Python continues its rise on the list of popular programming languages in the world. In fact, Python was also the most popular programming language of 2018.

TIOBE index measures search engine popularity of programming languages and is now out with its June rankings. Python programming language has reached an all-time high on the TIOBE index with 8.5% rating.

According to TIOBE analysts, with this rate Python can overtake C and Java and become the most popular programming language. Currently, Java holds the first place in TIOBE’s index with a rating of 15%, while C has a rating of 13.3%. Python’s popularity is largely driven by a strong growth in software engineering and new application areas where the programming language is being increasingly adopted.

The TIOBE report mentions, “The main reason for this is that software engineering is booming. It attracts lots of newcomers to the field. Java’s way of programming is too verbose for beginners. To fully understand and run a simple program such as ‘hello world’ in Java you need to have knowledge of classes, static methods and packages. In C this is a bit easier, but then you will be hit in the face with explicit memory management. In Python this is just a one-liner.”

The top 10 languages in TIOBE’s June 2019 index are – Java, C, Python, C++, Visual Basic .NET, C#, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, and Assembly Language. TIOBE determines the popularity of programming languages based on results from major search engines.

Python’s rapid ascend and popularity are due to various reasons. The explosion of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science has been a primary reason for the popularity of Python programming. It is much simpler than any of the other programming languages and that’s why Python is used for AI and machine learning.