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GitHub named C++ the fastest growing language of the year
The GitHub platform, the world's largest open source repository, published its annual Octoverse report for 2021. The main surprise was the recognition of the C++ language as the fastest growing in terms of the number of contributors. The annual increase was 12.2%, outpacing JavaScript (10.8%) and Python (9.7%).
"C++ is experiencing a rebirth thanks to the development of cloud technologies, game engines, and real-time systems," comments Alexey Petrov, a leading developer at Yandex. "The C++17 and C++20 standards added modules, coroutines, and concepts, making the language competitive even against Rust and Go."
According to GitHub, the number of new repositories in C++ grew by 14% compared to 2020. The main drivers are projects in machine learning (TensorFlow, PyTorch have a C++ core), game development (Unreal Engine 5), and high-load backends (for example, the ClickHouse and RocksDB databases).
Experts attribute the growth to the industry's transition to C++20, which simplified writing safe code. "Previously, C++ scared beginners with manual memory management," notes Maria Sokolova, author of courses on Stepik. "But modern tools like Smart Pointers and RAII lower the entry barrier. Plus, in 2021, the Boost 1.77 library with support for coroutines was released."
Notably, in the top 10 languages by absolute number of commits, C++ ranks 4th after JavaScript, Python, and Java. However, it is the growth dynamics that make it the "language of the year" according to GitHub. The report also emphasizes that 23% of all new contributors on GitHub in 2021 tried C++ for the first time.
"This is not just hype," summarizes Tim Lee, an engineer at Microsoft. "C++ remains indispensable for system programming, where speed and hardware control are important. As long as there are processors, memory, and operating systems, C++ will be in demand."
For the PythonLib community, this is an important signal: if you develop high-performance libraries in Python, their core is often written in C++ (via pybind11). Demand for such specialists in 2022, according to HeadHunter forecasts, will grow by another 20%.
