While I dig the idea, it's important to note a few issues with the dataset. Take the presented data with a huge grain of salt.<p>First, many repositories are not a single language. For example, this PHP framework is reported as a CSS project [0]. While it has more lines of CSS than PHP, it only has a single CSS file [1].<p>Second, GitHub has a problem with correctly identifying programming languages. For example, PrimeCoin [1] is identified as one of the most popular TypeScript repositories, but it has 0 lines of TypeScript code. Instead, it has... large localization files with the extension *.ts [2]. BitCoin used to have the same problem, but it looks like GitHub hack fixed it for that particular repository as less popular forks of BitCoin still have this issue.<p>It took me a few minutes to find these examples, just by examining trending repositories [4]. I'm sure there are many more. So do not be rash in drawing conclusions from this data! :)<p>[0] <a href="https://github.com/laravel/laravel" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/laravel/laravel</a><p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/laravel/laravel/blob/master/public/css/app.css" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/laravel/laravel/blob/master/public/css/ap...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://github.com/primecoin/primecoin" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/primecoin/primecoin</a><p>[3] <a href="https://github.com/primecoin/primecoin/tree/master/src/qt/locale" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/primecoin/primecoin/tree/master/src/qt/lo...</a><p>[4] <a href="https://github.com/trending" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/trending</a>
It's what I call an "AHA" piece of statistics.<p>Lots of data right there, and nicely visualised at that, only what it actually means is unfathomable without knowing any broader context.<p>For instance: C++ has the greatest number of opened issues per repository, then comes Rust, then Scala. All right.<p>Does it indicate that they're more tricky than others and hence more bug reports?<p>Or perhaps that projects written in these languages are under more intense scrutiny?<p>Or that people watching these repositories are just more eager to step up and file an issue instead of sulking in silence (a trait of programming culture surrounding these languages)?<p>And so on, and so on.<p>Or it could be one in case of C++, another in case of Rust - since they differ under so many aspects.<p>Wide field for wildest speculations, but no meaningful correlations identified.
Am I the only one that doesn't like the visualization? It seems like it would be fundamentally better if each bar was simply labeled instead of connected via line. Mouseover could highlight the same language in the other categories to get the cross-category information.<p>The question "What is ranked above Ruby for New Watchers Per Repository?" seems to be a question this dataset should be answering, but it is enormously difficult to parse here.
Languages with near flat or decreases in 2014:<p>- Ruby (that was a bit surprising)<p>- Dart (I guess the lack of native browser support is the killer here)<p>- Typescript (I'm surprised this didn't take off)<p>- Puppet (Interesting.)<p>- ActionScript (obvious now that Flash is dead)<p>- Scheme<p>- Common Lisp<p>- D<p>- Fortran<p>- Logos (huh?)<p>(I know near flat is subjective, but still these are the languages that are not seeing much growth in 2014, and what likely isn't growing strong in 2014, is likely to continue that trend in 2015.)
OCaml desperately needs some wind on its sail. It fares poorly than PowerShell in terms of # of repos, and that says it all really. Compared to Haskell and Clojure, which are soaring to put it mildly.
R's bump in Q1Y14 is probably when CRAN, R's largest "official" repo archive pushed all of its packages to Github. Pretty neat to see the volume right there.
Erlang and Clojure don't seem to take off on github, despite being very visible in HN..<p>It seems that everybody speaks about these languages but then they don't use them.
I think that these statistics are a bit under-rated and a bit misleading<p>-under-rated:
CSS: has 80% more pushes than C++ WOW :O
Javascript: remains to be super for small projects but man this sure brings a tear to your eye when you see 10.69 pushes per repo i think i may have misunderstood JS alot
Safe Languages: are probably not as safe as we think<p>-misleading: the fact that this isn't talking in anyway about the industry itself but about the LOVE given to each programming language for the following reasons:<p>a)Developers in general contribute to opensource programming projects with the same concept gcc devs used when saying "compiling GCC as C++, we are writing code if you want it as C do so your self" as i understood it<p>b)Interest and Time and Location on Github diverge from reality:
Interest: Developers are interested in doing new things when it comes to Open Source so this may affect numbers alot
Time:time changes everything
Location: i think Github is number 1 place when it comes to Front-end programmers although every one likes it but in Javascript i think Github is the super man
If only there was a way of analyzing the quality of the repository. Are those 1000s of snippet-size JS libraries and Ruby gems meaningful?<p>It's interesting that strong static languages have more issues open (top 5) - easier to spot them?
This is really good example of a useful slopegraph. I find so few of these in the wild thus I often fail to articulate the value of the approach such that a client will buy into the idea before I build it.<p>for reference: <a href="http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0003nk" rel="nofollow">http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0...</a><p>edit: the use of "small multiples" is superb as well
It would be incredibly enlightening to see what languages people are moving to/from. (like this for but for programming languages - <a href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-science/coordinated-migration/10151930946453859" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-science/coordin...</a>). I'd like to know what people are switching to from Ruby.
The top five languages were all created initially between 1991 and 1996. Is that by coincidence? Probably languages have a lifecycle and age matters a lot. The current top crop are about 20y.o. - just becoming adults. Would that mean that Swift and Rust will get in top 5 after year 2030?
It's interesting to me that so many Objective C repositories have so few pushes yet so many forks. I wonder if it's because companies like Facebook and Square "release" open source projects on Github then move on to something else.
Just a heads up; the page header (and footer?) does not render correctly on mobile. The top graph is centered and its data is impossible to read because of label overlapping. Interesting analysis nevertheless.
Swift wins the popularity contest: most watches per repository, third most forks per repository (R has most forks per repository). Anyone up for an iOS/Mac App with a statistics backend?
a look here (<a href="https://github.com/stars?direction=desc&sort=stars" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/stars?direction=desc&sort=stars</a>) shows that from the top 10 all-time-stars 6 are javascript related.
This confirmed some of my suspicions. Ruby seems to be in decline, just like Perl, but not declared dead yet, maybe in a few years. Python looks like it's getting to that point as well, hard to tell though, will be clear in a year. Go is growing fast and already ahead of Perl.