Kotlin overtakes Python and Java: GitHub recognizes it as the fastest-growing language in 2021

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GitHub named Kotlin the fastest growing language of the year

Popular source code hosting platform GitHub has published its annual Octoverse report for 2021. The main surprise was the recognition of the Kotlin programming language as the fastest growing: the number of developers using it on the platform increased by 160% compared to 2020. This allowed Kotlin to enter the top 10 languages by number of active repositories, overtaking Rust, Go, and even classic C.

GitHub analysts attribute the explosive growth to the massive migration of Android developers to Kotlin. In May 2021, Google officially declared Kotlin the priority language for creating Android applications, which spurred both large companies (for example, Netflix, Trello, and Evernote) and startups to rewrite legacy code from Java to Kotlin.

Interestingly, according to the report, the total number of developers on the platform exceeded 73 million people. At the same time, Kotlin showed the highest growth dynamics among languages in the top twenty. For comparison: the growth of TypeScript was 67%, and Python — 45%. Java, on the contrary, lost 2% of active users for the first time in the last five years.

Experts note that Kotlin wins due to compatibility with the Java ecosystem and modern syntax.

"Kotlin is Java without the pain. It allows you to write 2-3 times less code to solve the same tasks, while fully maintaining backward compatibility with millions of Java libraries," comments Jake Wharton, lead engineer at JetBrains.

Among other trends of 2021: the growing popularity of infrastructure code on Terraform (HCL) and the rise of WebAssembly. However, it was Kotlin that became the main discovery of the year, proving that even in the mature JVM language market, there is room for breakthroughs. Developers who want to stay on trend should pay attention to Kotlin Multiplatform — a technology that allows using one code for Android, iOS, and backend.