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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."

7 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. Rust will replace them all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Rust will be the new language everyone uses in 2020.

    1. Re:Rust will replace them all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Nah.. It'll be jython servlets running inside a lua hypervisor that is written in javascript.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  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.

  5. 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!