The July update of the authoritative Tiobe Programming Language Popularity Index shows an unexpected trend: Despite the constant growth of interest in new languages, it is the older languages that are showing steady growth. One of them is Ada, a systems programming language developed in the late 1970s, which currently shares 10th place with Delphi/Object Pascal in the ranking, InfoWorld reports.
According to Tiobe CEO Paul Jansen, Ada has a strong chance of outliving other languages of its generation, including Visual Basic, Perl, and Fortran. "Given the increasingly stringent security requirements, Ada - as a system programming language for safety-critical systems - is probably the most resilient option," Jansen said in his commentary on the ranking.
Interestingly, new languages like Rust, Kotlin, Dart, and Julia failed to make the top ten. Despite the rapid development of communities and active support of these languages by large companies, their usage is still inferior to more mature technologies. "It is clear that it is the established languages that remain relevant," Jansen noted.
Top 10 programming languages according to Tiobe (July 2025):
1. Python — 26.98%
2. C++ — 9.80%
3. C — 9.65%
4. Java — 8.76%
5. C# — 4.87%
6. JavaScript — 3.36%
7. Go — 2.04%
8. Visual Basic — 1.94%
9. Ada — 1.77%
10. Delphi/Object Pascal — 1.77%
The Tiobe ranking is based on an analysis of the number of qualified engineers, courses, trainings and suppliers, as well as mentions on more than 20 popular online platforms, including Google, Wikipedia, Amazon and Bing.
In comparison, another influential index, PYPL (PopularitY of Programming Language), which measures popularity by the number of Google searches for tutorials, favors Python, Java, and JavaScript. It ranks Rust 10th, while Ada is outside the top ten.
This contrast in rankings shows that popularity among enthusiasts or in academia does not necessarily translate into widespread use in industry. As a result, old, proven programming languages, particularly those focused on system security, remain relevant and competitive even decades after their creation.