Why C Surged to #1 in TIOBE’s May 2020 Ranking – Insights and Trends

TIOBE has released its May 2020 programming language ranking.

TIOBE May 2020 TOP 20 Programming Languages

The biggest highlight is C overtaking Java to return to the number‑one position, a rank it last held in 2015. The CEO, Paul Jansen, attributes this to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, noting that languages used in data science (Python, R) and embedded systems (C, C++) are benefiting.

Data‑science language R stays within the top ten, while MATLAB jumps from 18th to 13th, the largest monthly rise among the top‑20.

Scratch continues its upward trend, moving up one spot, indicating sustained interest in children’s programming.

Objective‑C keeps dropping, now at the bottom of the top‑20 list.

Rust also stands out, climbing from 27th to 21st, a surprising jump that may push it into the top‑20 soon.

TOP 10 Language Trend (2002‑2020)

Ranks 21‑50

Ranks 51‑100 (alphabetical list)

(Visual) FoxPro, ABC, Awk, Bash, BBC BASIC, bc, Bourne shell, C shell, cg, Clean, Clojure, CoffeeScript, Common Lisp, Crystal, cT, Elixir, Euphoria, Falcon, Forth, Hack, Icon, Inform, Io, Korn shell, Ladder Logic, LiveCode, Maple, Mercury, ML, MQL4, NATURAL, Object Pascal, OCaml, OpenCL, Oz, PL/I, PostScript, Programming Without Coding Technology, Q, Raku, Red, Ring, S, SPARK, Standard ML, Stata, Tcl, Vala/Genie, Verilog, VHDL

The TIOBE Programming Community Index measures language popularity based on the number of engineers, courses, and third‑party vendors, using search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube, and Baidu. The exact calculation method is available on the TIOBE website.

Note that the TIOBE index does not indicate language quality; developers can use it to assess whether to update their skills or choose a language for new software projects.

For detailed rankings, visit the TIOBE official site.