Top 100 Most Popular Programming Languages Of 2016
Short Bytes: You might be familiarized with the top programming languages like C++, Java, Python, JavaScript etc., but there exists a vast pool of programming languages that you need to know about. All these languages have different strengths and applications that should be studied before learning them. Here, we are sharing a list of the top 100 most popular programming languages of 2016.
From time to time, we keep telling you which programming you should learn to make a career that you love. As a novice programmer, choosing a trending programming language is one of the biggest choices that a person makes.
Various websites dedicated to the programming community keep releasing their programming language indexes throughout the year. With each passing year, they have a larger set of programming languages to choose from.
In December 2015, we shared our own list of the most popular programming languages that dominated the year 2015 using the search trends on Google.
As we’re in the sixth month of 2016, it’s a good idea to take a look at the most popular programming languages at the moment. Here, we are sharing the TIOBE Programming Community Index.
This rating is based on multiple factors like the number of skilled engineers, third party vendors, and courses. TIOBE also uses popular search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. to calculate its ratings.
Here’s the list of top 20 programming languages:
| Jun 2016 | Jun 2015 | Programming Language | Ratings | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Java | 20.794% | +2.97% |
| 2 | 2 | C | 12.376% | -4.41% |
| 3 | 3 | C++ | 6.199% | -1.56% |
| 4 | 6 | Python | 3.900% | -0.10% |
| 5 | 4 | C# | 3.786% | -1.27% |
| 6 | 8 | PHP | 3.227% | +0.36% |
| 7 | 9 | JavaScript | 2.583% | +0.29% |
| 8 | 12 | Perl | 2.395% | +0.64% |
| 9 | 7 | Visual Basic .NET | 2.353% | -0.82% |
| 10 | 16 | Ruby | 2.336% | +0.98% |
| 11 | 11 | Visual Basic | 2.254% | +0.41% |
| 12 | 23 | Assembly language | 2.119% | +1.36% |
| 13 | 10 | Delphi/Object Pascal | 1.939% | +0.07% |
| 14 | 14 | Swift | 1.831% | +0.39% |
| 15 | 5 | Objective-C | 1.704% | -2.64% |
| 16 | 13 | R | 1.540% | +0.02% |
| 17 | 15 | MATLAB | 1.447% | +0.01% |
| 18 | 17 | PL/SQL | 1.346% | +0.12% |
| 19 | 26 | D | 1.063% | +0.45% |
| 20 | 18 | COBOL | 1.048% | +0.10% (Source: TIOBE Index) |
TIOBE notes that about 10 years ago, the first eight languages covered about 80% market. Today, with the popularity of other languages, this percentage has declined to 55%.
As you can see in the list, Java continues to hold the top spot (as we predicted) with a rating of 20.794%, followed by C and C++.
The programming languages that scored less than 1% score, including the likes of Go, Scala, Dart, and Lua, have been listed in the following list for positions 21-50:
| Position | Programming Language | Ratings |
|---|---|---|
| 21 | Fortran | 0.956% |
| 22 | Scratch | 0.954% |
| 23 | ABAP | 0.917% |
| 24 | Dart | 0.890% |
| 25 | SAS | 0.842% |
| 26 | Groovy | 0.837% |
| 27 | Transact-SQL | 0.784% |
| 28 | Lisp | 0.673% |
| 29 | Ada | 0.665% |
| 30 | Scala | 0.613% |
| 31 | Lua | 0.608% |
| 32 | Logo | 0.511% |
| 33 | Prolog | 0.471% |
| 34 | Scheme | 0.462% |
| 35 | RPG (OS/400) | 0.417% |
| 36 | LabVIEW | 0.410% |
| 37 | OpenEdge ABL | 0.401% |
| 38 | Erlang | 0.388% |
| 39 | Haskell | 0.334% |
| 40 | Alice | 0.322% |
| 41 | Apex | 0.287% |
| 42 | Bash | 0.286% |
| 43 | F# | 0.278% |
| 44 | Q | 0.271% |
| 45 | Ladder Logic | 0.258% |
| 46 | Rust | 0.258% |
| 47 | Awk | 0.236% |
| 48 | Go | 0.209% |
| 49 | (Visual) FoxPro | 0.201% |
| 50 | VBScript | 0.198% (Source: TIOBE Index) |
The final batch of the programming languages i.e. languages holding positions 51-100, has been listed in the alphabetical order as their differences are relatively very small:
Did you find this list of top 100 programming languages helpful? Share your views in the comments below.
