Python Surges in Popularity. And So Does Perl

Last month, Python 'reached the highest ranking a programming language ever had in the TIOBE index,' according to TIOBE CEO Paul Jansen.

'We thought Python couldn't grow any further, but AI code assistants let Python take yet another step forward.'
According to recent studies of Stanford University (Yegor Denisov-Blanch), AI code assistants such as Microsoft Copilot, Cursor or Google Gemini Code Assist are 20% more effective if used for popular programming languages. The reason for this is obvious: there is more code for these languages available to train the underlying models. This trend is visible in the TIOBE index as well, where we see a consolidation of languages at the top. Why would you start to learn a new obscure language for which no AI assistance is available? This is the modern way of saying that you don't want to learn a new language that is hardly documented and/or has too few libraries that can help you.

TIOBE's 'Programming Community Index' attempts to calculate the popularity of languages using the number of skilled engineers, courses, and third-party vendors. It nows gives Python a 26.14% rating, which TechRepublic notes 'is well ahead of the next two programming languages on this month's leaderboard: C++ is at 9.18% and C is 9.03%.' But the first top six languages haven't changed since last year...

PythonC++C JavaC#JavaScript
Since August of 2024 SQL has dropped from its #7 rank down to #12 (meaning Visual Basic and Go each rise up one rank from their position a year ago, into the #7 and #8 positions).
In the last year Perl has risen from the #25 position to #9, beating out Delphi/Oracle Pascal at #10, and Fortran at #11 (last year's #10). TIOBE CEO Jansen 'told TechRepublic in an email that many people were asking why Perl was becoming more popular, but he didn't have a definitive answer. He said he double-checked the underlying data and found the increase to be accurate, though the reason for the shift remains unclear.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.