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Has the Rust Programming Language's Popularity Reached Its Plateau? (tiobe.com) 161

Posted by EditorDavid from the Rust-never-sleeps dept.
"Rust's rise shows signs of slowing," argues the CEO of TIOBE.

Back in 2020 Rust first entered the top 20 of his "TIOBE Index," which ranks programming language popularity using search engine results. Rust "was widely expected to break into the top 10," he remembers today. But it never happened, and "That was nearly six years ago...." Since then, Rust has steadily improved its ranking, even reaching its highest position ever (#13) at the beginning of this year. However, just three months later, it has dropped back to position #16. This suggests that Rust's adoption rate may be plateauing.

One possible explanation is that, despite its ability to produce highly efficient and safe code, Rust remains difficult to learn for non-expert programmers. While specialists in performance-critical domains are willing to invest in mastering the language, broader mainstream adoption appears more challenging. As a result, Rust's growth in popularity seems to be leveling off, and a top 10 position now appears more distant than before.
Or, could Rust's sudden drop in the rankings just reflect flaws in TIOBE's ranking system? In January GitHub's senior director for developer advocacy argued AI was pushing developers toward typed languages, since types "catch the exact class of surprises that AI-generated code can sometimes introduce... A 2025 academic study found that a whopping 94% of LLM-generated compilation errors were type-check failures." And last month Forbes even described Rust as "the the safety harness for vibe coding."

A year ago Rust was ranked #18 on TIOBE's index — so it still rose by two positions over the last 12 months, hitting that all-time high in January. Could the rankings just be fluctuating due to anomalous variations in each month's search engine results? Since January Java has fallen to the #4 spot, overtaken by C++ (which moved up one rank to take Java's place in the #3 position).

Here's TIOBE's current estimate for the 10 most popularity programming languages:
  1. Python
  2. C
  3. C++
  4. Java
  5. C#
  6. JavaScript
  7. Visual Basic
  8. SQL
  9. R
  10. Delphi/Object Pascal

TIOBE estimates that the next five most popular programming languages are Scratch, Perl, Fortran, PHP, and Go.


Has the Rust Programming Language's Popularity Reached Its Plateau? More | Reply

Has the Rust Programming Language's Popularity Reached Its Plateau?

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  • Netcraft confirms it... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12, 2026 @07:38PM (#66090648)

    ...Rust is dying.

  • Rust is a specialist language (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday April 12, 2026 @07:39PM (#66090652)

    It is aimed at systems programming, not regular application development. That limits its scope. It is also hard to learn. Hence there is a natural limit to its "popularity". Not that popularity actually matters that much.

    • Perl was also hard to master
      http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/... [quickmeme.com]

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        But not hard to learn. There is a difference.

        • Re:Rust is a specialist language (Score:5, Funny)

          by dunkelfalke ( 91624 ) on Monday April 13, 2026 @06:32AM (#66091144)

          Indeed. Even cats walking over the keyboard tend to write a valid perl script.

    • I've got about 5 cli tools that i use every day that replace core utils (exa to replace ls for example) so in my experience that's not the case.

    • Re:Rust is a specialist language (Score:4, Informative)

      by karmawarrior ( 311177 ) on Sunday April 12, 2026 @08:17PM (#66090698) Journal

      It's aimed at anything C++ would be used for, and is being used in the same scopes. Some system programming, some application programming. Chrome is now accepting Rust code, and of course Rust originated at Mozilla, and was intended to be the language Firefox would migrate to. An artifact of that effort, Servo, is still under development as an independent project.

      I don't think it's anywhere near plateaued FWIW. It has an excited cohort of programmers using it who are as annoying... I mean... enthusiastic as Python programmers were in the 2000s. It does need some clean up in some areas, specifically the NPM/composer-style external library management which is a security nightmare and just plain idiotic. But these are solvable problems.

      • Re:Rust is a specialist language (Score:4, Insightful)

        by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Sunday April 12, 2026 @10:37PM (#66090840) Journal

        It does need some clean up in some areas, specifically the NPM/composer-style external library management which is a security nightmare and just plain idiotic.

        Based on our experience with Node/NPM, that is never getting cleaned up.

        • Two ways in which it could be fixed:

          1. An expanded core library with all of the functionality you'd need that needs to be secure, from threadpools to hashing and SSL implementations. Doesn't have to be as huge as Java, but shouldn't be as absurdly minimal as Rust's current offering which pretty much forces everyone to use third party crates.

          2. A curated alternative to crates.io that's specifically supported and prioritized by the language. Deprecate crates.io in its current form, prevent use of 'unsafe' in

          • I agree with you that it CAN be fixed practically.

            My point is that it won't be, for reasons I don't understand; but for the same reason node/NPM won't be fixed. My guess is that the people in control of the existing system can't fix it, and the people with skills to fix it aren't going to be given a chance.

    • I use it for basically everything. No problems. It's also second to none for multithreading and concurrency.

      It also turns out that the people who have the most difficulty with it are older people who spent most of their lives on OOP and being able to just ignore concepts like RAII any time they want. Whereas newer developers who started with it as their first or second systems language tend to master it relatively quickly.

      No coincidence that rust code has a much lower defect rate than "easy" languages like

      • Re: Rust is a specialist language (Score:5, Insightful)

        by caseih ( 160668 ) on Sunday April 12, 2026 @09:23PM (#66090764)

        Do you use a ton of existing crates? If so how do you determine what is appropriate to use? Do you worry about supply-chain attacks? It seems like every rust app I try to install with cargo pulls in a dozen or more dependencies. I have no idea how to vet them. As a mere user it seems like I'm trading one kind of vulnerability for another. This is not unique to rust of course. All the modern, hip languages do the same thing.

        Not quite sure what you mean about ignoring concepts like RAII. Those go back to the beginning of C++.

        • ArmoredDragon thinks anything he does is great and he will imagine any evidence he needs to prove it, he doesn't need benchmarks or anything like that. His mission in life seems to be to eliminate microsecond lags that are unnotacible to everyone including him.

          • Meanwhile, all you ever do is shit talk everything you have no familiarity with, like electric cars, compiled programming languages, brains, and vaginas.

        • Do you use a ton of existing crates? If so how do you determine what is appropriate to use?

          Easy: If I need it, I use it. Here, I'm going to list some a personal project I'm working on uses:

          byteorder -- I'm reading and writing buffered data where endianness varies. 'Nuff said.

          clap -- Clap makes writing even very complicated CLI tools with a lot of options extremely simple. You can literally just create a struct and add very simple annotations to it, and a proc macro does the rest, then your code reads from it like it does any other struct. It's also quite unique to rust. You only wish your other f

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        That you can use a tool for everything does not mean you should. A real expert has more than one tool available and uses the one that fits bet. An amateur tries to do everything with that one tool.

        Also nice ageism fallacy you have there. "This tool is good because only old people have trouble using it and old people are worthless anyways." Ever thought that at least some "old" people may just have a lot more experience and hence insight than you do? No, probably not.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by keltor ( 99721 ) *
      It definitely seems like it was up and coming to replace all systems programming work and then just ... stalled out.

      Rust Community has unfortunately made many, many people HATE them with a passion.

      Who knows what the future will hold, but definitely seems like it might have stalled out.

      It's also really hard to teach people who aren't as good at programming to use Rust well.
      • Maybe because most people after becoming experienced developers that know how to properly manage memory don't like going to a way more complex language for someone who doesn't know how to manage memory.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        It definitely seems like it was up and coming to replace all systems programming work and then just ... stalled out.

        Probably because things are not as easy as the Rust proponents claim. Yes, Rust fixes some problems and creates others. Rust is hard to learn. The effort and the shift of the problems is probably worth it in some contexts (kernels, browsers, maybe virtualization layers and other execution environments, maybe access control layers), but not in general.

        Rust Community has unfortunately made many, many people HATE them with a passion.

        Yes, that is one thing I still find surprising. They did massive propaganda pushes and appeal to emotion instead of honesty and facts, and are now puzzled why

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Kisai ( 213879 )

      Eh, nah.

      Rust can replace C++ and Java, not C. Nothing can replace C because C is as close as you can get without writing assembly. You can not make C "memory safe" because the CPU is not memory safe. Rust is at the same layer C++ is. You can compile something in Rust or C++, and then decompile it back to C to see exactly how it works.

      To that end, There is this really godawful paradigm of programming recently, even before all this AI crappy-vibe programming started to be a thing, where people advocate for th

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Not very competent people always like to replace the tool they do not understand with the one they (think) they understand. It is basically resistance to learning, usually because learning involves insecurity and incompetence at the start and then you grow from there. Many people have trouble with this process. Hence we have one-tool "craftspeople" and one-language "programmers". Obviously anybody competent has more than one tool in their repertoire and can competently select the best tool from their select

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        It's interesting hearing this argument made about C. Way back when we said the same thing about assembly. Probably the originals said the same thing about machine code (and were actually right). Assembly pretty much got replaced as a language all but the very lowest level programmers actually write because computers got fast enough it wasn't worth the effort. C can be too. And C++ and Rust.

    • Depends on what you define as "applications". I agree that for GUI type stuff it's not very suitable (however Zed is superb and that's a GIU application).

      For back end development (API's and suchlike) its absolutely bloody superb. What it definitively isn't, is a scripting language.

    • I completely agree with this. Rust is for when you want to get the absolute fastest performance possible, and you're willing to put in extra work to get it. In the past, the main languages targeting that use case were C++, C, and Fortran. Rust is much more modern than any of those, and it's the first one to offer a high level of memory safety.

      Most code that most people write is not performance critical. It's worth giving up some speed to get easier development. In that case, other languages like Java,

  • What is Rust (Score:3)

    by pooh666 ( 624584 ) on Sunday April 12, 2026 @07:43PM (#66090656)
    HA HA HA

    • "Rust" was that movie where, during the filming, Alec Baldwin fired a live round from a prop gun that killed the movie's cinematographer.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ffkom ( 3519199 )
        And the movie was a pretty bland Western without any interesting ideas... as entertaining as watching Iron oxide.

      • during the filming, Alec Baldwin fired a live round from a prop gun that killed the movie's cinematographer.

        Why didn't they make a movie about that?

  • Until SystemD is written in Rust (Score:5, Funny)

    by thesjaakspoiler ( 4782965 ) on Sunday April 12, 2026 @07:55PM (#66090670)

    nobody will take it seriously.

  • Unfortunately half of them break. Still I expect to see Rust continue to rise if Zig doesn't steal its thunder.

    • Zig and rust aren't trying to do the same thing. I'd look at zig more as a competitor to C. I've heard good things about it, haven't tried it. C++ tried to replace C until it became apparent that c++ is only good for making buggy and insecure code that needs to run faster but less reliably than Java.

      Rust is only meant to replace c++, which it has already done. C++ is currently in the same graveyard orbit as cobol, only sticking around for the sake of legacy code.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by keltor ( 99721 ) *
        I think maybe you either only work in a certain POV of the world of software development or just totally have no clue.

        C++ has not at all died and has been increasing in enterprise business usage, mostly at the loss of Java and C# code. Also it's been growing in popularity in embedded usage.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Misagon ( 1135 )

          C++ is not really one language.

          A lot of embedded usage especially is using C++ as "a better C".
          Projects pick and choose features.

          Long-maintained projects who had started being developed in one version of C++ are still on that version because it would be worse to mix styles. There are large projects that don't even use the C++ standard library.

      • I think zig is more of an "interoperator" with C. In other words you use them together (like people are already doing with Python, only easier)

      • c++ is only good for making buggy and insecure code

        You're pretty much the poster child for obnoxious Rust fanboi.

        You do know a significant amount of the Rust compiler infrastructure is in C++, right?

  • The tenth most popular language is Delphi, a language that started dying in the late 90s, when its creator moved to Microsoft to invent C# (which replaced Delphi and made the partners that used to develop Delphi components change focus towards C#). And all of that despite Embarcadero (which doesn't advance Delphi that much since decades ago). Impressive.

  • No. Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by caseih ( 160668 ) on Sunday April 12, 2026 @08:39PM (#66090710)

    Rust's reason to exist has not gone away. Rust will continue to slowly replace C and C++ in systems programming where it makes sense.

    In other areas where it seems more like people are creating yet another version of a classic utility but in Rust, the answer is, "yes I sure hope so."

    The problem with all modern programming languages now comes down to supply chain risk. Even the simplest utilities depend on dozens of crates to be pulled into my computer from who knows where. Go, Dart, Python, Node.js, all have this problem. I just installed a cool utility (written in Rust of course) that pulled in 50 dependencies. I am to trust that they are all good of course. Still it seems a little excessive for a utility that does graphical browsing of disk usage (darya). But hey it's a modern utility.

    Maybe it will settle into just being a useful tool, like it was intended.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kisai ( 213879 )

      Maybe. If "AI Vibe Coding" is really good, it could write everything in C correctly the first time, and none of these other languages would be necessary.

  • Go went from #7 to just above Rust (Score:3)

    by votsalo ( 5723036 ) on Sunday April 12, 2026 @10:33PM (#66090834)
    I'm more interested in how Go went from #7 in July to #15 in April, just above Rust, in the TIOBE index. Go is much easier than Rust to learn and use. Comparing Rust and Go in the charts, the Rust ratings have mostly been going up since 2017, while Go seems to have stayed flat, with the exception of two spikes.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 )

      Go always seemed like something of a niche language to me. Some DevOps folks, and especially people working on cloud-native infrastructure like Docker and Kubernetes, and the tools designed to run on top of them, seemed to love it. I never really heard of it catching on outside that niche, though (except within Google).

  • Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Sunday April 12, 2026 @10:37PM (#66090836) Homepage

    AI is the new Borg queen.

    Rust is irrelevant. Memory safety is irrelevant. Languages are irrelevant. Programming is irrelevant. You will be assimilated.

    • I came to say the same thing. People who matter care way more about vibe coding than security. Especially if they believe that AI can fix the security holes automatically later.

      • A few months ago, I would have agreed wholeheartedly. But over the last few months I have watched the models get better and better, by orders of magnitude. Months ago, GitHub Copilot would regularly spit out changes that wouldn't even compile. Now, it regularly comes up with code changes that not only work, but often do exactly what I wanted. When I click that "Fix" icon when an obscure exception is thrown, or when I get it a javascript stack trace deep in obfuscated code, it often is able to tell me exactl

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tatroc ( 6301818 )
      With AI writing most code, Rust will become more widely used as the barrier to entry has come down. And you gain speed and safety.

  • This is the first TIOBE story we've seen in several months! Which editor has been out sick?

    • Yes it felt weird, Slashdot without the Tiobe marketing.

      At least it's good to know that Scratch is at #11, above Perl for some reason.

      Can't we have AI run Tiobe by now.

  • Perl (Score:3, Funny)

    by Media Archivist ( 3478167 ) on Sunday April 12, 2026 @10:48PM (#66090870) Homepage
    "The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated."— Perl

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kackle ( 910159 )
      Or "(*&^$&P(%$%^&*(}{}{}^$[[]][&*()_*^%$|{||}".
      • While this is perfectly cromulent Perl, it also demonstrates the misapplication of - and the misdirected anger at - an otherwise innocent tool. Sure, you *can* write code like this, but it's not required, nor recommended. Much like you can spray the neighborhood with a fully automatic rifle, but it's not required, nor recommended. In both cases, blame the person wielding the tool.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          That simile is pretty on the nose.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by kackle ( 910159 )

          While this is perfectly cromulent Perl, it also demonstrates the misapplication of - and the misdirected anger at - an otherwise innocent tool.

          Thank you for using the word "cromulent". I have no malice toward Perl, other than it looked a hot thing to learn back when, until, upon trying to embiggen my knowledge of it, I saw that all of the job postings for it had vanished. (Forgive me if I have missed some joke.)

          Sure, you *can* write code like this, but it's not required, nor recommended. Much like you can spray the neighborhood with a fully automatic rifle, but it's not required, nor recommended. In both cases, blame the person wielding the tool.

          'Depends upon the neighborhood.

  • ... I don't suppose you can last forever.

  • Rust is a horrible idea from a security and privacy perspective. It's seemingly being used - actively - by governments (particularly, Germany) to reimplement important parts of the open source ecosystem. It's particularly concerning.

    More generally, it's distressing that even with AI development, there are so many people that are implementing with python and javascript. I understand they're easy to type and there are a lot of libraries available, I get it. But...

    You can do more with less in Go. That's optima

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Jeremi ( 14640 )

      Rust is a horrible idea from a security and privacy perspective.

      Err, why? Rust's whole intent is to improve security by catching mistakes at compile-time that other languages wouldn't. What is it missing?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

        That doesn't prevent from malicious and intentional obfuscation of ability. You really want your government to be responsible for code that went into your bootloader? Look what these Rust fanatics are doing to GRUB in Ubuntu (and trying to move to systemd/rust nonsense, instead). Do you really want to trust these things to be contributed to by the same kind of people who run government? They can't even get healthcare funding right, and are known for violating civil liberties as a matter of fact and purpose.

        • What is done with a language is different than the feature set of the language. I love go too, but governments could and probably have done terrible things with Golang too.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Jeremi ( 14640 )

          That's not an argument against the language, that's an argument against the people you don't trust. They could just as easily be nefarious with C++ or any other language they write code in.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by djgl ( 6202552 )

      It's seemingly being used - actively - by governments (particularly, Germany) to reimplement important parts of the open source ecosystem.

      Source?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

        S0uRcE

        It's 2026 man, there's search engines and search features in every web site.

        It's well known at this point.

        https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/05/17/0032210/germanys-sovereign-tech-fund-now-supporting-ffmpeg#comments

    • What aspect of Rust makes it bad for security and privacy?
  • Rust has been very successful at programing--people.
    https://www.phoronix.com/news/... [phoronix.com]

  • Due to the way TIOBE gets its metrics, it's highly subject to the vagaries of LLM use. A language that is being targeted by LLMs and is getting much more effective LLM tooling support will likely drop in the TIOBE rankings as the LLM will bypass one of their major ways of collecting data: search queries.

  • Let's face it: RUST is limited in what you can do with it. Not as a language. But who creates Desktop applications with Rust? Who makes web apps with rust?

    I would like to progtram such things. Rust could be the next Delphi but it isn't yet.

    The security benefits from replacing maturated C/C++ apps with rust equivalents are limited. And the key term is here maturated.

    Also Rust has little institutional roots in Europe. We don't have Rust conferences and organisations and Rust was too much influenced by US ideo

    • Since Rust doesn't have a stable ABI you can't link closed-source pure Rust libraries. You have to switch over to a C API and then you lose all of the wonderful features of Rust between projects. This massively limits the size of projects you will see built with Rust.

  • Languages made for humans to decline (Score:4, Informative)

    by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Monday April 13, 2026 @03:20AM (#66091000)
    With the exception of machine language, all contemporary programming languages where designed for humans to use. Now that the era of humans being able and willing to write source code is ending(*), and more and more people relying on LLM-based bots to write software instead, it is easy to predict that the most used "programming languages" of the future will be one tailored not to be used by humans, but by bots. Like this "programming language for transformers" [percepta.ai], for example.

    (*) Disclaimer: I am not saying this a desirable future, but the signs are everywhere that it is coming.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Jeremi ( 14640 )

      AI can write code, but it's not clear that it will ever solve the problem of verifying that the code it wrote actually does what people want it to do, in all cases. For important tasks, who is going to want to trust a codebase that is difficult or impossible for a human to review? Will people just take the AIs' word for it that their air-traffic-control system software is correct and reliable?

      I think there will continue to be demand for human-readable languages, if only for that reason.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Why would an LLM need a langauge that's not machine language?

      Also, your link is talking about going the other way and turning a program into a circuit then translating that into a transformer, then using that to execute the program, which is kind of interesting but holy shit inefficient.

  • The biggest problem with Rust (as compared to say C++) is the lack of a formal specification. No spec helps in the beginning of programming language development, because you can move fast and break things - but if you want real investment in a language you need to have a stable and rigorous and versioned specification so that companies feel comfortable investing X billion dollars of IP in the language, knowing that its not going to fall apart on every compiler upgrade.

  • Rust is the only viable systems programming language to arrive in decades. Since it's already replacing C even with the most hardcore of C fan environments like the Linux Kernel it is very safe to assume that Rusts importance will only grown and that of C and C++ will stagnate and eventually fall back. A thing like Rust was way overdue and the Mozilla crew finally said: Screw it, we're building a new systems PL before we do anything to rebuild Firefox. And they were right in doing so, as we all can see now.

  • As usually when a question is asked in headlines.
    And it's too soon to tell anyway as it's not the first drop: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-in... [tiobe.com]

  • I love Rust. But in my experience, and maybe this has changed, it's hard to write large projects in Rust. I Rust was developed in an environment where computing power was cheap and abundant, so they could afford to compile everything for most projects. As with so many things at some point, however, "compile everything" starts to become a significant technical debt. You'll want to just utilize a black box library and some headers. This is especially true for companies that develop proprietary software. Even

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