R Programming Language Gains Popularity Among Developers

The R programming language is gaining popularity among developers, according to the December edition of the TIOBE Index. The CEO of software quality services vendor Tiobe noted that while R is sometimes frowned upon by traditional software engineers due to its unconventional syntax and limited scalability for large production systems, it continues to thrive in universities and research-driven industries.

The report highlights that R remains a powerful tool for domain experts and is rising in popularity as statistics and large-scale data visualization become more important, reflecting similar trends in tools like Wolfram/Mathematica.

In the TIOBE Index, Python remains the most popular language at 23.64%, with R now making its way into the top 10 programming languages. The report also points out that SQL is climbing from tenth to eighth place, while Perl holds ninth place with a late-year resurgence.

Comparisons with the PYPL index, which ranks languages based on Google search frequency for tutorials, show that both methodologies agree on Python's dominance and the rising profile of R.