When people say C is the most popular, this is the metric they are often referring too: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....

Yeah, I know TIOBE - when I said "popular", I mostly meant "what most companies make the most fuss about". (As in "we must move out ERP system to Java! Quick!" :-)) C kind of seems to evade this kind of popularity nowadays, it seems to be forgotten by many, almost like a second level of machine code.

Oh, yes, you are totally right. For some reason I mixed these rankings in my mind.