OT: languages and github activity

Ola Fosheim Grøstad ola.fosheim.grostad at gmail.com
Mon Oct 25 16:17:43 UTC 2021


I looked at bit at the github activity for various languages in 
terms of repos created in the past 2 months using [Github 
advanced 
search](https://github.com/search/advanced?q=type=Repositories).

|language | number of repos created in the past 2 months|
|---|---|
|Java|371K|
|TypeScript|165K|
|C#|147K|
|C++|102K|
|C|64K|
|Kotlin|50K|
|Dart|44K|
|Go|38K|
|Swift|29K|
|Rust|15K|
|Scala|3K|
|Pascal|2K|
|Haskell|2K|
|Objective-C|2K|
|Julia|2K|
|Fortran|657|
|Haxe|552|
|F#|520|
|OCaml|494|
|Prolog|368|
|Zig|245|
|Erlang|220|
|Nim|217|
|D|185|
|Crystal|119|
|Vala|61|
|Pony|11|
|Chapel|1|

*My interpretation:*

Languages that are used by students and academics appear to have 
a boost on Github (Fortran, OCaml, Haskell, Java). To get over 1K 
you seem to need to have a unique domain where are you are or 
have been dominating (except for Scala, which is an outlier).

I didn't expect C++ to have so many new repos, and expected the 
distance between C# and C++ to be bigger. Is this because the C++ 
standard library is weak, or do C++ programmers have a stronger 
inclination to share their projects in progress on Github? I 
don't know, maybe C# programmers have other platforms they prefer.

Dart being so close to Kotlin and Swift is also a bit surprising; 
it suggests that people have a strong preference for portability. 
I actually thought that Haxe was fading away, but it appears to 
be quite strong for a language that does not receive much 
exposure. Again, could suggest that portability is a strong 
factor.

Nim and D appears to be fairly stable, so no real surprise there, 
but Zig is getting more attention than I would expect at this 
point in time. I personally don't view Zig as a particularly 
interesting language design, so does the apparent growth reflect 
early enthusiasm or does it reflect actual productivity?

Pony and Chapel are interesting languages, but maybe concurrency 
is not as important to most programmers as we might like to think 
it is. Erlang has had a lot of exposure, yet it does not have 
more activity than languages that receive very little exposure. 
So again, maybe concurrency is not a strong factor when people 
select programming languages (yet).


(Note: github results vary by a few % for each search, so it 
isn't precise).



More information about the Digitalmars-d mailing list