The Octoverse has been rocked by an unexpected upset, as Python has displaced JavaScript as the most popular programming language on GitHub.
The Microsoft-owned coding platform, GitHub, said that the rise of Python from the second-place position, which it has held since displacing Java in 2019, is largely due to an explosion of generative AI activities on GitHub. This was revealed in the State of the Octoverse Report for this year, released last week.
Alongside Python’s leap to the first place, GitHub noted the use of Jupyter Notebooks, the open source, web based development notebooks for data science applications, rose by 92 per cent on the platform over the past year. GitHub’s list for 2024’s most popular languages – Click to enlarge. According to GitHub, many of these contributors are brand new users. A notable number come from India and Brazil. GitHub said. “This suggests AI isn’t just helping more people learn to write code or build software faster – it’s also attracting and helping more people become developers.”
In summary, GitHub concluded AI is changing the definition of a developer. It’s no longer about being a programmer with expertise in computers or mastery over a specific programming language.
“The notion of a developer extends beyond software developers to roles like operations or IT developers, machine learning researchers, data scientists, students, teachers, and mathematicians,” GitHub noted.
Given Python’s role as a darling in the data science community (with the exception for code pushes, where JavaScript is still the top language), its rise to become the most popular on GitHub makes perfect sense.
“We couldn’t be more pleased to learn about Python’s continued rise in popularity on GitHub, especially coupled with the increased use of Jupyter Notebooks, data analysis, AI, and open source technology,” Deb Nicholson, executive director of the Python Software Foundation, told GitHub about Python’s newfound dominance.
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With the rise of Python and the swap between Shell and C for the eighth most-used language, GitHub, GitHub, 2024 (r)