About this chart race
Java had the biggest share of tutorial searches in every year from 2004 to 2017, peaking at 30.3% in 2005. Python rose from 2.6% in 2004 and passed Java in 2018, 22.8% to 21.5%. That is the only change at the top in 23 years. PHP was second for most of the 2000s with close to 20% and is down to 2.6% in 2026. In 2026 Python averages 40.8% so far, more than C/C++ (11.9%) and Java (11.0%) put together.
This animated ranking shows how share of programming tutorial searches on google (pypl index) changed across 30 series between 2004 and 2026. The bars re-order themselves as the years advance, so overtakes are visible as they happen rather than hidden inside a table. Use the list on the left to choose exactly who competes, drag the slider to jump to any year, or open the table view to read the underlying numbers.
As of 2026, Python leads with 40.8.
Included in this race
Python, Java, PHP, C/C++, C#, JavaScript, Visual Basic, Perl, Objective-C, R, Swift, Matlab, Delphi/Pascal, TypeScript, Rust, Ruby, VBA, Ada, Go, Kotlin, Scala, Powershell, Dart, Lua, Julia, Abap, Groovy, Cobol, Haskell, Zig.
Source
Data from PYPL index (Google Trends). Every figure shown comes from this source — nothing is estimated or generated.
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