Most Popular Programming Languages: Data from 1958 to 2025

In this video I present a detailed timeline of the most used programming languages from 1958 to 2025, based on comprehensive data analysis. Historical rankings were based on a combination of aggregated national surveys, the number of educational books published about each programming language, and how often these languages are mentioned in global software and technology publications. For recent years, rankings were adjusted using data from multiple programming language popularity indexes, GitHub repository access patterns, and programmer surveys.

Popularity in this ranking is defined by the number of developers proficient in or actively learning each language. The scale is normalized to a relative value of 100, allowing for consistent comparisons across languages and time periods.

The flame emoji represents languages that have reached the number one spot at least once. The skull emoji represents languages that are no longer officially supported and no longer have an active developer community.

Several errors have been corrected from the previous video. I also extended the timeline by nearly a decade, starting from 1958, and added new data from 2023, 2024, and 2025.