TIOBE Programming Language Index News (September 2024): C Loses Its Crown
The top three programming languages on the TIOBE Programming Community Index saw a major shakeup in September, as C dropped to fourth place on the list. This is the lowest score C has ever held since its first appearance at the inception of the index in 2001.
C moved from 9.17% in August to 8.89% in September. This continues the downward trend for C, which peaked at 16.56% in December 2022 and has largely fallen ever since.
“Large C programs are hard to maintain because of the lack of object oriented features,” wrote TIOBE Software CEO Paul Jansen in the monthly release of the TIOBE Index. “Now that embedded systems tend to grow in functionality and thus in code size, and since more and more embedded compilers have good C++ support, there is tendency to switch from C to C++.”
In addition, the U.S. government identified C as a memory-unsafe language. Companies may choose Rust over C in order to fit with memory-safe standards.
