The nine-year-old Rust programming language is the star of this month’s TIOBE programming language community index. The Rust language rose from 17th to 13th place, a jump from 0.93% on the proprietary TIOBE points system in May to 1.18% in July. The list of the top 10 programming languages remained largely stable, with Go maintaining its position at number 7 after a spectacular rise last month.
The TIOBE Programming Community Index shows trends in programming languages based on search engine volume.
The US government recommends rust
TIOBE Software has been keeping a close eye on Rust as it has gradually risen through the ranks.
![Rust scores over the past two years have been trending upwards.](https://assets.techrepublic.com/uploads/2024/07/tiobe-rust-chart-jul-24.png)
“Gaining 4 spots may seem like a small change, but Rust has been the talk of the town for the past few years without making much progress on the TIOBE Index,” TIOBE Software CEO Paul Jansen wrote in the July update.
The US government recommended Rust as a safer alternative to C or C++ because it is memory-safe, which helped Rust climb the index. In terms of TIOBE’s proprietary points system, Rust grew 0.29% year-over-year to 1.18%, its highest score to date.
“The community is growing, including the number of third-party libraries and tools,” Jansen said. He predicted that Rust is headed for the top 10 on the TIOBE index.
SEE: The White House recommended memory-safe programming languages in March.
Other changes in the TIOBE index in July
Go remains a programming language to watch in the TIOBE index, jumping from 13th to 7th place compared to the previous year. C++ gained popularity slightly, while C lost some popularity, but neither change was enough to change the top positions of the two languages.
TechRepublic has reached out to TIOBE Software for further comment.