Shocking Twist: GitHub Declares C++ the Fastest-Growing Language of 2024 — What Does This Mean for Python?

GitHub named C++ the fastest growing language of the year

The GitHub platform published its annual Octoverse 2024 report, which traditionally analyzes developer activity. The main surprise: C++ became the fastest growing programming language by number of contributors, overtaking JavaScript, Python, and Rust.

According to GitHub data, the number of active developers writing in C++ grew by 23.5% over the past 12 months. For comparison, Python's growth was only 8.2%, and JavaScript's was 4.1%. Experts attribute this surge to several factors.

"C++ is experiencing a renaissance thanks to the development of AI/ML infrastructure, game engines, and high-load systems," comments Anna Smirnova, lead engineer at Yandex. "The modern C++20/23 standards have made the language significantly safer and more convenient, which has attracted a new generation of developers."

Growth is especially noticeable in repositories related to LLM tooling (for example, llama.cpp has gathered 78 thousand stars), development for ROS 2 (robotics), and low-level optimizations for Kubernetes. GitHub notes that 42% of new C++ projects are in some way related to AI.

At the same time, Python remains the absolute leader in total number of contributors (5.2 million vs 1.9 million for C++), but C++'s growth rate is 2.8 times higher. Interestingly, Rust, which is often called the "C++ killer," showed growth of only 12.1%.

For the PythonLib community, this is an important signal: the C++ ecosystem is actively integrating with Python via pybind11, nanobind, and Cython. Many high-performance libraries for Python (e.g., NumPy, TensorFlow, PyTorch) have a C++ core. The growth of C++ means that in 2025 we will see even more hybrid Python/C++ projects.

The full GitHub Octoverse 2024 report is available on the platform's official website.