Oracle, Microsoft, and Apple all have a programming language ranked prominently in an industry index that monitors language use, but Google's efforts have yet to yield results, according to an official with Tiobe, which publishes the monthly Tiobe Programming Community Index.
In the March index, released over the weekend, Google saw its Go language drop out of the top 50 while Google's Dart language was ranked 78th. Oracle's Java language ranked first, used by 17.1 percent of developers, while Microsoft's C# came in at the third spot, used by 8.24 percent of developers. The Microsoft Visual Basic language was ranked 7th, used by 4.37 percent of developers. Objective-C, preferred by Apple and used for developing applications for the iPhone and iPad tablet, was ranked 5th, used by 7.38 percent of developers.
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Google, said Paul Jansen, Tiobe managing director, "tried very hard the last couple of years to get its own programming languages in the market. They did a lot of PR for it, but they failed for Go and it seems Dart is going to the same way, too. Google is known for its innovation and instant successes, so this is a bit of a disappointment."
Also faring well in the March index was JavaScript, which jumped from the 10th spot in March 2011 to the 8th spot this month, used by 3.87 percent of developers. "Since websites depend more and more on JavaScript, it is expected that JavaScript's popularity will rise further in the near future," Tiobe said in its index. JavaScript had been used by just 1.87 percent of developers in the March 2011 index.
"JavaScript is used everywhere a little," Jansen said. "Almost every Web page uses JavaScript, but only as one of the many technologies that are used to assemble a complete website. Hence, JavaScript will probably never rule the complete world because it only solves part of a problem, i.e. only client-side Web programming."
The index gauges popularity by examining hits about a particular language on popular search engines. Despite being ranked first, Java dropped in usage from a year ago at the same time, when 19.71 percent of developers used it. Objective-C saw a dramatic rise from a year ago; it was used by just 3.5 percent of developers in March 2011.
Other languages in the top 10 included C, ranked second with 17.09 percent of developers using it; C++, ranked 4th (8.047 percent); PHP, 6th (5.55 percent); Python came in 9th (3.3 percent), and Perl 10th (2.7 percent). Python had been used by 5.7 percent of developers a year ago.
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