Java and C were already very close in April, but this month C surpasses Java again. The last time C was number one was back in 2015. We can only guess why C is number one again. One of the reasons might be the Corona virus. This might sound silly but some programming languages really benefit from this situation. Examples are Python and R in the data sciences area because everybody is searching for an antidote for the virus. But also embedded software languages such as C and C++ are gaining popularity because these are used in software for medical devices. On another note, it is also worth mentioning that Rust is really getting close to the top 20 now (from #27 to #21 within one month). - Paul Jansen CEO TIOBE Software
The TIOBE Programming Community index is an indicator of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. Popular search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube and Baidu are used to calculate the ratings. It is important to note that the TIOBE index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.
The index can be used to check whether your programming skills are still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what programming language should be adopted when starting to build a new software system. The definition of the TIOBE index can be found here.