Interpretation of the 2021 GitHub report: the number of Chinese developers is the second in the world | JavaScript is the most popular

Recently, GitHub, the world's largest developer community, released the 2021 Octoverse report.

The report data shows that there are currently 73 million+ global developer users on GitHub. Among them, there are 7.55 million developer users from China, ranking second in the world, and JavaScript has become the most popular programming language for developers.

(This research is the result of a joint survey of more than 4 million databases and more than 12,000 developers, which roughly reveals the current development trend of the developer community.)

1. 73 million+ developer users, 31.2% from Asia

According to the report data, there are currently 73 million+ global developer users on GitHub, and 16 million+ users have been added this year. 84% of the Fortune 100 companies use GitHub.

According to the geographical distribution of users, 56.8% are from regions outside North America. North America accounted for 31.5%, down 2.3% year-on-year; Asia accounted for 31.2%, an increase of 0.3% year-on-year; Europe was 27.3%, an increase of 0.7% over last year; South America had an increase of 1.0% over last year, and this year’s share was 5.9 %; Africa has increased by 0.3% compared with last year, and this year's share has reached 2.3%; Oceania has decreased by 0.1% compared with last year, and this year's share has been 1.7%.

2. The JavaScript programming language is most popular among developers

The report also shows the trend of the top 10 programming languages that have been most popular among developers since 2014.

Among ten programming languages such as JavaScript, Python, Java, TypeScript, C#, PHP, C++, Ruby, and C, JavaScript has been at the top of the most popular list for many years; Python has developed strongly in recent years, squeezing the hot Java for many years. Going down, came to the second position.

3. Sources of code contributors: nearly 50% are from private enterprise developers

The data shows that the sustainability of ecological development is related to the community, and highly trusted teams are more likely to have a healthy cooperative culture.

Such as codes of conduct, contributions, excellent projects, and respect for language in discussions, etc., all show that the community is safe, popular and trusted. Therefore, communities with these signals will attract more contributors and create a stronger sense of belonging and accomplishment.

In this survey report, the source of the code contributor group also reflects the above viewpoints:

Among them, 47.8% of code contributors came from developers of private companies, and the student group developers contributed 27.9% of the code. Secondly, the developer contribution from the OSS platform accounted for 13.5%, and the private OSS developer contribution accounted for 5.5%.

4. Geographical distribution of GitHub users: China ranks second with 7.55 million+

If the proportion of users on GitHub is divided by region or country, the data in this report also gives a very clear conclusion:

The United States ranks first with 13551846 total users, and China ranks second with 7555311 total users.

(We can switch between the total number of users in 2020 and 2021 by clicking the menu)

5. The work style has changed: the remote/hybrid office model is popular

In 2021, the global economy and productivity will gradually recover, and the mode of shifting from remote office to mixed office will also be further consolidated.

With the change of office space, how will the working status of developers be affected?

In this report, only about 11% of the respondents indicated that they would like to return to the same office, which is a 30% drop from the previous number of users who wanted to work in the office (41%). Most users said that the remote, mixed office model is more appropriate.

6. Automation can enhance sustainability, and readme files are vital to open source projects

Data shows that the elimination of disagreements and repetitive tasks through automation can increase the team’s performance in open source by 27%, increase in work performance by 43%, and the developer’s report implementation rate will be higher.

At the same time, the code needs to have a readme file to become a good open source project: (number of repositories with and without readme files listed by repository type)

For example, the survey showed a set of data. In open source, the proportions that do not contain/include readme files are 14.1% (33,544) and 85.9% (204,373), respectively; for open source in work, the proportions that do not contain/include readme files are 12.26, respectively. % (6,000), 87.74% (42,954).

Therefore, one of the keys to improving productivity is that readme files can increase user confidence in open source projects.

Through readme, contribution guidelines, and issue sharing information, we have come to the secrets of open source projects:

Inviting new contributors can increase the efficiency of developers by 55%. Companies can adopt these best practices to support the work of their teams and initiate internal resource planning.

Summary:

In the "post-epidemic" era, online telecommuting has become the new normal in the workflow of various industries around the world. So, under the current situation, how to support the community to increase productivity and happiness in a smarter and more sustainable way by developing code and creating documents?

The GitHub 2021 Octoverse report can clearly understand the question of "what makes developers and teams perform better, more efficiently, and have good development experience".