Kolejny indeks TIOBE

TIOBE Programming Community Index for February 2005
February Headline: Fourth increase in a row for both Java and C#

The 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 world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, and Yahoo! are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that the TPC index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.

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.
Position (Position) Programming Language Ratings (Ratings) Status
1 C 19.820% +1.63% A
2 Java 18.340% -4.22% A
3 C++ 11.337% -4.37% A
4 PHP 10.278% +3.02% A
5 Perl 8.861% -0.61% A
6 (Visual) Basic 7.102% -2.04% A
7 SQL 3.373% -0.14% A
8 Python 2.506% +1.50% A
9 C# 2.363% +0.19% A
10 Delphi/Kylix 1.895% +1.17% A
11 JavaScript 1.779% -0.36% A
12 SAS 1.378% +0.66% A
13 COBOL 0.874% +0.13% A
14 IDL 0.686% +0.31% A--
15 ABAP 0.678% +0.51% A--
16 Lisp 0.656% +0.20% B
17 Pascal 0.556% +0.06% B
18 Fortran 0.518% +0.03% B
19 Ada 0.462% -0.04% B
20 MATLAB 0.402% +0.17% B
Legend

Some columns need extra explanation:

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(Position). This column indicates the difference in position with respect to last year.
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Ratings. The search query '+" programming" -tv' is used to calculate the TPC Index. This query is executed for the regular Google, MSN, and Yahoo! web search and the Google newsgroups for the last 12 months. The formula that is applied is #(normalized Google web hits) + #(normalized MSN web hits) + #(normalized Yahoo! web hits) + #(normalized Google newsgroup hits). The term "normalized" means that the sum of all web hits of the first 50 languages for a query is taken and evenly distributed.
*

(Ratings). This column indicates the changes in ratings for the last 12 months.
*

Status. Programming languages that have status "A" are considered to be mainstream languages. Status "A-" and "A--" indicate that a programming language is inbetween status "A" and "B". From a supportability point of view, it is strongly advised to stick to mainstream languages for industrial, mission-critical software systems. If a programming language has a rating that is higher than 0.7% for at least 3 months it is rewarded status "A". The first two months the programming language will receive status "A--" and "A-" respectively. The opposite holds for languages that go from status "A" to status "B".

Sending us artefacts or ideas how to improve the way the TPC index is calculated are very appreciated