TIOBE Says Dart Entered Its Top 20 for the First Time in November 2026, While 2014 InfoWorld and SD Times Reports Placed It 17th; Go Passes Rust

Overview

TIOBE’s November 2026 index places Dart at No. 20 with a 0.74% rating and says Dart “has entered the TIOBE Index Top 20 for the first time in its history,” according to TIOBE. Two 2014 reports describe an earlier top-20 ranking for Dart: InfoWorld, dated October 6, 2014, said that month’s TIOBE index had Dart “ranking 17th with a rating of 1.119 percent,” and SD Times, dated October 7, 2014, said Dart ranks “at 17 out of the top 20 programming languages.” None of the sources reviewed reconciles the two accounts.

What We Know

• Dart. TIOBE’s November table lists Dart at No. 20 (0.74%), up from No. 26 in November 2025. TIOBE says Julia re-entered the top 20 in its previous publication but “has already been replaced by Dart this month,” and that it had named OCaml and Dart as the two contenders for a top-20 place, per TIOBE. In the October ranking, as quoted by Slashdot from a TechRepublic report, “Dart jumps from #41 to #27.” By the Herald’s comparison of the two sources, Dart then moved from No. 27 to No. 20.
• Why, according to TIOBE. TIOBE writes that “Flutter is the main driving force behind Dart’s growing popularity,” and that “The Dart language itself is not particularly unique, although it incorporates many modern programming language features,” per TIOBE.
• Go and Rust. TIOBE says “Rust has dropped out of the Top 10, losing its position to Go.” The November table has Go at No. 10 (1.69%) and Rust at No. 11 (1.63%), according to TIOBE. In October, Slashdot quoted the TechRepublic report as saying Rust “holds its No. 10 position” and Go had fallen “from #8 in October of 2025 to #11.” Taken together, the two rankings show Go and Rust trading places. The Herald previously reported Rust entering the top 10 in July and again holding No. 10 in August.
• Other top-10 changes. TIOBE says “Visual Basic has also lost two places, making room for R and SQL in the Top 10,” and that “Assembly has re-entered the Top 20.” The table lists R at No. 7 (2.27%), SQL at No. 8 (1.91%), Visual Basic at No. 9 (1.88%) and Assembly language at No. 17 (0.92%), per TIOBE.
• Top four. Python leads at 20.86% and C follows at 11.48%, with Java at No. 3 (8.89%) and C++ at No. 4 (8.35%), according to TIOBE. The October summary quoted by Slashdot lists “C, C++, Java” in that order, so by the Herald’s comparison Java and C++ also swapped places.

What the 2014 Reports Said

InfoWorld wrote that the October 2014 index had Dart “finally cracking its top 20 list” at 17th, and that Dart “was ranked 81st in the index a year ago.” It added that TIOBE Managing Director Paul Jansen said in an email that Dart’s ranking would be “quite volatile for a while,” but that he expected it to stay in the top 20. SD Times reported the same 17th place and described it as up 64 positions from the previous year’s rank of 81.

InfoWorld described the 2014 index as gauging popularity “through a formula that assesses searches on sites like Google, Yahoo, and YouTube.” TIOBE’s current page says its ratings “are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors,” per TIOBE. The sources do not say whether this difference, or some narrower meaning of “top 20,” accounts for the discrepancy.

What We Don’t Know

• Whether TIOBE’s “first time in its history” refers to a different measure or period than the 2014 rankings; the November page does not address the 2014 reports.
• How much of the month-to-month movement reflects the methodology change reported in October, when, as quoted by Slashdot, “TIOBE introduces Mandarin Chinese search terms into its methodology.” The sources reviewed do not quantify its effect.
• Whether Dart stays in the top 20. TIOBE states that its index “is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.”