Computer science pioneer Niklaus Wirth dies aged 89

In a sombre start to the new year, the world of computer science mourns the loss of Niklaus Wirth—a stalwart figure known for his influential contributions to programming languages, methodology, software engineering, and hardware design.

Born on 15 February 1934 in Switzerland, Wirth was a luminary in the field and celebrated for his development of several groundbreaking programming languages including ALGOL W, Pascal, and Modula-2. Wirth died aged 89 on 1 January...

4 January 2024 | Languages

Programming language Julia makes TIOBE Index top 20 debut

Programming language Julia has secured its place in the coveted TIOBE Index top 20 for the first time.

The historic achievement marks a major milestone for Julia, a programming language that has been in existence for just over a decade.

Known for its applications in data science and mathematical computation, Julia's inclusion in the top 20 raises questions about its unique attributes and its potential to compete with established giants in the field.

Julia's...

15 August 2023 | Languages

Go re-enters TIOBE’s top 10 programming languages

Programming language Go appears to be making a resurgence as it re-enters TIOBE’s top 10 list.

TIOBE creates its programming language popularity list using search data across 25 different engines. The methodology has been regularly criticised but suffices as a rough guide of the interest in each language.

Go was created by Google and often lingers just outside of the top 10 on the TIOBE Index. The language was last in the top 10 in July 2017.

In the March...

14 March 2023 | Go

‘Most loved’ programming language Rust now has its own foundation

Rust, the world’s “most loved” programming language, now has its own independent foundation.

The language was originally designed by Graydon Hoare at Mozilla Research and has ranked “most loved” in Stack Overflow’s annual developer survey for the past five years.

In a blog post, the Rust Foundation wrote:

“Mozilla, the original home of the Rust project, has transferred all trademark and infrastructure assets, including the crates.io package...

11 February 2021 | Languages

O’Reilly: Python leads languages, React for web development, and ML/AI interest grows

Education giant O’Reilly has released data about its online platform which highlights some interesting software development trends.

The headline finding is that Python continues to be the programming language with the most interest.

Given the growth in topics relating to Python such as AI – and the language often considered the best to pick up for new developers – it’ll perhaps come of little surprise to hear of its popularity.

O’Reilly highlights...

27 January 2021 | JavaScript

Brain activity while coding differs from processing language or doing maths

Neuroscientists from MIT have discovered that brain activity while coding differs from processing language or doing mathematics.

Coding is often likened to learning a new foreign language—and there are certainly many similarities. To the brain itself, however, it seems to be quite different.

The researchers took fMRI brain scans of young adults taking part in a small coding challenge using both Python and visual programming language ScratchJr to see what parts of their...

4 January 2021 | Languages

TIOBE Index July: Programming language R climbs up the rankings

The July 2020 edition of the TIOBE Index reveals an interesting climb in the popularity of programming language R.

R is a statistical language which notably crashed out of the top 20 in TIOBE’s Index for the first time in three years in May.

"A possible reason for this is that statistical programming is finding its way from university to industry nowadays, and Python is more accepted by the industry," TIOBE mulled in May.

R has made a remarkable recovery to...

7 July 2020 | Languages

Research: Interest in COBOL surges like it’s the 60s

Research from job site Indeed has shown a surge in interest for the COBOL programming language.

COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) was first created in 1959 and usage of the language has dwindled over years. Today, you'll only really find the language used by businesses for sexy things like processing forms and payments systems.

Indeed's research shows a large uptick in the number of people seeking COBOL jobs on its website. The careers site noted this increase...

29 April 2020 | Languages