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).
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