Python's ascendancy from the number-two slot, which it's held since knocking Java from the position in 2019, is largely down to an explosion of genera

Python dethrones JavaScript as the most-used language on GitHub

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2024-11-05 03:00:02

Python's ascendancy from the number-two slot, which it's held since knocking Java from the position in 2019, is largely down to an explosion of generative AI activity on GitHub, the Microsoft-owned coding platform said in this year's the State of the Octoverse report issued last week.

Along with Python jumping to first place, GitHub noted that the use of Jupyter Notebooks (the open source, web-based development notebooks designed for data science applications) rose by 92 percent on the platform in the past year. Those two factors, along with a surge of new users, "could indicate people in data science, AI, machine learning, and academia increasingly use GitHub." 

2024, GitHub seems to have concluded, is the year that generative AI has come into its own as a part of developers' "core building blocks," with a 98 percent increase in the total number of GenAI projects on GitHub, and a 59 percent increase in the number of contributions to those projects. Many of those contributors are new users, according to GitHub, with a notable number coming from India and Brazil. 

"We've also seen 100% year-over-year growth among students, teachers, and open source maintainers adopting GitHub Copilot as part of our complimentary access program," 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." 

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