Just about every larger company has an IT department where people write business or web applications. But not every larger company has people programming embedded systems. The TIOBE index simply does not reflect reality.

Every car, every industrial machine, every rocket, plane and tractor as well as the entire stack that your web applications run on in the cloud, the operating system, the infrastructure have significant parts written in C or C++. I think you need to take into account that the world of software extends beyond web applications and white collar services.

I think what they're saying is that applications are an order of magnitude more numerous than infrastructure software. Sounds plausible to me.

Is it ?

We sure are using more apps than ever. But I think we are also using more "smart" things than ever, and not just in the buzzword sense.

A ton of everyday object now have chips, from toothbrushes, thermometers, door bells, car keys, fire alarms, lights, even charging cables.

Considering drivers are coded for every variations of these appliances and chips, it look to me to be a tremendous amoubt of code written all over the world. Especially as writing code is cheaper than adapting hardware, even different uses of the same chip could get different drivers.