[panny]

Now remind me of every time you said Tiobe didn't matter when we pointed out Rust wasn't in the top 10 :)

I'm more interested in that massive collapse in python over the past year. Is it due to everyone running for the doors just before the AI bubble pops? Or did AI make rewriting everything Python into Rust a reality perhaps?

[baranul]

Exactly! Often, it's that TIOBE doesn't count, if their favorite language is not doing well or goes down in the rankings. Then, if their language moves up in the rankings, it is time to shout from the rooftops to tell everyone to go look how well they're doing on TIOBE.

[zdkaster]

What's more interesting is Visual Basic is ranked as #7 and I couldn't get my head around why this is the case, lol.

[duskwuff]

> I couldn't get my head around why this is the case, lol.

Because TIOBE's methodology is terrible, and always has been.

https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/programminglanguages_defin...

It's literally based on the (estimated) number of search engine hits for e.g. "Python programming" on Google and a handful of site-specific search engines (e.g. Amazon, eBay, Walmart, microsoft.com, etc), with some manually applied tweaks for languages with easily confusable names. Many of the fluctuations in rankings - like the big dip in the ranking for C between 2015 and 2018 - probably have more to do with changes in search engine algorithms than any real change in popularity.

[gf000]

https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2026/04/14/language-rankings-1-2...

This is usually considered a better ranking. This has Rust at #20.

[zdkaster]

Oh, thanks for the info. That's suprisingly a weird index to measure usage popularity...

[dlcarrier]

Scratch at #12 is even stranger. It's not even a programming language.

[baranul]

It makes sense, in terms of general usage and popularity, but not in terms of most requested for the job market or having the most legacy code.

Different rankings measure different things, so it depends on what and how people want to assess languages and usage.

[duskwuff]

It's sort of a programming language. But not a particularly general-purpose one.

[netbsdusers]

It wouldn't surprise me if I learned that the vast majority of programming globally is in languages like Visual Basic or PHP that are utterly unfashionable on a board like this, but still make the world go round.

[zdkaster]

It's a bit hard to comprehend that's reality to be honest. But I could see that it could be the case from the fact that old industrial factories or old corporates would still run with what works for them.

[DangitBobby]

The chart shows python really surged in popularity in the 2020s. I suppose the change is surge is from AI/ML really heating up for a few years, and is now starting to cool off.