News

Java Still Top Language in TIOBE Index

• By John K. Waters
• November 9, 2016

Java continues to command the top spot on the latest TIOBE Programming Community Index, edging C, C++, C#, Python and Visual Basic .NET, in that order. The November Top 20 list also included PHP, JavaScript, Assembly, Perl, Objective-C, Swift, Go, Ruby, MATLAB, Delphi, Visual Basic, Groovy, R and PS/SQL.

Poised to break into that list, TIOBE noted, is the functional programming language Haskell, which came in at 23, only 0.255 percent away. "Let's see what happens the next few months," TIOBE said. Also on the move, the company noted, are MQL4 (from #52 to #41), Hack (from #76 to #63) and Elixir (from #86 to #64).

TIOBE Software has been publishing the results of its monthly search for the languages in which the most lines of code were written since 2001. The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers worldwide, language courses, and third-party vendors. TIOBE uses 25 search engines to collect key words from the highest ranked websites of Web traffic monitor Alexa and calculate the most lines of code written in a given month to determine its 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 company wrote on its Web site.

The company has published its search criteria on its Web site.

Java, which TIOBE crowned Programming Language of the Year for 2015, lost a bit of ground this month, dropping 1.65 percent to earn a rating of 18.755 percent, though it has held the top spot since April. Among the top five languages in the index, C had the sharpest drop: down 7.94 percent to 9.203 percent.