A new TIOBE Software study has found that Java is the most popular programming language among developers, surpassing Visual Basic, was was the leader a year ago. This popularity measurement uses a simple metric: the number of relevant search engine queries. According to the most recent results, the top ten are Java, C, Visual Basic, PHP, C++, Perl, C#, Python, JavaScript, and Delphi.

A chart that shows trends among the top ten can be found at http://www.tiobe.com/index.htm?tiobe_index

The TIOBE Programming Community index simply "gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages, the company says. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, and Yahoo! are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that the TPC 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 programming language should be adopted when starting to build a new software system. The definition of the TPC index can be found here.

The changes in the popularity rating since the month of June place Visual Basic at the top of the gainers list. Search engine queries for "Visual Basic" in July were nearly 5% more than during the previous month. "Java" queries were up 2.19%.

Programming languages that lost popularity in July were C, C++, and Perl. All other changes in the top 10 were below 1%. The study does not include HTML, XML, SQL, or ASP.NET.