10 Most In Demand Programming Languages of 2020 – Updated (Tiobe Index)
Are you a programmer looking to make a change, perhaps in to a new job, employer or programming language.
Or maybe you are currently studying computer science or have just completed a degree and you are trying to decide on which languages to adopt in order to increase your employment prospects.
Alternately, you could be looking to make a career switch into programming but want to make sure that you don’t walk into it blind and end up having investing in a dead language, that is in decline. You need to make sure you are focusing on languages with good, sustained interest and which are on the up.
This is why all programmers or would be programmers should pay attention to the Tiobe Index which charts the popularity of programming languages and compiles it into a list of the top 20 most popular programming languages.
You can see the results of the survey below and you can see my comments directly below:
Key Points:
- The top 6 programming languages of: C, Java, C++, C#, Visual Basic and Python have not changed position over the past year and, have occupied the top 10 spots consistently for the past 10 years, and they represent solid dependable career options.
- R, Go and Scratch have shown significant surges in popularity over the last year.
- Assembly Language haas shown significant declines in popularity in recent years, which means there is a chance that supply may have caught up with demand.
- Perl and Objective-C have all shown recent declines in popularity, suggesting that there could currently be an oversupply in this area so you might want to be cautious about entering these areas for the moment, or at least until they show an upswing in demand.
should be adopted when starting to build a new software system. The definition of the TIOBE index can be found here.
| May 2020 | May 2019 | Change | Programming Language | Ratings | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 |  |
C | 17.07% | +2.82% |
| 2 | 1 |  |
Java | 16.28% | +0.28% |
| 3 | 4 | |
Python | 9.12% | +1.29% |
| 4 | 3 | |
C++ | 6.13% | -1.97% |
| 5 | 6 | |
C# | 4.29% | +0.30% |
| 6 | 5 | |
Visual Basic | 4.18% | -1.01% |
| 7 | 7 | JavaScript | 2.68% | -0.01% | |
| 8 | 9 | |
PHP | 2.49% | -0.00% |
| 9 | 8 | |
SQL | 2.09% | -0.47% |
| 10 | 21 |  |
R | 1.85% | +0.90% |
| 11 | 18 | |
Swift | 1.79% | +0.64% |
| 12 | 19 | |
Go | 1.27% | +0.15% |
| 13 | 14 | |
MATLAB | 1.17% | -0.20% |
| 14 | 10 |  |
Assembly language | 1.12% | -0.69% |
| 15 | 15 | Ruby | 1.02% | -0.32% | |
| 16 | 20 | |
PL/SQL | 0.99% | -0.03% |
| 17 | 16 | |
Classic Visual Basic | 0.89% | -0.43% |
| 18 | 13 | |
Perl | 0.88% | -0.51% |
| 19 | 28 | |
Scratch | 0.83% | +0.32% |
| 20 | 11 | |
Objective-C | 0.80% | -0.83% |
If you have been programming for a while and are looking at moving into management, try out this article, How Is the Scrum Master’s Role Different From a Project Manager Role.
