JavaScript and Python were the most popular programming languages on GitHub last year, according to the most recent GitHub Innovation Graph.
JavaScript was the highest-ranked programming language in the United States based on the number of unique developers who uploaded code to GitHub, followed by Python and Shell, the GitHub graph showed.
“Python is always at the top [of the list], along with JavaScript,” which is number one, Mike Linksvayer, GitHub’s VP of Developer Policy, told The New Stack in an interview after GitHub released its Innovation Graph data last week.
While Shell ranked third, Java held onto the fourth position for the first two quarters of 2023 but was overtaken by TypeScript in Q3 and Q4 of last year, the graph showed.
“This is probably not a big surprise, following developers. But it’s still quite interesting to see how this changes over time,” Linksvayer said.
GitHub provided the latest data on how the platform’s more than 100 million developers are building software together, including trends from the past four years such as the impact of popular AI tools on development, how developers come together to learn new programming languages, and more.
With the Q4 2023 data release, the GitHub Innovation Graph now offers four full years of data on eight metrics — git pushes, repositories, developers, organizations, programming languages, licenses, topics, and economy collaborators, said Kevin Xu, a senior software engineer at GitHub, wrote in a blog post.
Other key information from the graph includes that more than 21,077,000 American developers and over 1,173,000 American organizations are building on GitHub, American developers uploaded code to GitHub more than 25.9 million times, and American developers and organizations owned over 58.7 million repositories on GitHub.
Overall, the Innovation Graph provides a data-driven narrative about developer activity and collaboration on the GitHub platform, which can be useful for both developers and policymakers, Linksvayer said.
The latest release highlights seasonal trends in developer activity, such as the impact of the Advent of Code event and the Google Season of Docs program on the popularity of certain programming languages and topics.
The data also reveals global collaboration patterns among developers, showing how developers from different countries work together on open source projects.
The GitHub Innovation Graph tracks collaboration between global economies as the summation of git pushes sent and pull requests opened from one economy to the other. The United States’ top three collaborators were: the United Kingdom, Germany and Canada.
The Innovation Graph aims to showcase the contributions of developers to innovation, similar to how patents and academic publications are used to study innovation networks.
Moreover, GitHub’s policy team works to ensure that laws and regulations do not inadvertently harm software development, such as the EU’s copyright directive and the proposed AI Act, Linksvayer said.
The company has been studying the impact of AI-powered tools like GitHub’s own Copilot on developer productivity and learning, engaging with academics to understand the differential impacts on expert and novice developers.
In addition, GitHub is involved in discussions around responsible AI, intellectual property, and the relationship between training data and AI models.
“We want to make sure that tools like Copilot augment developers as opposed to replacing them,” Linksvayer said. “We’re going to give developers superpowers to be able to write more secure code faster, higher quality, etc. But also, we strongly believe a developer needs to be in the loop.”
