TIOBE Programming Community Index for August 2008

August Headline: COBOL scores a new all time low

hnzeG0The TIOBE Programming Community index gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages. 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!, and YouTube are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that the TIOBE index is not about thebestprogramming language or the language in whichmost lines of codehave been written.51Testing软件测试网1}6yhIi5?o+Cl

The index can be used to check whether your programming skills are still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what programming language should be adopted when starting to build a new software system. The definition of the TIOBE index can be foundhere.

Position ]!P i)lOo0Aug 2008	Position51Testing软件测试网2`:] z}E.\1V]8I6cIw Aug 2007	Delta in Position	Programming Language	Ratings51Testing软件测试网-^ ]g/F| Aug 2008	Delta !n d|P u0Aug 2007	Status
1	1		Java	21.571%	-0.20%	A
2	2		C	16.178%	+0.48%	A
3	3		(Visual) Basic	10.857%	+0.21%	A
4	4		C++	10.057%	-0.05%	A
5	5		PHP	9.349%	-0.35%	A
6	8		Python	4.975%	+2.23%	A
7	6		Perl	4.694%	-0.63%	A
8	7		C#	3.697%	-0.29%	A
9	10		Ruby	2.920%	+1.01%	A
10	9		Javascrīpt	2.892%	+0.32%	A
11	14		Delphi	2.732%	+1.51%	A
12	13		D	1.357%	+0.11%	A
13	11		PL/SQL	0.679%	-1.15%	A-
14	12		SAS	0.549%	-0.84%	B
15	-		PowerShell	0.440%	+0.44%	B
16	24		Pascal	0.416%	+0.00%	B
17	18		Lisp/Scheme	0.379%	-0.21%	B
18	15		Lua	0.373%	-0.27%	B
19	16		COBOL	0.358%	-0.24%	B
20	23		Actionscrīpt	0.355%	-0.07%	B

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Other programming languages

:_a%Yu-S#P0The complete top 50 of programming languages is listed below. This overview is published unofficially, because it could be the case that we missed a language. If you have the impression there is a programming language lacking, please notify us attpci@tiobe.com.51Testing软件测试网)_ CA Bd9W

The Next 50 Programming Languages

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• ABC, AD, Algol, Alpha, APL, Applescrīpt, AspectJ, Beta, Boo, C shell, cg, Ch, Clean, cT, Curl, Dylan, Eiffel, Factor, Felix, Focus, Icon, IDL, Inform, Io, MAD, Magic, Maple, Mathematica, MOO, MUMPS, NXT-G, Oberon, Occam, Oz, PILOT, Postscrīpt, PowerBuilder, Progress, Q, R, REALbasic, Rebol, S-lang, Scala, SIGNAL, SPSS, VBscrīpt, Verilog, VHDL, XSLT

August Newsflash -Brought to you by Paul Jansen

• Jeroen Vandenzande suggested to add Oxygene and Chrome to the Delphi entry and Kevin Coggins proposed to add ATLAS and C/ATLAS to the TIOBE index. Thanks for your suggestions!
• In the tables below some long term trends are listed about categories of languages. The object-oriented paradigm is at an all time high with 56.9%. The popularity of dynamically typed languages seems to be stabilizing (see trend diagram below).51Testing软件测试网}r%YL8x5xK P g
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  Category	Ratings August 2008	Delta August 2007
  Object-Oriented Languages	56.9%	+4.1%
  Procedural Languages	40.7%	-2.7%
  Functional Languages	1.7%	-0.3%
  Logical Languages	0.7%	-1.2%

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  Category	Ratings August 2008	Delta August 2007
  Statically Typed Languages	59.1%	+0.5%
  Dynamically Typed Languages	40.9%	-0.5%

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Frequently Asked Questions

• Q: What definition of programming languages has been used?
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  sHQ%}ZS#Uh bv^(j0A: A language is considered a programming language if it is Turing complete. As a consequence, HTML and XML are not considered programming languages. This also holds for data query language SQL. SQL is not a programming language because it is, for instance, impossible to write an infinite loop in it. On the other hand, SQL extensions PL/SQL and Transact-SQL are programming languages. ASP and ASP.NET are also not programming languages because they make use of other languages such as Javascrīpt and VBscrīpt or .NET compatible languages. The same is true for frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, ColdFusion, Cocoa, and technologies such as AJAX. Finally, we have also excluded assembly languages, although Turing complete, because they have a very different nature.

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• Q: How are dialects of languages grouped?

  t9d;k-u;h-Ef3h0A: Some languages are grouped together because they are very similar to each other. An example is the language entry Basic which covers Visual Basic, QBasic, Microsoft Basic, etc. VB.NET has been added as well to the Visual Basic entry because it is often referred to as Visual Basic. The ratings for a collection of languages is calculated by taking the maximum of all individual entries (not its sum!).51Testing软件测试网n7BN;o8s*Z

• Q: Am I allowed to show the TIOBE index in my weblog/presentation/publication?

  |0O4]Q0G5S%B0A: This is OK provided that you refer to its original source: www.tiobe.com.51Testing软件测试网9d(d}Q"{Q C

• Q: I would like to have the complete data set of the TIOBE index. Is this possible?51Testing软件测试网@f?;c:\8^}3gO

  A: We spent a lot of effort to obtain all the data and keep the TIOBE index up to date. In order to compensate a bit for this, we ask a fee of 1,500 US$ for the complete data set. This might seem a lot of money but it is considered strategic data. The data set runs from June 2001 till today. It started with 25 languages back in 2001, and now measures more than 150 languages at least 10 times per month. The data are availabe in comma separated format. Part of the deal is that new data will be send to you for 1 extra year. Please contactsales@tiobe.comfor more information.

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• Q: What happened to Java in April 2004? Did you change your methodology?

  #d+b,w;d)s-\bA0A: No, we did not change our methodology at that time. Google changed its methodology. They performed a general sweep action to get rid of all kinds of web sites that had been pushed up. As a consequence, there was a huge drop for languages such as Java and C++. In order to minimize such fluctuations in the future, we added two more search engines (MSN and Yahoo) a few months after this incident.51Testing软件测试网#nby_8_;E0g,S(B

• Q: Why is YouTube used as a search engine for the TIOBE index?

  :Eu!}$L-f%}T.w,mq0A: First of all, YouTube counts only for 7% of all ratings, so it has hardly any influence on the index. YouTube has been added as an experiment. It qualified for the TIOBE index because of its high ranking on Alexa. YouTube is a young platform (so an indicator for popularity) and there are quite some lectures, presentations, programming tips and language introductions available on YouTube.

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