C# Passes Visual Basic .NET in Programming Language Popularity Index -- Visual Studio Magazine

C# Passes Visual Basic .NET in Programming Language Popularity Index

By David Ramel
12/18/2019

Microsoft's C# programming language has passed Visual Basic .NET on the TIOBE Index -- which measures language popularity -- and is even in the running for being named "Programming Language of the Year" for 2019.

That accolade won't be awarded until next month, but in the meantime, TIOBE published its December 2019 report that basically features the same cast of usual characters. In fact, the same four languages that top the December 2018 list also lead the December 2019 list in the exact same order: Java, C, Python and C++.

It isn't until position No. 5 that we see some movement, as C# took over fifth place from Visual Basic .NET, another Microsoft language that dropped to sixth, effectively transposing their rankings from last year.

Here's the top 15 languages from the new report:

**[Click on image for larger view.]** TIOBE Index for December 2019 *(source: TIOBE Index).*

What's more, TIOBE indicated that C# was being considered for top language of the year along with other perennial favorites.

"TIOBE will announce the programming language of the year next month," the new report said. "There are 4 candidates for this title: Java (+1.3%), C (+1.8%), Python (+1.9%) and C# (+1.4%). These 4 languages are all in the top 5. Only C++ lost some ranking points in 2019. Python is top favorite for the title. It was already programming language of the year 2018, but its popularity keeps growing. This is mainly due to the lack of programmers in the world and the ease of learning this language if compared to other languages. C is also doing well thanks to the rise of Internet of Things. Why Java and C# are doing well is unclear, but it would be the first time that C# becomes the programming language of the year. Let's see what will happen next month!"

Here's the methodology behind the index: "The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. Popular search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube and Baidu are used to calculate the ratings. It is important to note that the TIOBE index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written. The index can be used to check whether your programming skills are still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what programming language should be adopted when starting to build a new software system. The definition of the TIOBE index can be found here."

About the Author

David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.

Printable Format

comments powered by Disqus

Featured

Hands On: New VS Code Insiders Build Creates Web Page from Image in Seconds

New Vision support with GitHub Copilot in the latest Visual Studio Code Insiders build takes a user-supplied mockup image and creates a web page from it in seconds, handling all the HTML and CSS.
Naive Bayes Regression Using C#

Dr. James McCaffrey from Microsoft Research presents a complete end-to-end demonstration of the naive Bayes regression technique, where the goal is to predict a single numeric value. Compared to other machine learning regression techniques, naive Bayes regression is usually less accurate, but is simple, easy to implement and customize, works on both large and small datasets, is highly interpretable, and doesn't require tuning any hyperparameters.
VS Code Copilot Previews New GPT-4o AI Code Completion Model

The 4o upgrade includes additional training on more than 275,000 high-quality public repositories in over 30 popular programming languages, said Microsoft-owned GitHub, which created the original "AI pair programmer" years ago.
Microsoft's Rust Embrace Continues with Azure SDK Beta

"Rust's strong type system and ownership model help prevent common programming errors such as null pointer dereferencing and buffer overflows, leading to more secure and stable code."
Xcode IDE from Microsoft Archrival Apple Gets Copilot AI

Just after expanding the reach of its Copilot AI coding assistant to the open-source Eclipse IDE, Microsoft showcased how it's going even further, providing details about a preview version for the Xcode IDE from archrival Apple.