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C Programming Language Back At Number 1

Posted by kdawson on from the doin'-what-we-always-did dept.

derrida writes "After more than 4 years C is back at position number 1 in the TIOBE index. The scores for C have been pretty constant through the years, varying between the 15% and 20% market share for almost 10 years. So the main reason for C's number 1 position is not C's uprise, but the decline of its competitor Java. Java has a long-term downward trend. It is losing ground to other languages running on the JVM. An example of such a language is JavaFX, which is now approaching the top 20."

5 of 535 comments (clear)

  1. That's great and all... by Thorrablot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    but shouldn't it really be at number 0?

    --
    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo. -- James Klass
  2. TIOBE methodology is so flawed it's pointless by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Go ahead, read it for yourself, and tell me how this is supposed to give any meaningful results. They aggregate together things of all kind, to the point where an aggregate doesn't make any sense at all (I mean, hits such as "programming in PHP sucks" or "you must be an idiot to write production code in VB" would count as +1 for PHP and VB, correspondingly!). You can have one language having many job postings, another having many books, and yet another having many basic "how to?" questions and dumbed-down tutorials, and they'd all get the same rating.

    In any case, most certainly, at these numbers (Java 18.051%, C 18.058%), speaking of one overtaking another is completely pointless, given the margin of error.

    Anyway, if you want to know how popular a particular language/technology is, the simplest - and much more accurate! - way of doing so is to check any popular job search web site. Just keep in mind that preferences vary in different regions, so if you are making career choices, stick to local/national postings, and if you want to see an overall worldwide trend, you have to aggregate data from enough sources.

    1. Re:TIOBE methodology is so flawed it's pointless by gzipped_tar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > I mean, hits such as "programming in PHP sucks" or
      > "you must be an idiot to write production code in VB"
      > would count as +1 for PHP and VB, correspondingly!

      This is the true spirit of our times. Any publicity is good publicity.

      --
      Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
    2. Re:TIOBE methodology is so flawed it's pointless by Vellmont · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What, you don't think Google Go, a language even Google doesn't use in production is just a hair less popular than PL/SQL, the programming language used in an Oracle DB for the last 18 years?

      Shocking!

      --
      AccountKiller
  3. 0.007% by westlake · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, Yahoo!, Wikipedia and YouTube are used to calculate the ratings

    I feel so much confidence in these numbers.