Python was the fastest growing progamming language of 2018, according to one tracking service that reckoned it seized a position in the top three most popular with Java and C.

The monthly TIOBE Index said Python saw more growth than any other language through the whole of 2018, up 3.62  per cent, earning an overall ranking of 8.2 per cent and bumping it up from fourth to third place for the year. It displaced C++, which grew 2.55 per cent.

Java and C also grew, 2.69 and 2.30 per cent respectively, but retained their first and second spots by a long way – 16.9 and 13.3 per cent.

Helping Python is AI, where – according to TIOBE – the language has become number one. Further helping to accelerate its growth is scripting and Python’s use in writing systems tests. Also, according to TIOBE, Python has become the most frequently taught first language at universities, is number-one in statistics and is leading in web and scientific computing.

“In summary, Python is everywhere,” TIOBE said here.

Other languages that experienced growth in 2018 were MATLAB, Kotlin and Rust while those waning included Ruby, Erlang and F#.

TIOBE, who has been running the numbers since 1989, currently keeps tabs on 50 languages.

Its results should be taken as a guide to popularity rather than something approaching definitive market share or physical adoption.

Rather than track something quantifiable such as, say, sales, downloads or web-site use TIOBE counts the number of search-engine queries for each language. Ratings are also based on number of skilled engineers, numbers of courses and third-party vendors.

This should, therefore, be seen as an approximation of popularity.

Other’s in the industry use different metrics in their own attempts to prove different languages’ popularity, such as counting the number of job postings online.