Most Popular Programming Languages 1965 - 2020br br Timeline of the most popular programming languages since 1965 to 2020. For recent years I've used multiple programming languages popularity indexes with adjustments thanks to the data from GitHub repositories access frequency. For historical ranking I've used aggregation of multiple national surveys to establish several data points, plus a world wide publications rate of occurrence. In this ranking popularity is defined by percentage of programmers with either proficiency in specific language or currently learningmastering one. Y axis a relative value to define ranking popularity between all other items.