For the second time in three years, C# has been awarded the accolade TIOBE Programming Language of the Year by virtue of have achieved the largest year-on-year increase in its ranking on the TIOBE Index.

 In case you are not familiar with it, the TIOBE index is intended to serve an indicator of the popularity of programming languages based on the factors including the number of skilled engineers world-wide; books and courses about them and searches for the language's name. Data from Google, Amazon, Wikipedia, Bing and more than 20 other websites are used to calculate the ratings. 

As we constantly reiterating the resulting rankings need to be regarded with some healthy scepticism. Its own rubric states:

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.

While it does reflect variations in the demand for skills in different programming languages, it has a tendency to alternately overshoot and undershoot which gives its monthly Top 10 Chart its characteristic zig-zag pattern. 

The TIOBE "Programming Language of the Year" award which uses the annual change in ratings was introduced in 2003, two years after TIOBE started to publishing its monthly index in June 2001, twelve different languages have taken this title:

Python holds the record for the most wins, having earned the honor six times - in 200, 2010, 2018, 2020, 2021 and last year, 2024. However, as this month's Top 10 chart shows, having achieved the all-time-high percentage rating in the history of the index, 26.98% in July 2025, Python has declined by 4.37%. Meanwhile midway down the chart C#'s share has been on the increase and while it both started and finished the year in 5th position,  its overall gain was 2.94%. 

C# is a relatively young language.  It was developed at Microsoft in the late 90s, at which time the language was internally code named COOL (C-like Object Oriented Language). Microsoft had headhunted Anders Hejlsberg from Borland (where he had been the chief architect of Delphi and Turbo Pascal) specifically to build a modern, managed language that could compete with Java.

While C# 1.0 was officially released in January 2002, together with .NET Framework 1.0 as part of Visual Studio .NET it was announced in July 2000 at PDC (Professional Developers Conference). At that event Hejlsberg’s central pitch was that C# combined the power of C++ with the productivity of Visual Basic, that allowed for "component-oriented programming", a streamlined programming experience saying:

"What we’ve tried to do, going from C++ to C#, is firstly the simplification... and increased productivity, but also to build a language that supports what I call component-oriented programming."

He told the audience of developers:

"In C++, you can do component-oriented programming; it’s just harder. You have to do all sorts of macros, and IDL files, and type libraries, and what have you. We wanted to roll all of that in and give you that ‘one-stop’ experience of programming."

His explanation of why Microsoft didn't just keep extending C++ was to avoid what he dubbed "compatibility tax":

"With the design of C#, we had the luxury of not having any backwards compatibility to worry about... we didn't have any 'compatibility tax'."

While the message from Bill Gates back in 2000 was to embrace C# as the first class language for .NET within Microsoft there was an internal battle between C# and C++ with the C++ faction tending to have the upper hand so despite C# having many advantages over Java it is only recently, with C# being a thriving open source language while Java is still under the influence of Oracle, that C# seems poised to live up to its promise, as discussed in C# Could Overtake Java in TIOBE Index. 

If C# manages to sustain its increasing share it is highly likely that it will overtake Java in the TIOBE index during the coming year. In which case, given that it is currently C++ that is in 4th place with a faster decline than Java, C# should jump from 5th place to 2nd. That is something that we'll be looking out for.

Credit: Gemini/Google

•  Mike James is the author of Deep C#: Dive Into Modern C#, in which he provides a “deep dive” into various topics that are important or central to the language. 
  

More Information

TIOBE Index

Related Articles

Python Is TIOBE Index Language Of The Year 2024

C# Could Overtake Java in TIOBE Index

C# Is TIOBE Language of the Year

C# Poised To Overtake Java In TIOBE Index

To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter, subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on Facebook or Linkedin.

Comments

Make a Comment or View Existing Comments Using Disqus

or email your comment to: comments@i-programmer.info

<ASIN:B09FTLPTP9>