According to GitHub’s annual State of the Octoverse report , 2020 was an unusual year that changed the way many developers work.
Since GitHub was founded in 2008 and acquired by Microsoft in 2018, it has become the largest source code repository in the world, connecting more than 56 million developers worldwide. Its scope allows it to track various trends, including an annual ranking of the best programming languages, which it calculates based on the number of additions to repositories in a given language, as well as new repositories created.
Despite numerous work-related changes in 2020, developers maintained some preferences throughout the year, with the top three languages maintaining their rankings. However, there have been several shifts: C has risen, PHP has fallen, and TypeScript has seen its biggest surge in popularity, moving from seventh to fourth place in the rankings.
Meanwhile, the GitHub report also showed that non-work open source activity jumped on weekends to a higher level than in 2019, which may indicate that users are increasingly focusing on developing as a hobby in their spare time.
Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto created Ruby in Japan in the 1990s. This open source language is similar to Python in the sense that it is structured like the English language. Ruby’s popularity has fallen sharply over the past half decade, falling from fifth to tenth place in the State of the Octoverse report since 2014.
A shell script is a computer program designed to control an operating system using commands rather than using a graphical user interface (such as desktop icons).
It’s common to come across Shell when there’s a problem with your computer, and admin will connect remotely to use it to solve the problem.
Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie developed C in the 1970s, and the way it is compiled makes it well suited for operating system development. For example, Linux and Unix were created using C.
C++ is a descendant of C and was originally called “C with classes” as it added object-oriented features that C lacked.
C++ was one of the most popular programming languages in the 1990s, but its use has declined since then, although it is still the main language in many operating systems, browsers, and games.
Rasmus Lerdorf created PHP in 1995 and stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor – because “HP” was already taken. This scripting language is most often used for web development, and its use has declined since 2018, in part because many programmers don’t like it. PHP’s design is influenced by languages such as C, Perl, Java, C++, and Python.
Microsoft created C# – pronounced like the musical note “C-sharp” – in 2001. C# is most often used to create desktop applications and video games for Windows. The Unity video game engine also uses C #.
TypeScript is a direct extension of JavaScript, which means that it includes all the features of JavaScript, and any program written in JavaScript will run in TypeScript.
However, there are two features that distinguish this language from its predecessor. TypeScript has a strong typing feature that JavaScript doesn’t have, which can help with syntax issues. Additionally, unlike JavaScript, TypeScript is object-oriented, which can help with code reuse, making it useful for large-scale projects.
These additional features have helped increase TypeScript’s popularity: over the past two years, it has risen from tenth to fourth place in the GitHub rankings.
Originally called Oak when it was created, Java is an object-oriented language created by Sun Microsystems, which is now owned by Oracle.
Java is commonly used for back-end development projects, desktop and mobile applications, databases, and more. A general purpose language is also very similar to C, C++ and C #.
Python is one of the most popular open source languages with significant community support.
It is easy to use, encoded much like plain English, and is often cited as the best language to learn for beginners. Python developers are also keen to make it a fun language to interact with, given that its name comes from the 1970s BBC comedy series Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
JavaScript has remained the most popular programming language on GitHub GitHub since 2014, largely due to its use in creating dynamic web pages.
The impact of JavaScript is far-reaching, with 97.1% of all websites using it. For example, JavaScript supports autocomplete, which is what you see when you start typing a question in a Google search.