Published on the 17/11/2022 | Written by Heather Wright

GitHub report reveals latest code-cutting fads… 

There are some surprises in amongst GitHub’s annual Octoverse listing of the fastest growing programming languages on its code repository in the past year, with Hashicorp Configuration Language, or HCL taking top spot.  

Infrastructure As Code is picking up.  

While Python and JavaScript might be more familiar names (and continue to reign supreme in Octoverse’s top languages for the year, taking out first and second), Github says it’s HCL which clocked the fastest growth in usage for the 2021-22 year, at 56 percent year on year.  

The configuration language was designed to be used with HashiCorp tools – notably Terraform. And therein lies part of the reason for HCL’s success this year, GitHub says, noting the growth in the popularity of the Terraform tool helped drive HCL’s popularity. 

There’s another reason too: Infrastructure As Code – the process of dynamically managing and provisioning infrastructure via code, rather than using manual process – is picking up.  

“Developers used the HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL), Shell and Go programming languages heavily in 2022, which indicates that IaC practices are increasingly being adopted across projects on GitHub – including open source projects.” 

Microsoft-owned GitHub says the Terraform tool and IaC practices are being used to increasingly automate deployments. 

Go, which has been on the scene for more than a decade, and Shell were also fast movers, ranking number five and six, respectively – with both jumping 28 percent –  on the fastest growing languages list.  

GitHub says the popularity of all three also points to the growing presence of operations communities in the world of open source, which has historically been more developer-centric. 

Second-placed Rust was another big winner, up 50 percent, driven in part by its security and reliability, GitHub says. 

Rust, released back in 2015, is popular among software developers and engineers, particularly as an alternative to C++, and has reigned supreme as the most loved programming language in the Stack Overflow Developer Survey for six years running.  

TypeScript and Lua, known for its utility in game development, rounded out the top five fastest movers.  Notably, Lua is also used as a simply scripting language in scenarios ranging from games to application development to the Internet of Things.  

Python just squeaked into the top 10, at 10, with a 22 percent year on year increase driven, in part, by its utility in data science and machine learning, GitHub says. 

When it comes to the top languages, however, the usual suspects continue to dominate: JavaScript, Python, Java, Typescript and C# all hold on to their top five positions. 

Also notable on among the trends highlighted by the report is the growth in commercially backed project – which made up some of the biggest projects on GitHub in 2022. Among the successful company-led projects is Google’s open source cross-platform framework, Flutter. 

GitHub says 30 percent of Fortune 100 companies now have open source program offices coordinating open source software strategies.  

Companies behind the most successful commercially backed open source projects have salaried developers regularly contributing to the projects.  

Copilot for business – and hand’s free coding

In other GitHub news, businesses will soon be able to buy the company’s Copilot AI coding tool. 

“Coming soon, businesses can purchase and manage seat licenses for GitHub Copilot for their employees,” Thomas Dohmke, GitHub CEO, said in a blog post.  

Launched in private beta in June 2021, Copilot suggests individual lines of code, or even entire functions, or can predict your next line of code.  

It’s been accused of ‘stealing’ open source code and failing to credit it, with accusations Microsoft and OpenAI trained Copilot on data published under an open source license.   

The controversy hasn’t stopped the popularity of Copilot, however, with Microsoft claiming it racked up 400,000 subscribers in its first month of general availability and now reportedly has a million users. 

The business version will provide admin controls and policies for users within the business.  

The company is also testing a hand’s free coding feature for Copilot, enabling a ‘Hey GitHub’ command to let you write, edit and navigate code without the keyboard.