The 10 most popular programming languages, according to the Microsoft-owned GitHub

GitHub has become a hub that 40 million developers use to collaborate and share code for their projects personal, professional, and otherwise.

Just last year, Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion, making it one of the key ingredients in its strategy for attracting more developers onto its cloud as it competes against Amazon and Microsoft.

As one of the largest online gathering spots for developers, GitHub tracks what programming languages are most popular among developers by releasing an annual report called The State of the Octoverse . The new report just came out this week, giving us new insight into which technologies developers are flocking to around the world.

Here are the top languages programmers are using, according to GitHub:

#10: Ruby

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Ruby is an open source programming language that focuses on being simple to use. It was created by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto, who blended the best parts of his favorite languages to create it. It was released in 1995, and since then, it's become even more popular, with several conferences and meetups based on the Ruby language.

#9: C

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C is one of the oldest programming languages still in popular use today, developed by Dennis Ritchie in 1972. It was designed to be a general-purpose language, for programming a wide array of computer systems and hardware. Many popular languages today, including Java, PHP, and JavaScript, have their roots in C.

#8: Shell

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Shell is especially popular with the IT department, allowing them to write commands that directly tell the operating system what to do. It can be used to automate common processes like installing or uninstalling programs remotely, or to manage, backup, and copy files.

#7: TypeScript

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TypeScript is an open source programming language developed and maintained by Microsoft. It's not only one of the most popular languages, it's also one of the fastest growing. With similar syntax and semantics, it's very similar to JavaScript, but with more powerful features that help developers build large-scale applications. It's also supported by Microsoft's free code editor Visual Studio Code , which is the top open source project on GitHub.

#6: C++

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The programming language C++ builds off of C, and goes back almost as far dating back to 1979. Bjarne Stroustrup created it while he was working on his PhD thesis, as a way to add additional features to C. Today, it's still widely used, as it's the core language in many operating systems, browsers, and games.

#5: C#

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C#, pronounced "C-sharp," was developed by Microsoft im a team led by Anders Hejlsberg. It's similar to the programming language Java. It's used in mobile applications, games, and enterprise software.

#4: PHP

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PHP, which stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (yes, the "P" stands for "PHP"), is an open source programming language for web development and creating interactive web pages. It also works well with databases, and has been used by Facebook and Yahoo. However, developers have long ridiculed it one of the worst programming languages.

#3: Java

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Java was first developed by Sun Microsystems in 1995, which was later acquired by Oracle. This open source language is used by companies like Twitter and Netflix, and is something of a standard at large companies. Developers have used Java to create mobile and web applications, games, and database-driven software. It's also similar to C++ and C#, allowing developers to easily switch between the languages.

#2: Python

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Python is both one of the most popular programming languages and one of the fastest growing ones. In terms of popularity, it went from third place last year to second place in 2019. This open source language is frequently used for artificial intelligence applications and data science, but it's also known to be easy to get started with. There's a large community around Python, and even conferences and meetups dedicated to it.

#1: JavaScript

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JavaScript remains the most popular programming language in the world. That's because it's one of the main languages used for building web pages. It helps make websites interactive and can also be used for building games. Developers love it because it's lightweight, flexible, and powerful. However, despite the name, it has little in common with