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The treasured web development program turns down in popularity but still retains its position as a widely-used programming language.

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor once was the most widely used programming language worldwide, but recently, it has gradually started to go down in popularity.

Tiobe, a software-testing firm, ranks PHP in the 10th position under the most commonly used programming languages. As reported, PHP fell two places behind since November 2020, dominated by JavaScript, Python C, and Visual Basic.

Tiobe’s CEO, Paul Jansen, reported,

“PHP was once the master of web programming, but now it faces a lot of competition in this field. This is not to say that PHP is dead. On the contrary, there are still a lot of small and medium enterprises relying on PHP. So I expect PHP to decline further but at a languid pace.”

In 1994, PHP became the third most widely used programming language in Tiobe’s 2010 software programming rankings. While it still remains popular under Microsoft’s GitHub, it has been overshadowed by Typescript, Javascript’s superset programming language. Typescript is widely used for more significant web development applications.

The workings of Tiobe

Tiobe’s software programming rankings are solely based on the queries regarding several software programming languages. Therefore, these rankings can be used to invest in programming languages that are worth it. However, Tiobe’s ranking list has some peculiarities. For example, Javascript has been placed at the seventh position in the list. In addition, PHP was initially placed in 4th place by developer analyst, Redmonk in the first few months of 2021.

Below is an overview of Tiobe’s descending list of software programming languages.

  • Python
  • C
  • Javascript
  • C ++
  • C#
  • Visual Basic
  • JavaScript
  • Assembly Language
  • SQL
  • PHP

A service that recruits freelance developers, SlashData, found out that JavaScript remains one of the most widely used programming languages among developers and programmers. With around 16 million developers, JavaScript witnessed a 0.63% increase in usage in November 2021.