Overtaking Python, C++ became the TIOBE's language of 2022. It outscored Rust, C#, Go and others by a large margin. Don't you find this weird? Well, let's figure this out.
The rating we're talking about is based on the TIOBE index. Here's the table of the 20 most popular languages for January 2023:
Here's the main question: why is C++ the language of 2022? According to the table, Python takes the first place in the rating.
Here's the answer: TIOBE chose the winner by the growth of the language popularity. In this regard, C++ is ahead of the curve.
Here's the top five leaders in popularity growth:
- C++ (+4.62 %)
- C (+3.82 %)
- Python (+2.78 %)
- Java (+1.55 %)
- JavaScript (+0.78 %)
TIOBE gives several reasons explaining C++'s growing popularity. Although C++ is an OOP language, it provides excellent performance. Moreover, ISO constantly releases new standards. TIOBE points out that the language started going uphill since the C++11 publication. They also suppose that C++20 which introduced modules will probably lift C++ further in the TIOBE index in the next few years.
Here are a few more curious results from the TIOBE index:
- Rust entered the Top 20 again (from #26 to #18);
- F# jumped from position #74 to #33;
- Lua jumped 6 positions from #30 to #24;
- Kotlin jumped from #29 to #25.
Here are some thoughts that crossed my mind after viewing the table and reading the article:
- Visual Basic takes position #6 — wait, what?! It's amusing to compare the absolute rating of VB (4.64%) with Go (1.14%) and Rust (0.61%).
- It's a pity that C# gets only +0.05%. That's a scanty increase (especially when comparing it with Java).
- I feel happy for F# — it made a great jump!
- Some people are skeptical about TIOBE ratings because of the way they calculate the popularity of languages. And that's a fair point. The Visual Basic position in this index kind of suggests that their algorithm of choosing a language is not perfect. Well, perhaps C# has actually become more popular, who knows.
- As Bjarne Stroustrup said: "There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses."
- In case you're curious to learn about the most interesting bugs in projects written on different programming languages, here you are:
What are your thoughts on the rating?
Top comments (4)
I believe the wave of interest to C/C++/Rust is caused by popularity (well-deserved) some new tools written in these languages gained lately. They allow to write performant and minimalist code (at least if you know how to do it😅) which does its job better (sometimes much better) than code written in other languages.
Also we’ll need to re-program robots that will rise against humanity very soon, so C is must-have.
Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin says Clojure will be the next big popular language.
Looks like his prediction will have to wait another year.
Unpopular opinion: JVM-based languages will never get to the top no matter how cool they are.
That's interesting. Have any thoughts on the future? I just read an article about how Kotlin is gonna become the next big thing, so maybe it'll rise a bit more.