And the winner is... VB.NET ?!
Every time I see an updated version of the TIOBE index it strikes me differently. Sometimes I'm surprised to see some programming languages in the TOP 20 that I didn't even know existed (happens all the time,) sometimes it's the realization of the languages on the rise like Ruby and Lua in recent years.
Take a look at this month's list.
| 1 | Java | 20.176% | |
| 2 | C | 15.292% | |
| 3 | (Visual) Basic | 10.782% | |
| 4 | PHP | 10.637% | |
| 5 | C++ | 10.484% | |
| 6 | Perl | 5.869% | |
| 7 | Python | 4.613% | |
| 8 | C# | 3.963% | |
| 9 | Ruby | 2.851% | |
| 10 | Delphi | 2.641% | |
| 11 | JavaScript | 2.411% | |
| 12 | D | 1.314% | |
| 13 | SAS | 0.738% | |
| 14 | PL/SQL | 0.625% | |
| 15 | Pascal | 0.498% | |
| 16 | Lisp/Scheme | 0.449% | |
| 17 | Ada | 0.431% | |
| 18 | COBOL | 0.411% | |
| 19 | Lua | 0.393% | |
| 20 | FoxPro/xBase | 0.385% |
This month, although not new, what hit me was the state of the .Net languages. I'm definitely a C# guy. You'd have to tempt me with serious money to get me doing VB.Net again (IronRuby, on the other hand, would be a different story ;)
Although I'm not exactly surprised to see the .Net languages being dwarfed by other heavy hitters like Java and C, which enjoy a little more platform-independence, it's always an humbling effect seeing VB that far ahead of C#.
The interesting thing with this index is how it is built. It serves as a good thermometer to what kind of support you can expect to find on the Internet for that language. That's why it surprises me in relation to Visual Basic in particular.
I understand the index lumps together VB.NET, VB6, plain Basic, etc, but the non-Net versions of VB have been considered legacy for so long now that I tend to think VB.NET is indeed what is pushing Visual Basic to the top.
Maybe it's just because "Visual Basic" or "VB" as much easier search terms than "C#", "CSharp", "C-sharp", etc.
I've been reading about .Net online for almost 8 years now and C# has always seemed more prevalent than VB.NET in article, samples, documentation, and Open Source projects.
What about you? Anything interesting in this list? Is VB really the bomb?