📊 TIOBE Index – December 2025

🔗 Official source: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

🔝 Top 10 Programming Languages – December 2025

🧠 December Analysis

The last month of 2025 brings an interesting consolidation of the trends observed throughout the year.

🔹 Python remains at the top but declines slightly

Although it loses -0.21%, Python continues to be the undisputed leader of the TIOBE Index, with nearly 24% share. Its use in AI, data science, scripting, and education keeps it at a dominant level.

🔹 C rises to 2nd place

The C language achieves another strong performance, reaching 10.11%, indicating that embedded industries, IoT, and critical systems continue to rely heavily on it.

🔹 C++ and Java fall

Both languages lose about 1% – 2%, indicating that new projects favor modern alternatives, while traditional ecosystems maintain relevance mainly in enterprise applications or infrastructure software.

🔹 C# – possible winner of the "Programming Language of the Year 2025" title

With a jump of +2.39%, C# is one of the strongest gainers in the top and becomes the main candidate for the TIOBE Programming Language of the Year 2025 title.

.NET 9, Blazor, and the growth of the cross-platform ecosystem seem to be major factors behind this advance.

📈 Spotlight on R – strong comeback in the top 10

The most interesting development in December is the rise of the R language, which reaches 10th place with a +0.91% increase.

According to TIOBE:

"Programming language R is known for fitting statisticians and data scientists like a glove. As statistics and large-scale data visualization become increasingly important, R has regained popularity. This trend is also reflected in the rise of Wolfram/Mathematica, which re-entered the top 50 this month."

R continues to be extremely popular in academia, research, healthcare, finance, and any industry where statistical analysis is critical.

Although it is not the favorite of "traditional software engineers" due to its unconventional syntax and limited scalability in production, R remains a powerful tool for:

• statistical modeling

• rapid data exploration

• advanced visualizations

• segmented analyses

While Python has won the battle for large-scale adoption, R has maintained a solid and stable niche, and its return to the top 10 clearly shows its continued usefulness.

🔍 How is the TIOBE Index calculated?

TIOBE provides a monthly indicator of programming language popularity. It does not reflect the "best language" but the level of interest, discussions, available resources, and community activity.

According to the official definition:

The TIOBE Programming Community index is an indicator of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. Popular websites such as Google, Amazon, Wikipedia, Bing and more than 20 others are used to calculate the ratings.

It is important to note that the TIOBE index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.

The index can be used to check whether your programming skills are still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what language to adopt in new software projects.

Full details here:

🔗 https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

🏁 Conclusion

December 2025 closes a very dynamic year:

• Python remains the leader but loses some ground

• C rises strongly and consolidates its position in the top

• C# is the favorite for the title of Programming Language of the Year

• R makes a spectacular comeback due to growing interest in statistics and data analysis

• Perl makes an impressive leap again

January will bring a key moment:

🏆 announcement of the 2025 language of the year.