Technology

Ranked: The World’s Most Popular Programming Languages (2014-2024)

Published

2 weeks ago

March 5, 2025

Kayla Zhu

Article/Editing:

Niccolo Conte

Graphics/Design:

Christina Kostandi

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Top Programming Languages on GitHub

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GitHub, the world’s largest platform for software development collaboration, reached over 518 million total projects in 2024, with nearly 1 billion contributions to public and open source projects.

This visualization shows the most popular programming languages on GitHub from 2014 to 2024, ranked by the number of users contributing to projects in each language.

Data comes from GitHub and is updated as of November 2024.

What Was the Most Popular Programming Language in 2024?

Below, we show the 10 most popular programming languages on GitHub each year from 2014 to 2024.

Year	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	9th	10th
2014	Javascript	Java	PHP	Python	Ruby	C++	C	C#	Shell	Obj-C
2015	Javascript	Java	Python	PHP	Ruby	C++	C#	C	Shell	Obj-C
2016	JavaScript	Java	Python	PHP	C++	C#	Ruby	C	Shell	Obj-C
2017	JavaScript	Java	Python	PHP	C++	C#	C	TypeScript	Shell	Ruby
2018	JavaScript	Java	Python	PHP	C++	TypeScript	C#	C	Shell	Ruby
2019	JavaScript	Python	Java	TypeScript	PHP	C++	C#	C	Shell	Ruby
2020	JavaScript	Python	Java	TypeScript	C#	PHP	C++	C	Shell	Ruby
2021	JavaScript	Python	Java	TypeScript	C#	PHP	C++	Shell	C	Ruby
2022	JavaScript	Python	Java	TypeScript	C#	C++	PHP	Shell	C	Go
2023	JavaScript	Python	TypeScript	Java	C#	C++	PHP	C	Shell	Go
2024	Python	JavaScript	TypeScript	Java	C#	C++	PHP	Shell	C	Go

In 2024, Python surpassed JavaScript as the most popular language on GitHub for the first time.

Python, known for its relatively simple and readable syntax compared to more traditional languages like C or Java, is widely used in fields such as machine learning, data science, and scientific computing.

This ease of learning and versatility has made it a favorite among both newcomers and professionals across various industries.

GitHub’s report suggests that the surge in Python’s usage is driven by an influx of contributors from various STEM fields, beyond just traditional software developers.

Jupyter Notebooks, an open-source tool popular for its beginner-friendly interface and interactive coding environment, also saw a 92% increase in usage on GitHub.

This surge suggests a growing reliance on GitHub for collaborative research, experimentation, and development, especially among newcomers to these fields.

Developers are also increasingly contributing to AI projects on GitHub.

In 2024, contributions to generative AI projects on GitHub surged by 59%, with a 98% increase in total projects, driven by significant activity outside the U.S., particularly in India, Germany, Japan, and Singapore.

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