Java has won the "TIOBE Programming Language of 2005″ award. The Java language has increased its popularity in 2005 with 4.77%. This is the highest positive delta if compared to other programming languages. Congratulations to the Java team! Java version 5, released at the end of 2004, has definitely proven to be a step forward in strong typing with its generic types. We are looking forward to Java 6 in 2006! The runners up for 2005 are C# (+1.35%) and suprisingly Visual Basic (+1.17%).

The TIOBE Programming Community index gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, and Yahoo! are used to calculate the ratings.

Note: The TPC index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.

The algorithmic nature of computation makes it free from editorial bias.

Position
Jan 2006		 Position
Jan 2005		 Delta Programming Language Ratings

Jan 2006

 Delta
Jan 2005		 Status
1 2 Java 22.254% +4.77% A
2 1 C 19.008% -1.70% A
3 3 C++ 11.464% -0.46% A
4 4 PHP 9.402% -0.07% A
5 5 (Visual) Basic 9.089% +1.16% A
6 6 Perl 7.045% -0.41% A
7 9 C# 3.554% +1.35% A
8 7 Python 2.604% -0.23% A
9 8 Delphi/Kylix 1.582% -0.98% A
10 10 JavaScript 1.538% -0.16% A
11 12 SAS 1.162% -0.24% A
12 11 PL/SQL 1.032% -0.62% A
13 13 COBOL 0.763% -0.30% A
14 17 Lisp/Scheme 0.604% +0.00% A–
15 16 Pascal 0.525% -0.11% B
16 25 ColdFusion 0.520% +0.25% B
17 18 VB.NET 0.511% -0.04% A–
18 19 Fortran 0.466% -0.05% B
19 20 Ada 0.465% -0.02% B
20 48 28*! Visual FoxPro 0.448% +0.37% B

Note: Ruby is currently at 22nd position.

Source: TIOBE via Calvin Austin