C# Claims Top Spot: TIOBE Awards Annual Programming Language Honor for 2023

TIOBE has announced that C# has successfully secured the annual programming language award in 2023, marking the first time C# has achieved this honor in the history of the TIOBE index. Over the years, C# has consistently ranked in the top ten and became the fastest-growing programming language last year with a growth rate of +1.43%. Following closely behind are Scratch (+0.83%) and Fortran (+0.64%).

Paul Jansen, the CEO of TIOBE, stated that C# is closely following the footsteps of the four major mainstream languages, gradually encroaching on Java’s market share, and gaining increasing popularity in areas such as the backend of web applications and the gaming industry (thanks to Unity). He believes, “C# is free to use, has a stable development pace, and each new release enhances the language’s expressiveness. C# will continue to exist and may even surpass Java soon.”

In addition, there were other interesting changes in last year’s TIOBE index. Fortran and Kotlin replaced R and Perl, securing a place in the top 20 languages. An intriguing question is: which languages will enter the top 20 of the TIOBE index in 2024?

Paul’s opinion is that it is difficult to predict. Although Julia briefly entered the TIOBE index in 2023, it failed to maintain its position. For Julia to get a second chance, the language and community need to mature further. He said, “I would bet on Dart (with Flutter) and TypeScript. The latter is widely used in the…