The TIOBE Programming Community Index for Feb 2010 shows that the most popular programming languages are:

  • Java (17% – strongly trending downwards from 26.5% in 2001 – seems governments are NOT interested in java solutions anymore)
  • C (17% trending downwards from 21% in 2001)
  • PHP (10% – rapidly rose from 1.5% 2001 to 5% in 2002 and since has been trending upwards – website only)
  • C++ (9% and rapidly falling from its peak of 17.5% in 2003),
  • VB (7% and falling from its peaks of 11.5% in 2004 an 2008 – a legacy language which will be superceded by C# in the .NET world)
  • C# (5% and strongly trending upwards from 0.5% in 2001 – the main language for .NET)
  • Python (4% trending up from 1% in 2003 – web scripting – fast development but slow running)
  • Perl(3.6% strong down trend from 10.7% in 2004)
  • Delphi (2.7% and trending up from 1.2% in 2002, although has hit higher peaks in between – the only RAD native compiled language for Win32 and soon to be Linux, MacOS and Win64 – fast development and fast running)
  • Javascript (2.6% trending up fro 1.2% in 2002 – scripting for websites and AJAX)
  • Ruby (2.4% – static after a rapid rise to 2.5% in 2007 – scripting for websites)
  • Objective-C (1.8% a big rise from 0.2% a year ago – the main language for Apple Cocoa API thus mainly for MacOS and iPhone apps)
  • Go (1.8% also a big rise from ~zero a year ago – introduced in 2003 as an multi-threaded agent-based language and taken over by Google in late 2009 as an experimental language combining the fast development of Python with the safety and fast running of C++).

See here