C named Tiobe’s language of the year

C edged out C#, Python, and Swift, with the largest increase in measured popularity year-on-year

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(Image: C Language)

8 January 2020

The stalwart C programming language has upset trendy Python to snag “language of the year” honours for 2019 in the Tiobe Index of language popularity.

Python had been expected to take the designation for 2019 just as it did for 2018. But C won, thanks to a 2.4% increase in its overall rating year-on-year. Runners-up were C# (2.1%), Python (1.4%), and Swift (0.6%).

Driving C’s resurgence is its use in programming for small devices in the Internet of Things. Also, C is easy to learn, and a C compiler is available for every processor, Tiobe said.

Tiobe’s ratings are based on a formula assessing searches of programming languages on popular search engines such as Google, Bing, and Wikipedia. Overall, for the month of January, Tiobe’s top 10 programming languages were as follows:

Java, with a rating of 16.9%
C, 15.8%
Python, 9.8%
C++, 5.6%
C#, 5.3%
Visual Basic .NET, 5.3%
JavaScript, 2.4%
PHP, 2.4%
Swift, 1.8%
SQL, 1.5%

The rival PyPL (Popularity of Programming Language) Index, which is based on an analysis of how often language tutorials are searched on in Google, listed the following languages in its top 10 for January 2020: