Java Ranks Second on Popularity Index

And the programming language of the year is…not Java.

According to TIOBE Software's latest Programming Community Index, JavaScript earned that title. It's hard to believe that a dynamic scripter edged out the most widely used enterprise software development language. But the growing popularity of JavaScript, which has been noted by many industry watchers, made it TIOBE's "biggest mover of 2014."    

"The JavaScript programming language has a long history and is always considered as the 'ugly duckling' from a language design point of view," the TIOBE Web site declared. "Nevertheless, JavaScript has become the standard browser language through the years. Boosted by the successes of JavaScript libraries and frameworks JQuery, Bootstrap, Node.js and GWT, JavaScript really deserves this award."

And yet, Java actually ranked second on TIOBE's Index for January 2015, with a 15.528 percent rating, down 1 percent from the previous index. The C language earned a 16.703 percent rating, which was down 1.24 percent . JavaScript was ranked ninth in this index at 3.24 percent, which was up 1.70 percent.

Furthermore, TIOBE said it expects both Java and Swift, the successor to Apple's Objective C programming language, to gain popularity among mobile app developers. Java has been ranked No. 1 on the TIOBE Index several times.

"It is always tempting to try to forecast what will change in 2015," the Web site states. "Objective-C will probably lose its dominant position in mobile app development, whereas Java and Swift will gain traction in that field. Java might even become number one of the TIOBE index again."

TIOBE is a Netherlands-based provider of software quality assessment services based on the ISO/IEC 9126 standard. The company ranks the popularity of software languages based on "the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses, and third-party vendors." The purpose of the Index, the company says, is to provide coders with a kind of contextual yardstick with which to measure their own language skills against current demand.

Altogether, TIOBE ranks 50 programming languages, though it follows many more. The company emphasizes that the Index measures only the popularity of a language, not its actual quality (no "bests") nor the number of lines of code written in it. And this month the company added 16 additional search engines to arrive at its findings. An overview of all search engines used can be found on the TIOBE index definition page.

Posted by John K. Waters on January 13, 2015