Python maintains its runaway top ranking in the Tiobe index of programming language popularity, while older languages continue to rise. Perl surprises. Credit: Danleo Python, the highest-ranking language ever in the Tiobe index of programming language popularity, has been getting a boost from AI coding assistants, according to Tiobe. In the Tiobe index for July 2025, Python scored a rating of 26.98%, the highest ever in the monthly index, which dates back to June 2001. In the Tiobe index for August, published August 4, Python once again easily maintained its top spot in the rankings, though its rating slipped slightly to 26.14%. In a bulletin announcing this month’s rankings, Paul Jansen, CEO of Tiobe, theorized that AI assistants have helped boost Python’s popularity. “We thought Python couldn’t grow any further, but AI code assistants let Python take yet another step forward,” Jansen said. He noted that there is more code available from popular programming languages to train the AI models. This trend is visible in the Tiobe index, where a consolidation of languages at the top is seen, Janson said. “Why would you start to learn a new obscure language for which no AI assistance is available? This is the modern way of saying that you don’t want to learn a new language that is hardly documented and/or has too few libraries that can help you.” Also grabbing attention in this month’s Tiobe index is Perl, which has risen to rank 9th from 25th one year ago. Perl’s rating is 2.08% for August 2025, a jump of 1.17 percentage points over August 2024. Jansen lacked an explanation as to why Perl was jumping in popularity. “Honestly, I don’t have any clue why this is the case,” Jansen said. “We see a general trend that ‘older’ languages are becoming more popular again.” Jansen last month noted the rise in popularity of older languages such as Perl, Ada, Visual Basic, SQL, Fortran, and Delphi. The Tiobe index rates the popularity of programming languages based on the number of skilled engineers worldwide, courses, and third-party vendors pertinent to each language. The ratings are calculated using popular websites such as Google, Amazon, Bing, Wikipedia, and more than 20 others. The Tiobe index top 10 for August 2025: Python (26.14%) C++ (9.18%) C (9.03%) Java (8.59%) C# (5.52) JavaScript (3.15%) Visual Basic (2.33%) Go (2.11%) Perl (2.08%) Delphi/Pascal (1.82%) The alternative Pypl Popularity of Programming Language index ranks languages based on an analysis of how often language tutorials are searched on in Google. The Pypl index top 10 for August 2025: Python (30.5%) Java (15.54%) C/C++ (8.3%) JavaScript (7.32%) C# (5.32%) R (5.19%) Objective-C (3.57%) PHP (3.49%) Rust (2.63%) TypeScript (2.48%)