

C language tops Tiobe’s index of language popularity for a second month, while Rust cracks the top 20 for the first time

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3 June 2020

The C programming language has kept the top spot in the Tiobe language popularity index for the second straight month and the Rust language has finally cracked the top 20.

The Tiobe index for June 2020 represents the first time that Rust, a Mozilla project, has scaled this far in Tiobe’s assessment, which measures language popularity based on a formula that looks at searches in popular search engines. Rust squeaked into the 20th spot with a 0.64% rating, rising from 38th in June 2019.

Commenting on Rust’s ascendance, Paul Jansen, CEO of Tiobe Software, described Rust as a systems programming language “done right.” “All the verbose programming and sharp edges of other languages are solved by Rust while being statically strongly typed,” Jansen wrote in a blog post. “Its type system prevents run-time null pointer exceptions and memory management is calculated compile-time.”

Rust’s rise in Tiobe’s index occurred right after the language once again took the title of “most loved” language in Stack Overflow’s annual developer survey.

The Tiobe index for June 2020 was led by the C language, which displaced Java to gain the top spot in May for the first time in more than five years. Tiobe last month reasoned that the rise of C was related to the COVID-19 pandemic and C’s wide use in medical devices.

The Tiobe index’s top 10 languages for June 2020: