C Programming Language 'Has Completed a Comeback' (infoworld.com)

InfoWorld reports that "the once-declining C language" has "completed a comeback" -- citing its rise to second place in the Tiobe Index of language popularity, the biggest rise of any language in 2017. An anonymous reader quotes their report: Although the language only grew 1.69 percentage points in its rating year over year in the January index, that was enough beat out runners-up Python (1.21 percent gain) and Erlang (0.98 percent gain). Just five months ago, C was at its lowest-ever rating, at 6.477 percent; this month, its rating is 11.07 percent, once again putting it in second place behind Java (14.215 percent) -- although Java dropped 3.05 percent compared to January 2017. C's revival is possibly being fueled by its popularity in manufacturing and industry, including the automotive market, Tiobe believes...

But promising languages such as Julia, Hack, Rust, and Kotlin were not able to reach the top 20 or even the top 30, Tiobe pointed out. "Becoming part of the top 10 or even the top 20 requires a large ecosystem of communities and evangelists including conferences," said Paul Jansen, Tiobe managing director and compiler of the index. "This is not something that can be developed in one year's time."
For 2017 Tiobe also reports that after Java and C, the most popular programming languages were C++, Python, C#, JavaScript, Visual Basic .Net, R, PHP, and Perl.

The rival Pypl Popularity of Programming Language index calculates that the most popular languages are Java, Python, PHP, JavaScript, C#, C++, C, R, Objective-C, and Swift.

Comments

Driven by Raspberry Pi?

[smist08]

With all the low cost ARM computers, perhap people appreciate the speed of C. Generally you get smaller faster programs. Or perhaps more people are working on the Linux kernel?

Re:Driven by Raspberry Pi?

[sourcerror]

You can use more advanced programming languages on the Pi that have decent execution speed too, like Java or C#. I think C's popularity is more driven by Arduino, where other alternatives don't exist.

Re:C programs are too dangerous for net-connected

[Excelcia]

Oh Lord, seriously? This again? C is more dangerous than Java the way that a KA-Bar is more dangerous than a butter knife. If you take a real programming language, hamstring it, put a bib on it, and pull its teeth so it can process nothing more than strained baby food, sure, it won't be dangerous but then again it won't do much useful either.

Write a device driver in Java or Python. Or a kernel. C will always have a place in net-connected computers. You just don't hand a loaded gun to a child and expect he'll produce something useful without blowing his foot off. C is for grown-ups and when you get big and strong and if you eat all your spinach maybe when you grow up you'll do system programming too. Until then, feel free to play around with interpreted languages that pen you in a coral so you don't do anything stupid and feel free to pretend that JIT really does mean it's compiled and just as fast as native code.

Re:C programs are too dangerous for net-connected

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. Too much of the modern economy now depends upon code to leave safety to the whims, skills or vanity of the programmer. Frankly, the "trust me, I'm good" argument isn't good enough and neither are you. Type safety, bounds checking, protected memory and access control are no longer optional in 2018. You either begin accepting these things or the product liability lawyers are going to win out in court eventually and you will be held financially liable for every bug in your C code. Software has long enjoyed a special immunity to liability lawsuits, but that protection is eroding and rightly so. The days of "trust me, I'm the Jedi Master of C code" are numbered. Better to participate in the transition to safer programming languages and practices than be bankrupted by lawyers, lawsuits and politicians looking for a villain to blame.

C is still king, thank Engineering Schools

[Proudrooster]

Everything on planet freaking earth has firmware in it now and guess what compiler makes the smallest binaries that can talk to hardware?

Yes, that's right C.

Python can talk to C, but you aren't going to write firmware or low level interrupt handling code (like reading IR pulses) or monitoring an I2C bus.

Java is C's fat lazy son that lives in the basement and consumes all available resources can do things eventually, if you give him enough resources, time, and be able to tolerate the odor.

As long as computer architecture remains constant, C will be king. It's fast, small, and get's sh*t done now. Plus once you write it in C, you can call it from any other modern programming language like Python, Java, Objective-C, Swift, etc ...

I went to a graduation party of a graduating Aerospace engineer last weekend and his advice was learn C, learn simulation and solving software like Mathematica, learn how to work in teams, and be multidiscipline in career focus for great success. He graduated from Perdue.

Re:Oh lord, that again?

[Excelcia]

Attitudes like this are why people need a computer 600,000 times faster with 262144 times the memory in order to load something just to check their e-mail. I don't use Rust. I use Go when I must. It's not a bad language as new languages go - Syncthing, a project I've contributed to, uses Go and it's not terrible.

In a way you're correct. I'd agree that only about 10% of software really needs the performance and versatility of C. Most others can get away with C++, for better organization, or some other natively compiled code. Go if you like. Or Pascal if you want something old school but still strongly type checked. I actually use Pascal quite a bit myself, simply because of the free Lazarus environment. Even interpreted stuff has its place, but far less than it is used for. Just as only about 10% of software needs the power and versatility of C, only about 10% of software is appropriate for an interpreted environment. The problem is, kids coming out of school high on what some unfortunate profs (who often don't have to work in the real world) have been feeding them then start all these projects in Python and Java that have no place being written in an interpreted language. Python is good for small front ends. But then someone will want to get fancy and use PyGTK or some other frankenlibrary or else what started as a little front end simply grows beyond what is really appropriate and it becomes non-portable and a nightmare fast.

I actually have nothing against any language. I have serious problems when they are used inappropriately, though, and I have even more serious problems when what has been the best swiss army knife programmers have ever had for the better part of half a century is slagged in favour of some du jour. C never lost its place, and won't for the foreseeable future. For system programming it's not just unparalleled, it's often just simply indispensable. Computers are not people, they are electrical devices with bits and bytes, and sometimes you just need a language that embraces that rather than tries to hide it like its some dirty secret.

Re:This really only indicates where jobs are now..

[Anonymous Coward]

I seriously used C for web development (an old intranet system that was written when CGI was a new thing) It wasn't as hard as it may sound, nor did it take much more time to do than if I were to use a javascript framework of the week. it actually it took less effort than when having to deal with js / npm / webpack etc. These days I would use python on the back end if starting a new web project, with just enough front end scripting libs (jquery, bootstrap) to get on with the job, but I'd still prefer to code in C instead of the clusterfuck that is modern javascript

Re: C programs are too dangerous for net-connected

[TheRaven64]

A very small subset of programmers, working with formal verification tools. It's not that we don't know how to write correct code, it's that we don't know how to write correct code cheaply. The seL4 team estimates their development cost at around 30 times that of a state-of-the-art conventional software engineering team with full test coverage that isn't using formal methods. That's not a cost that people are willing to pay for all software, but it is a cost that's easily amortised when it's just for a relatively small set of things in the trusted computing base.