Fortran popularity rises with numerical and scientific computing

Fortran’s return to the top 10 in Tiobe’s monthly index of language popularity is being attributed to the growing importance of numerical or mathematical computing.

Fortran returned to the top 10 in the index for April 2024 and retains the 10th place in the index for May 2024. The rating for Fortran did slip a bit, from 1.47% last month to 1.24% this month. But before April, Fortran’s last appearance in the Tiobe top 10 was April 2002.

Paul Jansen, CEO of Tiobe, a provider of tools for measuring software quality, attributed Fortran’s recent rise to the language’s advantages for numerical/mathematical computing. “Despite lots of competitors in this field, Fortran has its reason for existence,” Jansen said. He noted shortcomings in the competition: Python, while the top choice, is slow; MATLAB comes with expensive licensing; C/C++, while mainstream and fast, has no native computation support; R is slow; Julia, while rising, is not mature yet. “And in this jungle of languages, Fortran appears to be fast, having native mathematical computation support, mature, and free of charge. Silently, slowly but surely, Fortran gains ground. It is surprising but undeniable.”

The Tiobe Programming Community Index gauges language popularity based on the number of skilled engineers worldwide, courses, and third-party vendors. The ratings are calculated using Google, Bing, Wikipedia, and more than 20 other websites.

The Tiobe index top 10 for May 2024:

1. Python, with a rating of 16.3%
2. C, 9.98%
3. C++, 9.53%
4. Java, 8.69%
5. C#, 6.49%
6. JavaScript, 3.01%
7. Visual Basic, 2.01%
8. Go (golang), 1.6%
9. SQL, 1.44%
10. Fortran, 1.24%

The rival Pypl Popularity of Programming Language index assesses how often language tutorials are searched on in Google. The Pypl index top 10 for May 2024:

1. Python, with a 29.98% share
2. Java, 15.97%
3. JavaScript, 8.79%
4. C#, 6.78%
5. C/C++, 6.46%
6. R, 4.76%
7. PHP, 4.55%
8. TypeScript, 3.03%
9. Swift, 2.76%
10. Rust, 2.6%