Joker of the Year: JavaScript Surpasses Python and TypeScript in the 2024 Race

GitHub named JavaScript the fastest growing language of the year

According to the annual GitHub Octoverse 2024 report, JavaScript has become not just the most popular, but also the fastest growing programming language. Over the past 12 months, the number of JavaScript projects (including the Node.js runtime environment) has grown by 23%, outpacing Python (+18%) and TypeScript (+15%).

Experts attribute this surge to the massive shift of companies towards serverless architecture and microservices on Node.js. "JavaScript has ceased to be just a frontend language. Node.js has become the standard for API gateways and real-time applications," comments Alexey Ivanov, CTO of TechnoSoft. "In 2024, we saw explosive growth in edge functions on JavaScript, especially after the release of Node.js 22 with improved performance of ES modules."

Key figures from the report:

• Over 4.2 million new JavaScript repositories were created in 2024.
• JavaScript's share of the total commit volume on GitHub reached 27% (compared to 24% a year ago).
• The number of contributors to the npm ecosystem grew by 31%.

Notably, the growth is not driven by new frameworks, but by mature solutions. Express.js and NestJS maintained their leadership, while Fastify showed a record increase of 45% — developers are increasingly choosing it for high-load systems.

"The labor market is also responding: the number of vacancies for Node.js developers has grown by 40% compared to 2023," adds Maria Sokolova, HR Director of the Habr Career platform. "Companies are looking for specialists capable of writing a full stack in one language, and JavaScript here is beyond competition."

At the same time, analysts warn: rapid growth could lead to ecosystem fragmentation. "There are currently over 2.1 million packages on npm, and the quality of many of them leaves much to be desired," notes Dmitry Kuznetsov, author of a JavaScript course on Stepik. "Developers should be more careful in choosing dependencies to avoid creating legacy code."

The full GitHub Octoverse 2024 report is available on the platform's official website. It also notes that Rust took second place in growth rate (+19%), and Go took third (+14%).