Becoming popular in the early 1990s and the norm today, object-oriented programming (OOP) languages, such as C++ and Java, provide a formal set of rules for creating and managing objects.

A brochure for the GE 210 computer from 1964. BASIC's creators used a similar computer four years later to develop the programming language. Credit: GE / Wikipedia ...

COBOL, which stands for Common Business Oriented Language, is a computer programming language that was developed back in 1959, according to the National Museum of American History.

Clearly, there needed to be an easier language for programming those hulking early mainframes. That language, named in September 1959, became Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL).

C#, an object-oriented language for building .NET applications, wins the award for the first time, Tiobe announced on January 6. The Tiobe Programming Community Index itself dates back to 2001.