The TIOBE Index for April 2020 has been published bringing news that the graphical block-based language Scratch has moved up the index by seven places in the past year and regained a place in the top 20 for the first time in some years. 

Before we turn our attention to Scratch lets look at when April 2020 means at the very top of the TIOBE Index. Well of course not much change. 

Java and C still hold sway with almost identical share of the ratings, nearly 17% apiece. Over the past year Python has displaced C++ to gain third place, due to Python seeing a rise in its rankings of 1.15% at the same time as C++  lost just over 2% of its share.

Since April 2019 C# and Visual Basic have swapped places. C#, is now in 5th position, ahead of VB.Net, now in 6th and this seems a realistic relationship. What I continue to find entirely unrealistic is JavaScript's ranking of #7 corresponding to a rating of only 2% However this is actually quite an achievement in terms of stability and is close to its highest ever position in the table, which was #6 in February, 2019. 

While it takes a relatively large percentage rating change to climb up a single place at the top of the TIOBE index, when you reach its middle orders then even a small percentage change can have a big effect. In the case of Scratch it has seen an increase of 0.28% in its share of ratings to enter, or rather re-enter, the TIOBE Top 20 at #20 with a ratings share of 0,,77%.

This chart shows its performance in the Index since 2009:

The highest position Scratch has ever occupied to date in the TIOBE index was #14 in October 2017, when it has a ratings share of 1.82% and the lowest was #58 (0.17%) in January  2014. Last April it was at #27 (0.49%), and as the chart shows it its share of ratings dipped to a recent low last July but have been steadily climbing since the turn of 2020. 

Headlining the arrival of Scratch in the Top 20, TIOBE comments:

 At first sight this might seem a bit strange for a programming language that is designed to teach children how to program. But if you take into account that there are in total more than 50 million projects "written" in Scratch and each month 1 million new Scratch projects are added, it can't be denied any more that Scratch is popular.

Developed by the MIT Media Lab's Lifelong Kindergaten Group, with Mitchel Resnick at the helm, Scratch was intended to teach kids to code. Its event-driven, block-based approach, which has been widely imitated, has been a big hit in K-12 education and out-of-school clubs. 

First released in 2007, the initial version, Scratch 1 was desktop-only. Scratch 2.0. released in 2013 had both an offline and online editor. The current version Scratch 3.0, was released in 2019.  has a dektop version that not only runs under Windows 10 and Mac OS 10.13+ but also on the Raspberry Pi as well as running online using Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari - but not Internet Explorer

If haven't come across it before then try our Programmer's Guide to Scratch or watch the video on the About Scratch page. Scratch is worth knowing about.

More Information

TIOBE Index for April 2020

Scratch Website

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