As a techie at heart who’s spent countless hours in GitHub’s ecosystem, I’ve been glued to the updates coming out of GitHub Universe 2024 and diving into the latest Octoverse report.
Every year, alongside the new features, we gain access to a one-of-a-kind data set that offers valuable perspectives on our industry. Let’s dive into the details!
Copilot’s – Now multi model
Finally! Copilot’s embracing multi-model support, adding Claude and Gemini alongside its existing OpenAI support models. It’s a solid upgrade, but I can’t help but wonder if this will help it catch up with Cursor – which, let’s be honest, has been leading the pack in this space for a while now. Competition breeds innovation though, so I’m here for it.
GitHub Spark: Another Low-Code Tool?
Here’s something that caught my attention: GitHub Spark. Sure, “micro apps” might sound like just another buzzword, but I’m genuinely intrigued by the potential here.
Being able to spin up small apps using natural language could be a game-changer for quick prototypes or hackathon projects. I’m already thinking about how this could transform those “what if we tried…” moments into actual working demos.You can sign up for the pilot here.
Octoverse 2024: The Numbers That Actually Matter
Every year I geek out over the Octoverse report (yes, I’m that person), and this year’s data is particularly interesting:
The Python Takeover Is Official
Python has finally claimed the top spot as the most-used language on GitHub. As someone who’s watched this trend developing, boosted with the AI revolution, it’s not shocking, but it’s still a big moment.
Global Dev Community Shake-ups
- Brazil just knocked the UK down to 5th place in the top 10 developer communities on GitHub (though the UK’s still showing healthy 19% YoY growth)
- Growth in countries like India is simply staggering, the boost – largely attributed to changes in their education – now has them at >17m active developers!
- The wildest stat? Antarctica showed 379% YoY growth, jumping from 19 to 91 developers. Mostly scientific research stuff, but still – Antarctica!
Most-Loved Projects
No big surprises here, but it’s worth noting the top 3 projects:
- VS Code (The worlds default IDE)
- Home Assistant (I’m still yet to give this a run out)
- PowerToys (One for the Microsoft users, a handy tool pack)
The Good, The Bad, and The “We Need to Talk About This”
There’s some genuinely cool stuff happening in the education space – over 1 million open source maintainers, students, and teachers getting Copilot for free. Though I keep meeting folks who had no idea this was even a thing (maybe time to work on that marketing, GitHub?).
Here’s what’s bugging me though: the UK is only 9th in contributions to generative AI projects globally. For a country that prides itself on innovation, that’s a bit of a wake-up call. We need to step up our game in the AI entrepreneurship space.
On the security front, injection vulnerabilities are still topping the charts of found issues. In 2024, this feels like we’re still making the same mistakes we were making a decade ago. We’ve got to do better with our patterns and catch these earlier in the dev cycle.
Speaking of Love Letters to GitHub…
There’s this quote going around from Ryuzo Yamamoto at Souzoh about GitHub being “like the air we breathe” and honestly, while it’s a bit much, I totally get it. When was the last time you didn’t use Github on a working day?
What This All Means for Us
The platform’s evolving in interesting ways, particularly with AI integration and tools like Spark. But what really matters is how we use these tools to solve real problems. The upcoming year is going to be interesting as we figure out how to integrate these new capabilities into our workflows effectively.
Despite some of these tools being available for 12 months+ now, I’m still seeing relatively low rates of these tools being effectively embedded in engineering teams.
And hey, if you’re not already exploring these new features or taking advantage of the educational benefits, now might be a good time to start. Just maybe hold off on relocating to Antarctica for the developer scene – despite the impressive growth numbers.
Author: Edward Marshall
Chief Technology Officer at Enablis
