This is the 11th year for IEEE Spectrum's annual Top Programming Languages exercise and Python has now come top in the Spectrum ranking in nine consecutive years. In the Jobs ranking Python comes in second place after SQL, which has been top for three years in a row. 

This ranking exercise was devised by by IEEE Spectrum magazine in collaboration with data journalist Nick Diakopoulos in 2014 to estimate the relative popularity of different languages with only 10 languages included. New languages have been added every year since, although some have been removed when their scores dropped off the scale. This year 63 languages were included, with two newcomers - Apex, used for building business applications that use a Salesforce server as a back end, and Solidity,designed for creating smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain.

It combines metrics from multiple sources, including Google, StackOverflow, GitHub, the IEEE Xplore Digital and the IEEE Job Site and normalizes them to produce a relative popularity score between 0 and 1. Rankings using alternative weightings are then computed.  For several years IEEE gave users the option of choosing their own weightings to produce custom rankings, but now there are just three "meta rankings":

The “Spectrum” ranking is weighted towards the profile of the typical IEEE member, the “Trending” ranking seeks to spot languages that are in the zeitgeist, and the “Jobs” ranking measures what employers are looking for.

Rather than the entire rankings, we're looking at languages that have a ranking above 0.1 when the top language is set to 1. 

In the case of the Spectrum ranking where the very lowest score  is Ladder Logic with a score of 0.0006, fifteen languages score over 0.1 and it is Python that comes top and has in fact  extended its lead over every language yet again.

Looking at last year's report,  Python Extends Its Lead In IEEE Spectrum Rankings Java had a score of 0.588, followed by C++ at 0.538. Now Java's score has dropped to 0.4855 and JavaScript, which had been in 5th place with 0.4638 has risen to 3rd place, even though its index has seen a slight decline to 0.4451. C++, now in 3rd place saw a bigger decline to 0.3749 points. C, which had been in 4th place with 0.4641 points  has dropped to 9th with 0.1989 points, while Typescript has swapped with it going from 9th place with 0.1794 points has risen to 4th with 0.2497. Rust is another climber, going from 15th with less than 0.1 to 11th at 0.156.

Comparing the Trending ranking with Spectrum ranking, 14 languages have a rating above 0.1 but the apart from Shell, which was in 14th place on the Spectrum ranking, all the same languages are included and mostly in similar positions. In particular the same 4 languages are in the top positions, but the gap between Python and the rest is smaller, so Java has a score if 0.6055 and JavaScript 0.4732. C# and SQL moved the most - C going higher, to 5th place, 0.2588 and SQL going lower, from 6th to 11th place. 

On the other hand the Jobs ranking diverges quite a lot from the Spectrum one. Again 15 languages score above 0.1 but SQL is top with the index of 1. However, Python is a close second at 0.98. Java and Typescript are not far behind, at 0.8813 and 08017 respectively. Next, in 5th place comes SAS (Statistical Analysis System), widely used in Data Analysis and BI (Business Intelligence), that is similar areas to SQL. Languages that stay in the same or similar places are C#, 7th, 0.4271 and HTML 8th, 0.2934, but others that are not above 0.1 in the Spectrum ranking are Kotlin - 11th, 0.2133; Scala - 12th, 0.1223; and Solidity - 15th, 0.1133.

The missing languages include PHP, going from 13th, 0.1196 to 16th 0.0992 and Mathematica going from 12th, 0.1275 to 17th 0.0889. While they experience a small decline Lua, which was in 15th place in the Spectrum ranking and 14th in the Trending Ranking with 0.1041/0.115 points plummets to 55th  with a score of less than 0.001. Possibly more surprisingly Rust which occupies 11th place in the Spectrum ranking and 10th in the Trending Ranking with 0.1506/0.1544 points is only in 24th place for jobs with a score of 0.0454.

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