Tiobe’s Programming Language of the Year honors go to the language with the most growth in popularity year over year. Credit: Thinkstock While C# fell short of Tiobe’s Programming Language of the Year honors for 2022, Tiobe expects the Microsoft-built object-oriented, type-safe language to snag the honor for 2023. Tiobe will announce the winning programming language in January. Tiobe gives Programming Language of the Year honors to the language with the most growth year over year in its popularity index. At the end of 2022, it appeared C# would take the title. However, C++ overtook C# in the final month, growing by 4.62 percentage points. “This year we are a bit surer that C# is going to win. It gained +2.38% in one year, whereas its closest contenders Fortran and F# only gained +0.64% and +0.48% respectively,” Tiobe said in its December bulletin. In fact, most of the top 20 languages lost popularity in 2023, whereas the gainers typically come from lower in the chart. Tiobe describes this as the long tale, where small languages reside. Why the uptick for C#? Tiobe CEO Paul Jansen believes the language is attracting Java developers. “I think that Java developers are moving to C# and Kotlin because these languages are more expressive and have no license issues.” Software quality services company Tiobe bases its monthly popularity index on a formula that assesses the number of skilled engineers worldwide, courses, and third-party vendors for each language, using search engines such as Bing, Google, and Yahoo. The Tiobe top 10 for December 2023: Python, with a rating of 13.86% C, 11.44% C++, 10.01% Java, 7.99% C#, 7.3% JavaScript, 2.9% PHP, 2.01% Visual Basic, 2.82% SQL, 1.61% Assembly, 1.11% The rival Pypl Index of Language Popularity gauges language popularity based on how often language tutorials are searched on in Google. The Pypl top 10 for December 2023: Python, with a share of 28.09% Java, 15.81% JavaScript, 8.93% C/C++, 6.8% C#, 6.84% PHP, 4.6% R, 4.53% TypeScript, 2.81% Swift, 2.8% Objective-C, 2.33% Related content analysis Beyond the usual suspects: 5 fresh data science tools to try today The mid-month report includes quick tips for easier Python installation, a new VS Code-like IDE just for Python and R users, and five newer data science tools you won't want to miss. By Serdar Yegulalp Jul 12, 2024 2 mins Python Programming Languages Software Development analysis Generative AI won’t fix cloud migration You’ve probably heard how generative AI will solve all cloud migration problems. It’s not that simple. Generative AI could actually make it harder and more costly. By David Linthicum Jul 12, 2024 5 mins Generative AI Artificial Intelligence Cloud Computing news HR professionals trust AI recommendations HireVue survey finds 73% of HR professionals trust AI to make candidate recommendations, while 75% of workers are opposed to AI making hiring decisions. By Paul Krill Jul 11, 2024 3 mins Technology Industry Careers how-to Safety off: Programming in Rust with `unsafe` What does it mean to write unsafe code in Rust, and what can you do (and not do) with the 'unsafe' keyword? The facts may surprise you. By Serdar Yegulalp Jul 11, 2024 8 mins Rust Programming Languages Software Development Resources Videos