After C fell from the top three last month, this month’s top programming languages saw relatively little change on the TIOBE Programming Community Index. However, the programming community is on the lookout for a new language with the three most desirable traits: security, speed, and an easy on-ramp for new programmers.
This month, we’ll cover the state of search, Rust’s rise in popularity, and the remarkable progress of the Mojo language just one year after its release.
At number one, Python jumped from 20.17% in September to 21.9% in October. In second place, C++ rose from 10.75% in September to 11.6%. In third, Java ascended from 9.45% to 10.51%.
The TIOBE Programming Community Index shows trends in programming languages based on search engine volume.
Searching for alternatives to Python
“In today’s world, the amount of available data of whatever kind is increasing rapidly, and the demand to harvest this data is increasing accordingly,” wrote TIOBE Software CEO Paul Jansen in the monthly release of the TIOBE Index. “Hence, there is now a need for programming languages that are good in data manipulation, number crunching and being fast. Next to this, there are two other important characteristics high on everybody’s list: languages should be easy to learn and should be secure.”
Forwarding easy-to-learn programming languages is especially important as early career programmers, or people who switched to programming as a second career, come into the field in response to the skills gap.
Python — the number one language on the TIOBE Index — is “easy to learn and secure, but not fast,” wrote Jansen. Therefore, the hunt for a new language that can do it all is on.
SEE: Attackers can ‘jailbreak’ generative AI by instructing the model to ignore its guardrails.
C++ is a popular candidate for the crown, but it isn’t secure enough due to its explicit memory management, Jansen wrote. Despite it being difficult to learn, Rust is increasing in popularity and might be a candidate to fit all three buckets well enough to reach the TIOBE Index top 10. Rust sits at number 13 in October, growing in popularity from 1.32% in September to 1.45% in October.
Mojo language enters top 50 after just one year
Jansen highlighted another language to watch: Mojo.
Created in 2023 by Chris Lattner at Modular, Inc., Mojo entered the TIOBE Index top 50 this month for the first time, at 49th place. Mojo is “a mix of Python and Swift, but much faster,” Jansen wrote. Its rapid ascension into the top 50 makes it a programming language to watch. Modular advertises Mojo as a language suitable for programming “low-level AI hardware” without having to use NVIDIA’s CUDA architecture.