The Top 10 Programming Languages On GitHub, Over Time

An anonymous reader writes with a link to VentureBeat's article on the information that GitHub released this week about the top-ten languages used by GitHub's users, and how they've changed over the site's history. GitHub's chart shows the change in rank for programming languages since GitHub launched in 2008 all the way to what the site's 10 million users are using for coding today. To be clear, this graph doesn't show the definitive top 10 programming languages. Because GitHub has become so popular (even causing Google Code to shut down), however, it still paints a fairly accurate picture of programming trends over recent years. Trend lines aside, here are the top 10 programming languages on GitHub today: 1. JavaScript 2. Java 3. Ruby 4. PHP 5. Python 6. CSS 7. C++ 8. C# 9. C 10. HTML

Comments

i think it shows trends in GitHub's demographic

[lisabeeren]

> it still paints a fairly accurate picture of programming trends over recent years

i don't think it does (at least not very much). i think it tells us about shifts in GitHub's demographic.

java usage has increased at GitHub, but this more likely reflects greater adoption of GitHub by the business community.

ruby has declined, but this probably just reflects that the ruby community really embraced GitHub at the beginning.

Re:i think it shows trends in GitHub's demographic

[AuMatar]

And why would CSS be more than HTML? There's nobody who uses CSS without HTML, but people do use HTML without CSS. So CSS should be a subset of HTML (also neither are programming languages, but that's a separate argument). So even ignoring massive bias problems, I question their accuracy.

Re:i think it shows trends in GitHub's demographic

[tkrotchko]

I agree. If you look up what programming language experience companies are looking for, you usually end up with two very unsexy choices: Java and C.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/compu...

Javascript will continue to be popular if only because it's becoming the defacto standard for cross-platform mobile development.

Re:i think it shows trends in GitHub's demographic

[h33t l4x0r]

Any project related to jQuery or scss/sass has something to do with CSS but nothing to do with HTML.

Re:i think it shows trends in GitHub's demographic

[Anonymous Coward]

They're styling HTML, but the HTML is generated by jQuery, so the files showing up in github are primarily CSS and javascript files.

Re:i think it shows trends in GitHub's demographic

[El_Muerte_TDS]

> java usage has increased at GitHub, but this more likely reflects greater adoption of GitHub by the business community.

Not to forget that Google Code is closing, Codehause closed, SF.net becomes more shit every day. They housed a lot of Java projects, and they are moving to alternatives like GitHub.

Re:i think it shows trends in GitHub's demographic

[h33t l4x0r]

jQuery for example uses CSS to target DOM elements. I think you can imagine why a CSS preprocessor it wouldn't use HTML for anything.

Re:i think it shows trends in GitHub's demographic

[Antique Geekmeister]

> No one does C, unless he is forced by someone to do so, people usually do C++.

Or they write in C and use a C++ capable compiler, like "gcc". A lot of "C++" code being published has no elements specific to C++.

Re:i think it shows trends in GitHub's demographic

[narcc]

There's no reason their numbers should correlate to each other at all on GitHub, especially considering neither is a programming language.

This will either interest or agitate you. HTML5 + CSS3 has been proven to be Turing complete. Just to drive the point home, someone's even made the effort to produce a desktop calculator app using only those two technologies.

Re:i think it shows trends in GitHub's demographic

[phantomfive]

No one does C, unless he is forced by someone to do so, people usually do C++.

Uh, have you heard of Linus? A lot of embedded developers prefer C over C++, because there are fewer side effects. Other programmers prefer C over C++ because it has a cleaner design.

Re:i think it shows trends in GitHub's demographic

[phantomfive]

I did a lot of embedded projects the last 25 years: everyone was in C++, non in C.

If everyone was using C++, then your experience is obviously not representative.
If most people you associated with used C++ in embedded, then your experience is different than mine.

Re:i think it shows trends in GitHub's demographic

[Antique Geekmeister]

A great deal of professional code is published: it's key to the Apache foundation and the Free Software Foundation. And a great deal of the more straightforward being published as "C++" for lightweight applications is standards compliant C. I just went through a similar issue with a job applicant who wrote backend website processing: That person's code had _no_ C++ elements in it, written for the simplest and most reliable compilation. It was very lightweight, the libraries it required were very stable, and it had _no_ dependency confusion common to the "overloading" of C++ functions. I was quite pleased with their code.

Re:i think it shows trends in GitHub's demographic

[Antique Geekmeister]

> Might be because the systems I was involved in where not supposed to run on washing machines.

Then you don't look at Linux device drivers, and apparently don't look at highly performance optimized daemons. That's fine: you may not have needed to do this.

> That is a non sense sentence. What exactly is an unreliable compilation?

"Unreliable compilaton" could mean many things. Code that is likely to give different results based on subtle compilaton option differences, such as optimization levels, due to assuming default population of uninitialized variables is my current favorite. Code that produces different binary functions dependent on compiler assumed architecture is another, such as using "int" versus "uint_32", is another older favorite from when I did more porting of 32-bit code to 64-bit environments. Code that relies on replacing system libraries with its own particular "tuned" versions of libraries or standard OS functions is another, since it becomes vulnerable to inconsistencies in the compiler flags and a developer who fails to set them correctly can get surprisingly inconsistent behavior.

Other features do not so much prevent compiler inconsistency, but help with programmer consistency. Following the local style guide, using consistent naming schemes for variables, keeping memory handling in one consistent area of code so "free" and "malloc" are easily tracked, and sanitizing I/O before relying on it are all aids to consistent behavior.

Re:i think it shows trends in GitHub's demographic

[angel'o'sphere]

I suggest you once work in a company/team that actually does embedded development instead of populating forums, web sites, blogs etc. with your nonsense.

Then you don't look at Linux device drivers, and apparently don't look at highly performance optimized daemons. That's fine: you may not have needed to do this.
This is not embedded software development so out of scope of this discussion.

Code that is likely to give different results based on subtle compilaton option differences,
If that is so, it is a compiler bug and has nothing to do with C versus C++.

Like the rest of your comment!

Odd

[Anonymous Coward]

What, no COBOL?

Re:Odd

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

LOL. I do find Ruby's position surprise. It outranks Python and all three C-derived languages! Where do they teach this stuff? Certainly not in school, where C rules. (I can understand the lowly position of HTML, which while probably the most popular computer language ever is too basic to be worth a Github.)

Programming?

[lorinc]

If it is about programming, then why are CSS and HTML along the list? These are rendering languages...

Re:Programming?

[smittyoneeach]

Hey, hey, hey: everyone gets a participation trophy, mister.
We don't want anyone feeling diminished because their specialty is not considered "programming".
More seriously, especially with CSS, the capacity to design something that doesn't look like a mud fence is a substantial skill.
That is: don't discount the work just because it executes subjectively in the mind of a user. You want to know where the sale is made? It sure ain't in the elegance of the design patterns buried in the server code.

Re:Programming?

[Viol8]

"More seriously, especially with CSS, the capacity to design something that doesn't look like a mud fence is a substantial skill."

So is riding a unicycle while juggling. That doesn't make it a programming language.

If CSS ever supports logical, mathematical and iterative operations then maybe it deserves to be on this list. Until then - no.

Re:Programming?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Because they are both used with API compliant software to accomplish specific computer behavior, including I/O, programmed operations, and back end integration with style guides, QA verification, and clear functional success of the computer application if misused or if ocrrectly implemented. They may not be Turing complete and able to compile their own interpreters written in their own language as source code, but they're certainly "languages" as far as listing them on a resume or planning training are concerned.

Also, they're quite a _lot_ of the hosted code on github: it's certainly reasonable to acknowledge their roles in open source.

Re:Programming?

[Gondola]

Next up: the TXT, NFO, INI, and CSV programming languages!

Re:Programming?

[ClickOnThis]

HTML+CSS is turing complete
http://lemire.me/blog/archives...

Well, so is TeX, but you'd be insane if you used it for serious programming. The same goes for HTML+CSS.

Re:Programming?

[serviscope_minor]

HTML plus CSS is Turing compete.Someone proved that by implementing rule 110. Quite astonishing, but they're you go.

http://lemire.me/blog/archives...

Re:Programming?

[infidel_heathen]

Just because something is Turing complete doesn't mean I would want to program in it. I would rather use HTML5 + CSS3 for the purpose they were designed for (rendering web pages), and use a proper language to program the backend.

OTOH, I agree with putting HTML & CSS on the Github's top 10 list, since it takes skill & practice to develop in those as much as in a conventional programming language.

Javascript copies

[Meneth]

I think Javascript may have had its ranking artifically inflated due to all the libraries people copy into their own repos, like jQuery and Bootstrap.

Since when are HTML & CSS programming language

[Viol8]

They're page layout and style description languages, NOT programming languages. They have no place on this list. Otherwise you might just as well include troff & latex too.

# github projects != language popularity

[tomhath]

All this shows is a count of github projects by language. I expect that the vast majority of those projects were created by people trying to learn a language by working through tutorials. It would be more useful to display languages by number of downloads or something like that, so we could see what languages are actually being "used" rather than what languages self-taught programmer wannabes are trying to learn.

And InfoWeek Has Posted the Inverse

[kjhambrick]

http://www.informationweek.com/it-life/11-programming-languages-that-lost-their-mojo/d/d-id/1321678?f_src=informationweek_informationweek_mostpopular_fornewsletters&_mc=NL_IWK_EDT_IWK_daily_20150822&cid=NL_IWK_EDT_IWK_daily_20150822&elq=70d72d20140f4602a92820472e5c17fa&elqCampaignId=16221&elqaid=62985&elqat=1&elqTrackId=35c8af5f447d4d2a8f19ad601c98a3be/

Re:And InfoWeek Has Posted the Inverse

[SQL Error]

Well, that's depressing. Great languages like Ada, Algol, Pascal, Modula-2, and Logo, and in their place we have PHP and Javascript.

HTML is a programming language?

[rnturn]

Us old-timers always called HTML a markup language. Just what did the author think the "ML" stood for?

Re: i think it shows trends in GitHub's demographi

[boteeka]

That's not accurate. Rather, jQuery uses the same DOM selectors to target elements as CSS does.