The decline of Kotlin, Swift, and Ruby in industry prominence
The programming world keeps evolving, and so does the relevance of the tools we use. Kotlin, Swift, and Ruby, languages that once secured solid top-20 spots in Tiobe’s global language index, are slipping. The latest April 2025 data puts Ruby at 24th, Kotlin at 25th, and Swift at 26th. For leaders thinking long term about platform choices and developer skill sets, this is a clear signal.
What’s happening here is simple. Kotlin is used mainly for Android, Swift for iOS. That worked fine before, but the game’s shifted. Cross-platform development stacks have matured fast, delivering results without locking you into native tools. You now have strong alternatives, React Native, Flutter, and others, that work across iOS and Android with a single codebase. If you can build for both platforms using one language, why spend time and money maintaining two native stacks?
Ruby is a different case. It had its time when tools like Ruby on Rails made web workflows fast and clean. But in recent years, Python has scaled across sectors. It’s not just about web development anymore, Python now powers AI, automation, data science, and scripting. That momentum is hard to rival. When one language becomes the de facto standard across so many industries, others naturally lose space.
Executives should take this as a cue to audit their development pipelines. If you’re heavily invested in any of these declining languages, fine, but make sure you have a strategy to integrate alternatives in the next cycle. You don’t need to react overnight. Just stay ahead of it. Language trends aren’t emotional, they’re driven by how rapidly the ecosystem moves.
According to Tiobe’s CEO, Paul Jansen, these drop-offs show that Kotlin, Swift, and Ruby “have lost traction and are likely to go out of fashion.” In tech, staying relevant is about adoption and ecosystem support. If your team is spending resources working in silos, using tools the rest of the industry is moving past, that’s not innovation. It’s inefficiency. Think broader. Use what’s gaining momentum. That’s where the future is.
Market consolidation reflects a growing preference for established languages
Stability is winning. That’s the current signal in the programming space. According to Tiobe’s April 2025 data, the top 20 programming languages account for 83.56% of total market use. That’s higher than the historical average of around 75%. What does that tell us? The industry is becoming more conservative. Developers and companies are tightening their focus around trusted, battle-tested stacks.
This is about efficiency and risk management. When teams face pressure to deliver, they default to tools that are well supported, scalable, and known to work. These are languages with deep documentation, large communities, and integrations across cloud platforms, libraries, and services. That matters when speed and reliability are business-critical.
For executives leading tech strategy, this is key. Experimenting with emerging languages might sound innovative, but if they aren’t mature, the cost of onboarding, maintenance, and hiring multiplies fast. The market is saying: stick to what works unless there’s a clear, justifiable edge.
Paul Jansen, CEO of Tiobe, described this as a “defensive” stance. His analysis signals a broader industry trend: companies aren’t interested in novelty for its own sake. They want proven performance and broad compatibility. That’s where the investment is flowing.
Whether you’re scaling a SaaS platform, managing mobile infrastructure, or transitioning into AI-driven services, betting on established languages gives you more control over performance, hiring, and operational costs. Make decisions that give your teams leverage, technically and financially. This is a time to prioritize depth over novelty.
Python’s dominance continues to set the pace in programming language adoption
Python is pulled ahead. Based on April 2025 figures from both Tiobe and Pypl, the language is now the undisputed number one in global popularity. Tiobe shows Python holding a 23.08% share of market usage, while Pypl puts it at 30.27% of developer search interest. That kind of convergence across two separate indexes tells you something critical: Python is the center of gravity in software today.
What makes this relevant at the executive level is its versatility. Python stretches across multiple domains, web platforms, AI, automation, scripting, cloud workflows, and data science. Other languages may excel in a specific function, but Python covers broad territory with minimal friction. Its learning curve is shallow. Its processing power has scaled. And its ecosystem has matured.
Organizations that prioritize Python see faster onboarding, less time wasted on boilerplate coding, and access to a global workforce already fluent in the language. The open-source libraries built around Python, particularly for machine learning, scientific computing, and backend services, eliminate the need to reinvent what already works.
If you’re allocating resources into product development, automation, or data infrastructure, choosing Python is aligning with what’s being actively used by the industry. It’s the default choice because it works at scale. It also integrates natively with major cloud services and frameworks.
The current market data shows other languages trailing by a wide margin. Java, the next in line on the Pypl index, sits at 15.04%. It reflects the momentum Python has continued to build over the last decade. This dominance is the result of practical decisions by countless teams shipping reliable products.
For executives looking at long-term value, the message is straightforward: if you’re not prioritizing Python in your stack, you should ask why. The language isn’t new, but its momentum is still accelerating, and most importantly, it delivers results.
Differing methodologies in language ranking illuminate varied aspects of popularity
Not all popularity rankings measure the same thing. The Tiobe and Pypl indexes both track programming language trends, but they do it in fundamentally different ways. Tiobe focuses on professional usage, metrics like the number of skilled engineers worldwide, availability of courses, and third-party vendor support. It collects data from over 20 platforms, including Google, Bing, Amazon, and Wikipedia. If you’re trying to assess language dominance in real-world deployment, Tiobe leans in that direction.
Pypl, on the other hand, tracks search frequency on Google for programming tutorials. It’s effectively measuring developer interest and curiosity, especially from those learning or upskilling. This index is more reflective of where momentum might be heading in terms of onboarding and individual learning patterns. That makes it useful for identifying rising trends before they make it into full-scale enterprise usage.
These differences matter to leadership. If you’re guiding technology decisions, you need to understand whether a language is deeply entrenched in deployed environments (which Tiobe offers insight into) or gaining grassroots attention from developers (where Pypl excels). One metric shows where the majority of the market operates today. The other points to where new talent and innovation could mobilize.
Both indexes agree on one thing: Python leads. But beyond that, the rankings start to differ, Java ranks second in both, but JavaScript, C#, and C++ shift based on the methodology. That divergence isn’t noise. It communicates something real, how developers interact with these languages based on their roles, industries, and goals.
For C-suite decision-makers, context is everything. These indexes aren’t interchangeable. Tiobe is more indicative of system-wide adoption. Pypl is more tuned to developer behavior. Understanding both gives you a more complete view of where the software landscape is now, and where it’s about to move. Use both as instruments, not answers.
Key highlights
- Kotlin, Swift, and Ruby are declining in relevance: These languages have dropped out of the Tiobe top 20 due to limited use cases, Kotlin and Swift tied to specific mobile platforms, and Ruby edged out by broader use of Python. Leaders should evaluate long-term viability before continuing investment in platform-specific stacks.
- Market is consolidating around proven languages: The top 20 programming languages now command over 83% of market usage, signaling a shift towards stable, mature technologies. Executives should prioritize languages with strong ecosystems and proven scalability to reduce risk and improve delivery speed.
- Python remains the dominant development language: Python leads both the Tiobe and Pypl indexes, making it the most widely adopted and searched language across business and tech functions. Organizations should align talent and infrastructure strategies around Python to maximize agility across AI, data, and web environments.
- Popularity rankings reflect usage and momentum differently: Tiobe measures active deployment and talent availability, while Pypl highlights emerging interest through search trends. Leaders should use both indexes to balance short-term operational needs with long-term talent planning and innovation tracking.
