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C Programming Language Hits a 15-Year Low On The TIOBE Index (businessinsider.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the new-low dept.

Gamoid writes: The venerable C programming language hit a 15-year low on the TIOBE Index, perhaps because more mobile- and web-friendly languages like Swift and Go are starting to eat its lunch. "The C programming language has a score of 11.303%, which is its lowest score ever since we started the TIOBE index back in 2001," writes Paul Jansen, manager of TIOBE Index. With that said, C is still the second most popular programming language in the world, behind only Java. Also worth noting as mentioned by Matt Weinberger via Business Insider, "C doesn't currently have a major corporate sponsor; Oracle makes a lot of money from Java; Apple pushes both Swift and Objective-C for building iPhone apps. But no big tech company is getting on stage and pushing C as the future of development. So C's problems could be marketing as much as anything."

11 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. It's not a popularity contest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't need a corporate sponsor or a sexy advertising campaign to figure out that if I want something to run on most Linux distributions, as well as the BSDs with minor modifications, C is the obvious choice. Most of the languages being heavily promoted are garbage, that's why companies have to spend money to get anyone to use them. Robust languages don't need a marketing team.

    1. Re:It's not a popularity contest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Most of the languages being heavily promoted will be dead 10 years from now. Anything serious and written to stand the test of time is done in C. Everything else is transient.

  2. problems, lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From TFS, "c's problems": c doesn't have "problems"; programmers who don't use c have problems. Such as their code is slow, overweight, wasteful of resources, and uses only a fraction of the potential available at the low level.

    But you keep holding that warm, safe hand. Momma will lead you right to the rubber room. :)

    Or, you know. You could actually learn how to write good code at the most powerful level. That's a radical thought.

    1. Re:problems, lol by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      From TFS, "c's problems": c doesn't have "problems"; programmers who don't use c have problems.

      That is actually what TIOBE measures. It counts Google searches. C programmers are smart enough that they don't need to search for answers on Google, or they use a better website, such as Stackoverflow. A high TIOBE index can mean a language is popular, or it can mean that language has dumb programmers.

    2. Re:problems, lol by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      C doesn't have a corporate sponsor.

      Why is that a bad thing? Is Java better because Oracle owns it?

  3. So what! by no-body · · Score: 4, Insightful

    C is great - love it and if somebody shits on it, even more so!

  4. Moronic Subject for an Article by hoofie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This really is a moronic article. Programming language choice is not about "popular" or "cool" - it's whatever tool gets the job done. The article also takes a whack at COBOL and Fortran. They might be old but they have been around a long time and are still in heavy use in many areas. The article also ignores things like microcontrollers, arduinos etc whose development tooling invariably uses C. The whole thing reads like it was written by a newly minted graduate.

    1. Re:Moronic Subject for an Article by lgw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This really is a moronic article. Programming language choice is not about "popular" or "cool" - it's whatever tool gets the job done.

      For a hobby? Sure. Otherwise it's about whatever tool gets the paycheck done. Java sucks today and isn't the best tool for any job, yet it dominates the job market. It was a bad tool 15 years ago, and it will be a bad tool 15 years from now, when it will still dominate the job market. And by then, sadly, $10 computers will run Java easily.

      C will always be the kernel guy's tool, and those jobs pay nicely, but there will never be very many of them. C++ has faded (despite being a darn good language with the latest standard, too many burned bridges). C# will go down with the Microsoft ship. Will one of the new fad languages have staying power? Maybe. Likely 1 of them will, if not a current one. But fucking Java just refuses to die.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  5. End of coding by OrangeTide · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Us C programmers have already written everything there is to write.

    Feel free to reinvent the wheel in various toy languages if that is what makes you happy, I soon will retire and won't care.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  6. In other exciting news by LichtSpektren · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The hammer just passed the screwdriver again on the Household Tools Popularity List. Is it because the hammer has the venerable backing of large companies like Lowe's and Home Depot while the lowly screwdriver is still seen to be a hobbyist's tool unfit for enterprise adoption?

    Stay tuned for next month's exciting random statistical variations and the inane commentary from bloggers desperate for clicks!

  7. C programmers don't need to consult the web by KeithH · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This TIOBE index relies on web queries for each programming language. Frankly, C programmers don't need to ask questions about the language itself since it is so simple.

    I'm not questioning the popularity of the various languages but it seems to me that this metric favours the more complex languages.

    Finally, in the embedded real-time space, there is still no real substitute for C.