GitHub released its annual “State of the Octoverse” report this week. And while “Systems programming languages, like Rust, are also on the rise… Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, and Java remain the most widely used languages on GitHub.”
In fact, “In 2024, Python overtook JavaScript as the most popular language on GitHub.” They also report usage of Jupyter Notebooks “skyrocketed” with a 92% jump in usage, which along with Python’s rise seems to underscore “the surge in data science and machine learning on GitHub…”
We’re also seeing increased interest in AI agents and smaller models that require less computational power, reflecting a shift across the industry as more people focus on new use cases for AI… While the United States leads in contributions to generative AI projects on GitHub, we see more absolute activity outside the United States. In 2024, there was a 59% surge in the number of contributions to generative AI projects on GitHub and a 98% increase in the number of projects overall — and many of those contributions came from places like India, Germany, Japan, and Singapore…
Notable growth is occurring in India, which is expected to have the world’s largest developer population on GitHub by 2028, as well as across Africa and Latin America… [W]e have seen greater growth outside the United States every year since 2013 — and that trend has sped up over the past few years.
Last year they’d projected India would have the most developers on GitHub #1 by 2027, but now believe it will happen a year later. This year’s top 10?
1. United States
2. India
3. China
4. Brazil
5. United Kingdom
6. Russia
7. Germany
8. Indonesia
9. Japan
10. Canada
Interestingly, the UK’s population ranks #21 among countries of the world, while Germany ranks #19, and Canada ranks #36.)
GitHub’s announcement argues the rise of non-English, high-population regions “is notable given that it is happening at the same time as the proliferation of generative AI tools, which are increasingly enabling developers to engage with code in their natural language.” And they offer one more data point:
GitHub’s For Good First Issue is a curated list of Digital Public Goods that need contributors, connecting those projects with people who want to address a societal challenge and promote sustainable development…
Significantly, 34% of contributors to the top 10 For Good Issue projects… made their first contribution after signing up for GitHub Copilot.
There’s now 518 million projects on GitHub — with a year-over-year growth of 25%…
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