| Languages That Stand The Test Of Time |
| Written by Sue Gee | ||||||||
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Beyond Today's Top 20The lowest ranked language in the table, and the one with the biggest difference between start and "finish" is BASIC, which went from #4 to #25, but this should perhaps be seen as a remarkable survival. Originating as a teaching language devised by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College, its name stood for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. As well as making computing accessible to students it contributed to the popularity of early personal computers, thanks to Microsoft. Under MS-DOS Microsoft used QBasic, under Windows Microsoft gave the language a GUI and it became Visual Basic. "Classic Visual Basic" culminated in VB6 after which it was replaced by VB.NET which is the variant in the March 2025 TIOBE Index. Perl, which occupied #5 at the start of the TIOBE index is, at #24 in March 2025, the next to lowest ranked language of the set. Its zenith was in May 2005 when it was at #3 and it was in the Top 10 for around the first 5 years and in the Top 20 for around a further decade. Used for system administration, network programming, web development, and more, Perl is regarded as the "Swiss Army Chainsaw of Scripting Languages" which reflects its versatility and ability to handle a wide range of tasks. Perl's community was split when Perl 6, subsequently renamed Raku, diverged from the original branch and this impacted its popularity. Lisp, which is the oldest language in the table had a ranking of #14 initially and an all time high of #13 in May 2013, after which it fell to an all-time low of #44 in December 2017. It is one of only two languages in the table that never made it into the TIOBE Top 10, the other being Ada, possibly on the grounds is that is was perceived as a difficult languages to learn. Like other legacy languages it experiencing a resurgence and is at #23 in March 2025, and at #35 on PLDB. Finally we come back to Ruby, which as noted earlier fell outside to the Top 20 at the beginning of the TIOBE Index and just misses being there in March 2025 when it occupied #21. Meanwhile however it has been as high as #8, in May 2016, and has never gone lower than #39, back in January 2002. Used for web development and supported by the Ruby on Rails framework, Ruby is one of the earliest pure object-oriented languages and features dynamic typing. Its syntax is designed to be expressive and readable, often described as resembling natural language. This focus on developer-friendliness has contributed to lasting popularity, though not to it achieving a top ranking.
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 26 March 2025 ) |
