Is the R Programming Language Surging in Popularity?

The R programming language "is sometimes frowned upon by 'traditional' software engineers," says the CEO of software quality services vendor Tiobe, "due to its unconventional syntax and limited scalability for large production systems." But he says it "continues to thrive at universities and in research-driven industries, and "for domain experts, it remains a powerful and elegant tool."

Yet it's now gaining more popularity as statistics and large-scale data visualization become important (a trend he also sees reflected in the rise of Wolfram/Mathematica). That's according to December's edition of his TIOBE Index, which attempts to rank the popularity of programming languages based on search-engine results for courses, third-party vendors, and skilled engineers. InfoWorld explains: In the December 2025 index, published December 7, R ranks 10th with a 1.96% rating. R has cracked the Tiobe index's top 10 before, such as in April 2020 and July 2020, but not in recent years. The rival Pypl Popularity of Programming Language Index, meanwhile, has R ranked fifth this month with a 5.84% share. "Programming language R is known for fitting statisticians and data scientists like a glove," said Paul Jansen, CEO of software quality services vendor Tiobe, in a bulletin accompanying the December index...

Although data science rival Python has eclipsed R in terms of general adoption, Jansen said R has carved out a solid and enduring niche, excelling at rapid experimentation, statistical modeling, and exploratory data analysis. "We have seen many Tiobe index top 10 entrants rising and falling," Jansen wrote. "It will be interesting to see whether R can maintain its current position."
"Python remains ahead at 23.64%," notes TechRepublic, "while the familiar chase group behind it holds steady for the moment. The real movement comes deeper in the list, where SQL edges upward, R rises to the top 10, and Delphi/Object Pascal slips away... SQLclimbs from tenth to eighth at 2.10%, adding a small +0.11% that's enough to move it upward in a tightly packed section of the table. Perl holds ninth at 1.97%, strengthened by a +1.33% gain that extends its late-year resurgence."

It's interesting to see how TIOBE's ranking compare with PYPL's (which ranks languages based solely on how often language tutorials are searched on Google):

TIOBE	PYPL
Python	Python
C	C/C++
C++	Objective-C
Java	Java
C#	R
JavaScript	JavaScript
Visual Basic	Swift
SQL	C#
Perl	PHP
R	Rust

Despite their different methodologies, both lists put Python at #1, Java at #5, and JavaScript at #7.

What a shame

[phantomfive]

APL [zerobugsan...faster.net] is a far superior language to R. It lost popularity in the 80s when PCs couldn't handle keymappings, but that's not a limitation anymore.

If people are using R, it's because they are doing statistics. R doesn't compete against other languages, it fills a different niche. Its use grows or shrinks depending on the size of that niche.

Re:

[lokedhs]

Some people still use it, as well as its derivatives (of which one I am the author).

R as a language has some huge problems, and APL is certainly a lot better. But where R shines is in the availability of utilities that are included. I wish I could promote my language as an alternative to R, but it would take decades of work to build a strong set of libraries for all the things people use R for.

Even Dyalog, which has been around for decades, has not had the community needed to build of a rich set of open

Re:

[phantomfive]

but it would take decades of work to build a strong set of libraries for all the things people use R for.

That's true, people use languages because of the libraries available.

Re:

[martin-boundary]

In the case of R, it's because it's the only place where high quality research level statistical algorithms are built en masse (ML libraries in python are not a substitute, they tend to be built by non-subject matter experts who don't even know that there are corner cases)

Re:

[TechyImmigrant]

In the case of R, it's because it's the only place where high quality research level statistical algorithms are built en masse (ML libraries in python are not a substitute, they tend to be built by non-subject matter experts who don't even know that there are corner cases)

A long time ago I helped my wife with writing R scripts for her PhD. Why? MANOVER. Your average stats library will do ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) but not MANOVER (Multivariate Analysis of Variance). R did the MANOVER. It could also read in the CSV and had plenty of distribution models to apply.

Of course, I read up and wrote my own MANOVER implementation in python so I don't have to touch that horrible R language ever again. There's a little bit of R in my RNG book, but that's because it's in a section revi

Re: What a shame

[simlox]

Except that people, who are doing statistics, choose Python, a general purpose language such you can do everything. Numpy, scypy, sklearn, and a lot of other specialised packages seems to cover most of scientific and numerical computing these days. Pure staticians should stick with R, old engineers are stuck with MatLab. Almost everybody else use Python.

frowned upon by 'traditional' software engineers

[fahrbot-bot]

The R programming language "is sometimes frowned upon by 'traditional' software engineers," ...

But pirates love it ... :-)

Re:

[phantomfive]

It sucks as a traditional software language.

I don't know any software engineer who "frowns" at it, just use the right tool for the job.

Re: frowned upon by 'traditional' software enginee

[karmawarrior]

Not really, as far as programming languages, a pirate's first love is the C.

Re:

[sysrammer]

Not really, as far as programming languages, a pirate's first love is the C.

Came for the pirate joke, stayed for the encore.

Re: frowned upon by 'traditional' software engine

[JungleBoy]

Aye, youâ(TM)d think that, wouldnâ(TM)t you? But no, we love the C.

Re:

[backslashdot]

I don't mean to criticize your attempt at comedy, but do you realize for a joke to be funny the double entendre has to be dually valid? I mean I get that pirates (supposedly) say "arr" (though nobody has ever actually validated that pirates say that outside of Hollywood). My point is that pirates do not utilize anything called R for navigation or anything like that. Pirates saying "arr" isn't really a coding or function related activity. There needs to be a tool or significant activity called "R" associated

Re: frowned upon by 'traditional' software engine

[BadgerStork]

The other kind.

Python is BASIC

[phantomfive]

Python is just BASIC for the modern world. People learn it in school because it's easy to learn, then never learn anything else.

TIOBE is BASICally bullshit.

[geekmux]

Python is just BASIC for the modern world. People learn it in school because it's easy to learn, then never learn anything else.

You sure Python isn’t just the new C+ wearing a Rusty old wrapper? Perhaps we should make sure the compiler matches the keycap color scheme too. /s

Imagine the programer who chose to specialize on a language at some point in their education, spent a year or two dedicated to that language to get good enough to hire for full time permanent employment and start carving out a career, only to be told you’re no longer popular enough with the software cool kids to have a career, according to some index

Re:

[phantomfive]

Imagine the programer who chose to specialize on a language at some point in their education, spent a year or two dedicated to that language to get good enough to hire for full time permanent employment and start carving out a career,

Yeah, anyone who can't learn another programming language easily should not be a programmer. I don't enjoy working with those people.

Re:

[geekmux]

Imagine the programer who chose to specialize on a language at some point in their education, spent a year or two dedicated to that language to get good enough to hire for full time permanent employment and start carving out a career,

Yeah, anyone who can't learn another programming language easily should not be a programmer. I don't enjoy working with those people.

Not the point. Any good mechanic can learn to switch from Fords to Ferraris. Doesn’t mean they should be forced to because someone created a list driven by fashion rather than function.

TIOBE claims to exist so that you can check up on yourself and ensure you’re still fashionably relevant in our world. And yet they’re tracking software literally decades old? In the Top Five? Make it make sense, or make it go away. Pointless, is pointless.

Re:

[HiThere]

Depends on the language. Where I worked you needed to work in SPAN (a language from SBC), but when they tried to shift us over to MADAM it basically didn't work. (I shifted over, but to PL/1.)

And there's nothing wrong with that

[Viol8]

When starting out in programming you need an easy to learn, easy to read language to get people up to speed on CS concepts which are at that point more important than the language they're using to express them. Try teaching novices the basics of programming using C++, Java or other languages with complex syntaxes and lots of hidden gotchas you just have to know about and watch them run for the hills.

FWIW I learnt programming on old school line BASIC. I've been a professional C++ dev now for decades with a s

Re:

[DrXym]

In fairness, Python is somewhat better than BASIC given that it's portable, supports functional programming like lambdas, has decent slicing and other conveniences.

But at the same time it's also a very poor choice of language to actually write anything substantial in. Performance blows and it doesn't scale. Multithreading is especially bad and even if they fix that, code is liable to break in all sorts of racy ways due to the body of code out there. Package management is a disaster with workarounds using

Re:

[martin-boundary]

You have to remember that data science majors are not programmers. They don't care about procedural correctness and are much too green to understand how their data gets into a CSV. They just want to apply some recipes they were taught in their last year of school.

This means that python/basic IS the right tool for the job, if the majority of the worker population has those characteristics.

So editors are trying to disguise YAWTB?

[93 Escort Wagon]

YATS = Yet Another Worthless TIOBE Blathering.

Re:

[arglebargle_xiv]

Yeah, was wondering when we'd get this week's one, they seem to have missed last week.

English

[backslashdot]

Use AI, we don't need programming languages anymore.

Sorry, my fault.

[bistromath007]

I stayed up until 4:00 last week trying to learn it for a statistics project that was due that evening. It was easier to find than a tool for converting .xpt.