The programming language of all programming languages C is consistently going down since November 2015. The language was in a range of 15% to 20% for more than 15 years and this year it suddenly started to suffer. Its ratings are now less than 10% and there is no clear way back to the top. So what happened to C? Some months ago we already listed some possible reasons: it is not a language that you think of while writing programs for popular fields such as mobile apps or websites, it is not evolving that much and there is no big company promoting the language. May be there are more reasons. If you happen to know one, please share it with us.

source: http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/   (Dec 2016)


cheers
Nick

On Tuesday, 6 December 2016 at 07:40:44 UTC, Nick B wrote:
> (...)

My guesses are:
Big reason:
People in third world countries are going out of poverty and for those who do programming the first language they learn is not C because it is too low level. They start with something that can be used to make an app or a website easily.

Smaller reason:
C is being replaced in some applications by Go, D and C++.

On Wednesday, 7 December 2016 at 09:12:39 UTC, piotrklos wrote:
> Smaller reason:
> C is being replaced in some applications by Go, D and C++.

And most likely also Rust.

On Tuesday, 6 December 2016 at 07:40:44 UTC, Nick B wrote:
> source: http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/   (Dec 2016)

Glad to see D at 21. I believe this an improvement compared to previous year. Does anybody got any hard numbers for this?

It's strange to see "assembly language" as an entry, the target is not specified, so I suppose it includes them all, and is more a way of programming. It would be interesting to see which target (x86, ARM?) are the most used.

On Thursday, 8 December 2016 at 08:46:07 UTC, Nordlöw wrote:
> On Tuesday, 6 December 2016 at 07:40:44 UTC, Nick B wrote:
>> source: http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/   (Dec 2016)
>
> Glad to see D at 21. I believe this an improvement compared to previous year. Does anybody got any hard numbers for this?

Actually I think D has slipped. I believe it used to be at 18, but I can't remember when that was.

On Thursday, 8 December 2016 at 13:19:31 UTC, Meta wrote:
> On Thursday, 8 December 2016 at 08:46:07 UTC, Nordlöw wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 6 December 2016 at 07:40:44 UTC, Nick B wrote:
>>> source: http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/   (Dec 2016)
>>
>> Glad to see D at 21. I believe this an improvement compared to previous year. Does anybody got any hard numbers for this?
>
> Actually I think D has slipped. I believe it used to be at 18, but I can't remember when that was.

It's nice to see D in the ballpark of 1%+. That said, I also think the whole index should be taken with more than one grain of salt. Sources and metrics. Lies, damned lies and statistics.

As their disclaimer says, it's the languages most mentioned and with the most search hits that score the highest, not the most used. Maybe it was particularly high when dconf coverage circulated reddit and HN.