Ever wondered how your skillset stacks up in the scope of all programming languages?  I’ve presented this before in PHP class just to illustrate the popularity (as a result of the usability and easy learning curve) of the language but as my own work has drifted into several others, it’s always interested me where my skills stand.  In any case, TIOBE is a Dutch company specializing in assessing and tracking the quality of software.  They produce the TIOBE Index a monthly updated list of how languages stack up to each other.  Below is shown the current trend graph and the top 10 languages as of July 2008.

TIOBE Index, July 2008 by TIOBE bv

Position		Delta	Language	Ratings Jul 2008	Delta Jul 2007	Status
Jul 2008	Jul 2007
1	1		Java	21.345%	+0.33%	A
2	2		C	15.945%	-0.42%	A
3	3		C++	10.693%	+0.19%	A
4	4		(Visual) Basic	10.447%	+0.72%	A
5	5		PHP	9.525%	+0.87%	A
6	6		Perl	5.131%	-0.20%	A
7	8		Python	4.973%	+1.95%	A
8	7		C#	4.000%	+0.29%	A
9	9		JavaScript	2.757%	+0.24%	A
10	10		Ruby	2.735%	+0.64%	A

(For my students) In case you’re wondering why HTML is not included in this list, the definition used by the index is:

A language is considered a programming language if it is Turing complete. As a consequence, HTML and XML are not considered programming languages. This also holds for data query language SQL. SQL is not a programming language because it is, for instance, impossible to write an infinite loop in it. On the other hand, SQL extensions PL/SQL and Transact-SQL are programming languages. ASP and ASP.NET are also not programming languages because they make use of other languages such as JavaScript and VBScript or .NET compatible languages. The same is true for frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, ColdFusion, Cocoa, and technologies such as AJAX. Finally, we have also excluded assembly languages, although Turing complete, because they have a very different nature.

And finally, for those of you in my weekend classes…yes, it’s 2 hours after class and yes, I am still up.  Good night.