A current popularity snapshot, plus the history that explains why these languages are still here.
C took shape at Bell Labs between 1969 and 1973 while Unix was being developed; the Unix kernel was rewritten in C in 1973. Python was created in the early 1990s at CWI as a successor to ABC. Java grew out of Sun Microsystems' work on portable software and was released publicly in 1995. JavaScript was created at Netscape in 1995 to make web pages programmable inside the browser.
The pattern is useful: languages are shaped by the limits of the machines, software, and developer tools around them. Some aim for speed or hardware control. Others make programming easier to read, safer to maintain, better suited to data, or accessible to beginners.
What TIOBE measures matters. The TIOBE Programming Community Index is a monthly popularity indicator. Its ratings are calculated from normalized search-result counts for queries such as +"Python programming" across qualifying websites. It does not measure which language is best, how many lines of code exist, or the exact share of developers using a language.
This page uses the official September 2026 TIOBE ranking. The top 20 changed noticeably from the earlier version of this page: Rust is now #10, while Scratch, Ada, Objective-C, and COBOL are in the top 20; Kotlin, MATLAB, Ruby, and Perl are currently outside it.
The dates are different because the problems were different
September 2026 TIOBE ratings — a search-result-based popularity indicator, not usage share
These categories overlap. Most languages are used in more than one kind of work.
Ranked by TIOBE, explained by the problem each language was built to handle
Software lasts a long time when it becomes part of something expensive, important, or difficult to replace. That is one reason languages from very different eras can sit next to each other in the same 2026 ranking.
COBOL, first developed around 1959–1960, remains tied to long-lived business and transaction-processing systems. Fortran, commercially released in 1957, is still used in scientific and high-performance computing, including atmospheric and oceanic work. C remains fundamental to systems and embedded software. Newer languages often grow alongside these systems instead of instantly replacing them.
Python is #1 in the September 2026 TIOBE Index, while C, C++, Java, and C# remain near the top. Rust has climbed to #10. Near the edge of the top 20, older languages such as Ada and Objective-C have returned, while Julia sits just outside at #21.
TIOBE does not directly measure usefulness, job demand, developer satisfaction, or production code. It measures one kind of public visibility. That makes it useful as a signal, especially when you compare it with other evidence instead of treating the ranking as a scoreboard for which language is “best.”
The more useful question is usually: what problem is this language good at solving, and why did people build it this way?
Understand the problem first. Then choose the tool.
Ranking data were verified against TIOBE on September 20, 2026. Historical claims were tightened to remove unsupported quotations, absolute claims, and places where the earlier page confused related languages such as Visual Basic, VBA, and Visual Basic .NET.