The Top and Fastest-Growing Programming Languages on GitHub

With over 44 million developers in the GitHub community, this hub of open source development can define programming language trends or at least help us identify the shifting tides of certain languages’ popularity. In their recently released State of the Octoverse report, GitHub revealed their top 10 programming languages as well as the 10 programming languages that were growing the fastest on their platform.

GitHub’s Top 10:

1. JavaScript

2. Python

3. Java

4. PHP

5. C#

6. C++

7. TypeScript

8. Shell

9. C

10. Ruby

JavaScript maintained it steady hold as the number one programming language utilized on GitHub, a title it’s held since 2014. The number two spot shifted over the past year from Java, which now ranks third, to Python. PHP remained in fourth place while C# grew to overtake C++ for fifth. Then, in seventh place, TypeScript maintained its huge jump up the list—which began in 2017—and Shell’s popularity overcame C, which allowed it to secure the eighth place slot. Finally, Ruby stayed steady after a rapid descent from 2015 to come in tenth place.

It’s not exactly a riveting race to the finish line but these changes year over year are quite interesting and may have further implications about the available pool of technical talent, what technologies are gaining or losing steam, and where the overall IT industry is heading. Although a few of the top technologies remained steady, there was a lot of small shifts and fluctuations in the popularity of languages like Python, C#, and Shell over the past year amongst GitHub repository contributors. Now, let’s move onto the technologies that aren’t necessarily the most widely used but are gaining steam faster than the rest.

GitHub’s 10 Fastest-Growing Programming Languages:

1. Dart

2. Rust

3. HCL

4. Kotlin

5. TypeScript

6. PowerShell

7. Apex

8. Python

9. Assembly

10. Go

From 2018 to 2019, the aforementioned 10 technologies saw rapid growth in usage on GitHub. Dart, for starters, grew by a whopping 532% followed by Rust with a 235% growth rate, HCL with a 213% growth rate, and Kotlin with a 182% growth rate. Interestingly, both TypeScript—which grew by 161%—and Python—which grew by 151%—are on this list and the overall list of the top technologies used on GitHub in the last year. GitHub, “saw trends toward statically typed languages focused on type safety and inoperability” which paints an overall picture of how some of these more-popular-than-ever programming languages are being actively utilized on the platform.

Whether you’re curious about where the industry is heading or trying to choose the next programming language you’ll learn, this insightful GitHub report can help steer you in the right direction. Knowing which languages are winning out in GitHub repositories is at the very least interesting and at most a great gateway into the current state of certain programming languages’ overall popularity in the IT industry.