Objective-C is TIOBE Language of the Year Second Time in a Row

The TIOBE Index shows Objective-C as "Language of the year 2012". As it also won the honor in 2011, this now makes it only the 2nd language to win the award twice (Python won 2007 and barely edged out Objective-C in 2010), and the only one to win it twice in a row.

Although this surge in popularity is certainly largely due to the popularity of the iOS ecosystem (iPhone, iPad, AppStore), the fact that it continues despite Apple loosening its policies and alternatives popping up suggests that there may be more going on: maybe developers are discovering that Objective-C is a pretty fun and productive language, warts and all?

It'll be interesting to see wether Objective-C has now peaked, as Tiobe predicts, or wether it manages to expand back into other areas that could benefit from its qualities.

As last year, table and graphic reproduced here because Tiobe doesn't appear to keep an archive:

Position Jan 2013	Position Jan 2012	Delta in Position	Programming Language	Ratings Jan 2013	Delta  Jan 2012	Status
1	2		C	17.855%	+0.89%	A
2	1		Java	17.417%	-0.05%	A
3	5		Objective-C	10.283%	+3.37%	A
4	4		C++	9.140%	+1.09%	A
5	3		C#	6.196%	-2.57%	A
6	6		PHP	5.546%	-0.16%	A
7	7		(Visual) Basic	4.749%	+0.23%	A
8	8		Python	4.173%	+0.96%	A
9	9		Perl	2.264%	-0.50%	A
10	10		JavaScript	1.976%	-0.34%	A
11	12		Ruby	1.775%	+0.34%	A
12	24		Visual Basic .NET	1.043%	+0.56%	A
13	13		Lisp	0.953%	-0.16%	A
14	14		Pascal	0.932%	+0.14%	A
15	11		Delphi/Object Pascal	0.919%	-0.65%	A
16	17		Ada	0.651%	+0.02%	B
17	23		MATLAB	0.641%	+0.13%	B
18	20		Lua	0.633%	+0.07%	B
19	21		Assembly	0.629%	+0.08%	B
20	72		Bash	0.613%	+0.49%	B