SQL has slid down the TIOBE Index of computer languages, as developers switch their focus to NoSQL databases.
The TIOBE Index measures the popularity of almost 100 languages. It readmitted SQL to its listing in 2018 because although it is data specific, it is Turing complete.
It has always been in the top 10 of the index – until recently. The latest iteration saw it slide to number 12, which TIOBE CEO Paul Jansen noted, “is its lowest position in the TIOBE index ever.” A year ago, it stood at number 8.
Jansen continued, “SQL will remain the backbone and lingua franca of databases for decades to come. However, in the booming field of AI, where data is usually unstructured, NoSQL databases are often a better fit.” NoSQL has become “a serious threat” to the “rather
static SQL approach.”
Traditional database providers and data management platforms have been steadily scaling up their NoSQL integrations or NoSQL-like features. In February, IBM announced plans to acquire NoSQL specialist DataStax, with a plan to accelerate production
AI at scale and bring NoSQL to enterprises at scale.
Jansen compared NoSQL’s popularity to “the rise of dynamically typed languages such as Python if compared to well-defined statically typed programming languages such as C++ and Java.” And, of course, the rise of Python has also been closely tied to its popularity for
AI and machine learning development.
On which note, Python maintains its spot at the top of the index, with a 25.87 percent rating, up 10.48 percent on the year.
C++, C, Java, and C# round up the top five, with just the latter recording a minor slip on the year. All show ratings under 11 percent.
Other notable movers include Rust, which slipped one slot on last year to number 18. Ada and R both moved into the top 20, to 11 and 14, from 25 and 21 respectively. Perl also moved up, from 27 to 13. The biggest slide was for Assembly, down from 13 to 19.
Looking at classic languages, Fortran held its number 10 spot year-on-year, while Cobol did the same at number 20. Which, together with Assembly show just how long a language can survive – all were created between 1949 and 1959.