TIOBE Programming Index News September 2025: Perl Regains the Spotlight

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Last month, Perl’s gradual rise over the summer into the top 10 rankings was a bit of a mystery. Specifically, version 5 of Perl rose from 27th place last year to 10th place this month. It is still not entirely clear why the programming language from 1995 has garnered so much attention.

The TIOBE Programming Community Index measures trends in programming languages based on search engine volume.

Perl 5 publications proliferate

One reason why Perl rose in the leaderboard is a fascinating look at how the TIOBE Index works.

The Index judges programming languages by popularity or attention: it tracks the ...