Programming language statistics vary by what they measure: survey adoption, developer admiration, repository activity, or contributors. The latest figures below combine Stack Overflow and JetBrains survey results with GitHub’s 2024 and 2025 platform data, so each number should be read with its measurement period and scope in mind.
Contents
- Survey adoption and language leaders
- Admiration, demand, and switching
- GitHub rankings and contributor growth
- Programming languages in AI projects
- Developer population and platform scale
- Work context and the programming ecosystem
Survey adoption and language leaders
Survey measures describe developers’ reported use, not the total number of programmers using a language. Even so, they provide a useful long-term view of how language preferences have changed.
The 2024 Stack Overflow survey report says JavaScript was the most popular language in every survey except 2013 and 2014, when SQL led. This gives JavaScript a leading position across the 2013–2024 series, although the result is a survey comparison rather than a census of all developers. Stack Overflow Developer Survey, 2024
Python then gained 7 percentage points between the 2024 and 2025 Stack Overflow surveys. The change shows momentum over a one-year survey interval, but the percentage-point increase should not be treated as a count of newly trained developers. Stack Overflow Developer Survey, 2025
JetBrains measured JavaScript at 61% of developers worldwide for creating web pages in 2024. In the same JetBrains series, TypeScript usage rose from 12% in 2017 to 35% in 2024. Python grew from a 32% share in the first survey to more than half of programmers in 2024. These figures come from a developer survey and use different wording and contexts, so they are best used as directional adoption indicators. JetBrains Developer Ecosystem 2024
GitHub’s repository-based ranking tells a different story from survey leadership. Python was the most-used language on GitHub in 2024, ending JavaScript’s 10-year run at the top. GitHub ranked TypeScript third, Java fourth, C# fifth, and C++ sixth in its 2024 top 10. The ranking reflects GitHub activity and should not be read as a direct replacement for survey adoption results. GitHub Octoverse 2024
| 2024 GitHub position | Language |
|---|---|
| 1 | Python |
| 3 | TypeScript |
| 4 | Java |
| 5 | C# |
| 6 | C++ |
Admiration, demand, and switching
Popularity and admiration measure different things. A language can have a smaller user base while receiving especially positive ratings from the people who use it.
Rust had an admired score of 72% in Stack Overflow’s 2025 language results. Gleam reached 70%, Elixir 66%, and Zig 64%. In the 2024 Stack Overflow results, Rust was the most admired programming language with an 83% score. The two Rust scores belong to different survey years and should not be treated as a verified year-over-year change without a comparable methodology. Stack Overflow Developer Survey, 2025; Stack Overflow Developer Survey, 2024
The 2024 Stack Overflow results also found that learners wanted to try 12 other languages on average, compared with 8 among professional developers. This gap suggests that career stage affects experimentation, but it does not show which languages each group ultimately adopts. Stack Overflow Developer Survey, 2024
JetBrains reported that one in six Go users in its 2024 survey was considering adopting Rust. That is a consideration measure, not a confirmed migration rate. By contrast, the same source’s 2023 findings place Objective-C below 2% of programmers, with only 11 participants reporting it as their primary language. JetBrains also reported that Objective-C had lost two-thirds of its users over the six years preceding its 2023 report. These legacy figures were reported in the cited survey materials and were not independently rechecked here. JetBrains Developer Ecosystem 2024; Stack Overflow Developer Survey, 2024
Language overlap can change as ecosystems mature. The share of TypeScript users who also used JavaScript fell from 47% in 2020 to 38% in JetBrains’ 2023 survey. The result indicates less overlap in that reported sample, but it does not establish that TypeScript replaced JavaScript in every development context. Stack Overflow Developer Survey, 2024
GitHub rankings and contributor growth
GitHub’s August 2025 result placed TypeScript as its most-used language, ahead of Python by about 42,000 contributors. Across 2025, TypeScript gained more than 1 million contributors, a 66% year-over-year increase. Python added roughly 850,000 contributors, up 48.78%, while JavaScript added about 427,000, up 24.79%. These are GitHub contributor figures for 2025, not estimates of all people who write each language. GitHub Octoverse 2025
Repository creation shows a related but distinct pattern. JavaScript appeared in 9.3 million repositories created on GitHub in 2025, up 14.57% year over year. Python appeared in 9.26 million, up 53.41%, while TypeScript appeared in 5.39 million, up 78.10%. Java appeared in 3.52 million repositories, up 9.35%; C++ appeared in 1.7 million, up 11.82%; and C# appeared in 1.48 million, up 10.61%.
| Language | New GitHub repositories in 2025 | Year-over-year change |
|---|---|---|
| JavaScript | 9.3 million | 14.57% |
| Python | 9.26 million | 53.41% |
| TypeScript | 5.39 million | 78.10% |
| Java | 3.52 million | 9.35% |
| C++ | 1.7 million | 11.82% |
| C# | 1.48 million | 10.61% |
The repository figures show why ranking and growth rate should be separated. JavaScript and Python were close in repository volume, while TypeScript had the fastest reported growth among the listed languages. C++ and C# remained substantial parts of new repository activity even with lower totals than the web-focused languages. All figures in this section are from GitHub’s 2025 Octoverse report. GitHub Octoverse 2025
Programming languages in AI projects
Python’s position is especially strong in AI-tagged GitHub repositories. GitHub reported 582,000 AI-tagged repositories using Python in 2025, up 50.7% year over year. JavaScript was used in 88,000 such repositories, up 24.8%, and TypeScript in 86,000, up 77.9%. C++ appeared in 7,800 AI-tagged repositories, up 11%, while Shell appeared in 9,000, up 324%. The Shell percentage starts from a much smaller reported base, so its growth rate does not make Shell comparable with Python’s total.
As of August 2025, nearly half of all new AI projects on GitHub were built primarily in Python. GitHub’s AI code-environment data also recorded more than 110,000 Python users and around 50,000 Jupyter Notebook users in 2025. Jupyter Notebook usage increased 75% year over year as of March 2025, while GitHub’s 2024 Octoverse data reported a 92% increase from the prior year. These are separate measurement points and should not be combined into one cumulative growth figure. GitHub Octoverse 2025; GitHub Octoverse 2024
The AI figures also show a division of roles across languages. Python leads in the number of AI-tagged repositories and in the reported code-environment users. JavaScript and TypeScript remain prominent in application-facing projects, while C++ appears in a smaller but growing set of AI-tagged repositories. The dataset does not identify the libraries, project sizes, or production status behind these repository counts.
Developer population and platform scale
GitHub reported more than 180 million developers building on the platform in 2025. More than 36 million developers joined during the year, a 23% year-over-year increase. GitHub had 630 million total repositories, including more than 121 million new repositories, and developers created more than 230 new repositories per minute. The platform averaged 43.2 million merged pull requests per month, up 23% year over year, while users pushed nearly 1 billion commits, up 25.1%. GitHub recorded nearly 100 million commits in August 2025 alone. GitHub Octoverse 2025
Geography is also changing the scale of the developer community. India added more than 5 million developers to GitHub in 2025, accounting for over 14% of new accounts. GitHub projects that India could account for one in every three new developers on the platform by 2030. The 2030 statement is a forecast, not a measured outcome. GitHub Octoverse 2025
GitHub’s platform population is not identical to the professional developer population. JetBrains’ revised model estimated 19.6 million professional developers worldwide in 2024. The difference in these figures reflects different definitions and scopes: GitHub reports platform participants, while JetBrains’ model estimates professional developers. Neither figure should be used as a universal count of everyone who programs. JetBrains Global Developer Population 2024
Work context and the programming ecosystem
Programming language use is shaped by where code runs. In JetBrains’ 2024 survey, 58% of developers ran code on browser platforms, 53% ran code on desktop platforms, and 30% ran code on mobile platforms. The categories can overlap because a developer may target more than one platform. JetBrains Developer Ecosystem 2024
AI integration was already part of many developers’ work: 18% of JetBrains’ 2024 respondents were involved in building AI integrations. Only 3% targeted blockchain functionality. These percentages describe respondent involvement and do not measure the share of all software projects using either technology.
The professional setting was varied. Twenty-two percent of developers had previously worked in another industry, 26% said they worked for a startup, and 6% worked for government organizations. Half worked in teams of 2–7 people, while 88% worked in teams smaller than 20. These figures help explain why programming language decisions can be influenced by team size, organizational context, and existing codebases rather than popularity alone.
Developer tooling is another ecosystem factor. JetBrains reported that 69% of developers had tried ChatGPT for coding in 2024, and 49% used it regularly. GitHub reported that nearly 80% of new developers used Copilot within their first week in 2025. The two statistics come from different sources, years, populations, and product measures, so they should not be treated as a single AI-adoption trend. JetBrains Developer Ecosystem 2024; GitHub Octoverse 2025
Taken together, these programming languages statistics show several simultaneous patterns: survey leadership has shifted toward Python, GitHub contributor growth has propelled TypeScript, Rust leads admiration measures, and AI-related repository activity is concentrated around Python while expanding across JavaScript, TypeScript, Shell, and C++. The measures are complementary rather than interchangeable, and their dates, geographies, respondent groups, and platform scopes remain essential to interpreting the results.