Python Overtakes JavaScript on GitHub, Annual Survey Finds (github.blog)
- Reference: 0175389757
- News link: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/24/11/04/0235235/python-overtakes-javascript-on-github-annual-survey-finds
- Source link: https://github.blog/news-insights/octoverse/octoverse-2024/
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 [2]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 [3]For Good First Issue is a curated list of [4]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%...
[1] https://github.blog/news-insights/octoverse/octoverse-2024/
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population#
[3] https://forgoodfirstissue.github.com/
[4] https://digitalpublicgoods.net/digital-public-goods/
Github says Python's overtaken Javascript?! (Score:3)
Quick! Someone better post a story with the latest TIOBE numbers, pronto! It's been weeks since the last one!
Python (Score:2)
The No.1 language for lazy devs who bumbledev kludges then link them all togethere and pass the mess off as a solution.
All the while sucking in huge chunks of compromised PyPi packages, flooding the world with all sorts of fascinating malware.
Re: (Score:3)
And javascript is in any way better in any of those respects?
Like I'll be the first to acknowledge that Python has problems, but the JS ecosystem is a blight.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know of any "ecosystem" that isn't a cesspit. CTAN seems to be one of the best, but only because the community is so small. There's still a lot of crap in it.
As far as languages go, JS is far and away the better language in terms of design than the horror show that is Python. It's like a bad joke.
Re: (Score:2)
That was a good one. Python is surely not a very good language design, but JS had no design whatsoever since the very beginning, its origin being a dirty hack by the Netscape developers to add interactivity where it didn't belong. INTERCAL is a better designed language than JS.
Re: (Score:2)
I have absolute no idea why people keep claiming Python is a bad design. It is not. It is a pretty good design. Maybe people lack comparison?
Re: (Score:2)
> And javascript is in any way better in any of those respects?
Hell no! I just don't have to deal with it all that much so can't claim an informed opinion.
Re: (Score:2)
_Real_ bad coders can write bad code in any language!
Re: (Score:2)
Python is the language people learned in their first programming class these days. And those who stayed with it never bothered to learn anything else.
Re: (Score:2)
Soo, when I stay with Python after having done real work in C, Eiffel, Pascal, Lua, Perl and some others, what does that say about me?
Huh? (Score:2)
How do they even know the developers' countries of origin? I never specified that in my profile, and I guess most people don't either.
Re: (Score:2)
IP addresses, probably.
Re: (Score:2)
Or by name.
But obviously an Indian name or Chinese one could come from everywhere.
Non-English programmers? Maybe, but probably not. (Score:4, Interesting)
> 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."
Maybe, or maybe not. I'm not sure I'd automatically assume that the rise in programmers in other countries is necessarily because language barriers are being broken down more easily. That could certainly be true, or it could just be that the youth are realizing that tech is a gravy train, and are jumping on it in larger numbers. And it's hard to say how many of them speak English.
Critically, the percentage of English speakers among programmers is not necessarily all that similar to the percentage of English speakers among the general population. To use India as an example, depending on who you ask, anywhere from 10% to 30% of people in India speak English. But:
When you limit it to upper social classes who are more likely to have access to tech and are more likely to have gotten training in programming languages, that number goes up to 41%.
When you limit it to urban areas, where people are more likely to be involved in tech jobs, that number goes up. If you believe the most extreme numbers, it could be as high as [1]97% [statista.com], though there's often a big difference between the percentage of people who say that they speak English (as a sort of status symbol) and the percentage who are actually fluent, so such numbers should be taken with a grain of salt.
When you limit it to younger people, who are more likely to be interested in taking on a new career, that number also goes way up.
When you realize that most of the new programmers are likely to be younger members of upper social classes and living in urban areas, you're multiplying all of those scaling factors together, and the percentage of English speakers could be *very* different from the general population.
So it's not necessarily as easy as saying "This country is predominantly non-English, so most of these new programmers are probably non-English speakers." Maybe they are, maybe they aren't.
And of course, even if they are, it seems far more likely that the language barriers are being broken down by translation tools like Google Translate rather than by generative AI nonsense. Maybe generative AI made a lot of people able to write simple code without having to have as solid a grasp of program flow and logic, but that's a different kind of language barrier that we're talking about at that point.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1007578/india-share-of-english-speakers-by-region/
Significantly? (Score:2)
> Significantly, 34% of contributors to the top 10 For Good Issue projects... made their first contribution after signing up for GitHub Copilot.
How do they extract any significance from that datum? It can't be that they asked "Would you have made a contribution if Copilot didn't exist?", because if they had asked that then the responses to the question would be what they cite. So the only thing the statistic really demonstrates is that they've successfully convinced a certain number of people that signing up
These results are due to a software error. (Score:2)
The tracker crashed due to a buffer overflow when counting JavaScript Frameworks.
Hate (Score:3)
I don't get the hate for Python. I know C++, Java, JavaScript, and Python among other languages and Python is my go to almost every time. Sure if i am doing web stuff i use JavaScript and if i want a really fast GUI application i use C++ but for most things in the middle i use Python. For example, i recently needed to connect to an ldap server and monitor it for changes. Pip install ldap3 and a three line script an I'm done. It just can't be done that easily with any other language. The time to get to that point with c++ would be horrible. And i don't even know if JavaScript can do that.
br>Time is the thing i am in most short supply of, and i just don't have enough of it to be wasting it on religious battles over languages. I go to the tool that will let me do what i need the easiest and the fastest.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, same here. My guess is there are a lot of "one language wonders" out there that simply cannot evaluate Python competently and then latch on the indention and think it was an important (bad) language feature.
Re: (Score:2)
> Pip install ldap3 and a three line script an I'm done.
Precisely this. Kludges all the way down and zero concept of what the code is, what it does or how secure it is.
To be fair,, you're also still using LDAP so... it's a moot point.
Python is the go-to for unmaintable, once-off, kludges. This isn't development. This is how we develop technical debt.
Indian programmers (Score:2)
Ever seen one actually do the needful?
Re: (Score:2)
Note. That was a joke, I am not a racist. I know there are some really great Indian programmers.