C++, Go, and Rust gaining popularity – Tiobe

With Tiobe’s February 2025 rankings, the publisher of the monthly index of programming language popularity notes that fast programming languages such as C++, Go, and Rust are gaining ground. But index leader Python, described as a “slow” language by Tiobe CEO Paul Jansen, has held on to the top spot because it is easy to learn, Jansen said.

The Tiobe February index puts Python in the lead with a rating of 23.88%, followed by C++ at 11.37%, Java at 10.66%, C at 9.84%, and C# at 4.12%. Jansen said in his bulletin accompanying the index that program speed is getting important as more and more numbers need to be crunched per second. Thus fast languages are gaining in the index. He called attention to Mojo and Zig as two other fast languages on the upswing.

Jansen mentioned AI as one of the reasons for the growing importance of fast languages, along with applications such as data mining, video processing, and trading. However, Python survives next to the “race monsters” despite its slowness. “This is because there is another driver nowadays except for performance: how easy is it to learn a new programming language,” Jansen said.

The world needs more programmers and developing apps completely in AI is not possible yet, said Jansen. “Since the number of graduated software engineers is lower than is needed, all kind of non-software engineers are jumping on the programming bandwagon, and their favorite language is Python. This is why Python is here to stay.”

Python was named Tiobe’s language of the year for 2024 last month, having gained the highest increase in ratings in the index during that calendar year.

Tiobe’s index is calculated using a formula that assesses the number of skilled engineers worldwide, courses, and third-party vendors pertinent to a language, by examining websites such as Google, Bing, Amazon, and Wikipedia.

The Tiobe index top 10 for February 2025:

Python, with a rating of 23.88%

C++, 11.37%

Java, 10.66%

C, 9.84%

C#, 4.12%

JavaScript, 3.78%

SQL, 2.87%

Go, 2.26%

Delphi/Object Pascal, 2.18%

Visual Basic, 2.04%

Rust was ranked 13th, with a 1.37% rating.

The rival Pypl Popularity of Programming Language index assesses language popularity by analyzing how often language tutorials are searched in Google. The Pypl index top 10 for February 2025:

Python, with a 29.85% share

Java, 15.15%

JavaScript, 7.92

C/C++, 7.19%

C#, 6.13%

R, 4.55%

PHP, 3.72%

Rust, 3.07%

Objective-C, 2.86%

TypeScript, 2.74%