Longtime leading programming language for systems development dropped to fourth in the Tiobe index for September, its lowest position ever. Credit: Krakenimages.com/Shutterstock The C language has dropped to fourth place in the Tiobe index of programming language popularity, its lowest position in the monthly index ever. The index was begun in 2001. In the Tiobe Programming Community Index for September 2024, published September 7, the C language finished behind first-ranked Python, followed by C++ in second place and Java in third. Described by software quality services company Tiobe as “one of the mothers of all programming languages,” C dates back to the early 1970s. Tiobe noted that C has been a favorite of embedded systems for a very long time. The only serious drawback of C, so far, cited by Tiobe, was that it was not designed to scale. “Large C programs are hard to maintain because of the lack of object-oriented features,” Tiobe CEO Paul Jansen said. “Now that embedded systems tend to grow in functionality and thus in code size, and since more and more embedded compilers have good C++ support, there is tendency to switch from C to C++.” The C language, along with still-thriving C++, was the target of a February report from the White House Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD), which recommended that software developers abandon C and C++ in favor of memory-safe languages such as Rust. Companies indeed are checking out Rust as an alternative for C, said Jansen. “C might lose its mojo, but it will stay in the Tiobe index top 10 for a very long time. Its installed base is incredible and it is part of a zillion of safety-critical systems around the world,” he added. Tiobe’s index assesses language popularity by examining the number of skilled engineers worldwide, courses, and third-party vendors pertaining to a language, based on searches of websites such as Google, Amazon, Wikipedia, and Bing. The top 10 languages in the Tiobe index for September 2024: Python, with a rating of 20.17% C++. 10.75% Java, 9.45% C, 8.89% C#, 6.08% JavaScript, 3.92% Visual Basic, 2.7% Go, 2.35% SQL, 1.94% Fortran, 1.78% This rival Pypl Popularity of Programming Language index assesses language popularity based on how often language tutorials are searched on in Google. The top 10 languages in the Pypl index for September 2024: Python, 26.66% Java, 15.64% JavaScript, 8.3% C#, 6.64% C/C++, 6.46% R, 4.66% PHP, 4.35% TypeScript, 2.96% Swift, 2.69% Rust, 2.65% C LanguageProgramming LanguagesSoftware Development