TypeScript Overtakes Python and JavaScript To Claim Top Spot on GitHub

TypeScript overtook Python and JavaScript in August 2025 to become the most used language on GitHub. The shift marked the most significant language change in more than a decade. The language grew by over 1 million contributors in 2025, a 66% increase year over year, and finished August with 2,636,006 monthly contributors.

Nearly every major frontend framework now scaffolds projects in TypeScript by default. Next.js 15, Astro 3, SvelteKit 2, Qwik, SolidStart, Angular 18, and Remix all generate TypeScript codebases when developers create new projects. Type systems reduce ambiguity and catch errors from large language models before production. A 2025 academic study found 94% of LLM-generated compilation errors were type-check failures. Tooling like Vite, ts-node, Bun, and I.D.E. autoconfig hide boilerplate setup. Among new repositories created in the past twelve months, TypeScript accounted for 5,394,256 projects. That represented a 78% increase from the prior year.

So basically...

[93 Escort Wagon]

GitHub is devolving into a repository for websites, and actual application development is moving elsewhere.

TypeScript

[JBMcB]

The problem is developers only know how to make websites now. The Windows app for my UPS is 300MB because it's an Electron app, so it has to run a couple of hundred megs of python and a node.js server to show me the last time my UPS tripped. I just use the built-in Windows battery thing now, but it doesn't keep track of battery health unfortunately.

Re:TypeScript

[CubicleZombie]

I go where the money is, and nobody wants to pay me to write console applications anymore. Lately it's all been Angular and ... Typescript.

Re:

[ArchieBunker]

Apcupsd is available for windows. I use it.

Re:

[93 Escort Wagon]

The problem is developers only know how to make websites now.

You are probably right. My view gets a little skewed because our engineering students are learning more specialized software, so I don't run into the "everything is a web app" situation as much. But it's true that the mass market software does all seem to be heading in that direction.

I suspect for a lot of them the excuse is it makes it easier to move to a subscription model.

Re:

[codemachine]

The one benefit to that is that it is easier to make it cross platform, but there are other ways to be cross platform without writing a web app. Unfortunately the largest (and often least expensive) set of developers know how to make websites and nothing else, so they make what they know.

You can't really blame application developers for not targeting native Windows anymore when even Microsoft doesn't use their own native frameworks to build applications. Outlook is now just a website inside a webview contro

Re:

[rsoundman]

Moving where, in your opinion?

Re:

[93 Escort Wagon]

If they're smart, they're moving to non-public storage that's under their own control.

But, honestly, unfortunately I suspect the commenters who've pointed out most devs are just making web apps now are probably right.

Re:

[timeOday]

There are only like half a dozen actual (not web) applications out there any more.

Is that like Profiles for Rust?

[kurt_cordial]

Is there a standard, like with TP-Link routers?

Typescript is great

[i_ate_god]

Of course, it's still hobbled by the fact that it is a superset of JavaScript, but it's type system is really great. I would love to see a language have a similar mentality to TS's type system without all the trappings of web development

Re:

[hjf]

Why would anyone use "bare javascript" instead of TS is beyond me.

A couple years ago some high profile libraries ditched TS and moved to bare JS because it was "holding them back". But then again, idiots developing JS libraries love to break API compatibility completely in every major release. And not like "yeah let's rename this argument because my OCD prevents me from being productive if i see this name).

No like, "let's completely rewrite the codebase and make a fundamentally different product, but call i

Re:

[phantomfive]

Breaking API changes in Javascript are especially insidious because often they don't even give you a runtime error notification. Assign a value to a variable that doesn't exist? No problem.

De-JS-ing TypeScript?

[Tablizer]

Would it be plausible to make a language from scratch that's fairly similar to TS but fixes the warts left over from JS-ness? Call it Fixed Type Script (FTS) as a working term here.

Then make a FTS-to-JavaScript compiler/transpiler/interpreter. I realize FTS wouldn't run as fast as TS, but for most apps that wouldn't matter.

Oh, and add Optional Named Parameters. Those are a must! I will eat the pet of anyone who makes a new language without ONP's! I love ONP's; I married them!

And please don't use "+" for st

Re:

[Wdomburg]

AssemblyScript might count, but with a WASM target instead of Javascript.

Re:

[Tablizer]

I thought WASM has limited access to the DOM. It's a common complaint. Perhaps necessary for security?

Re:

[Wdomburg]

In a web environment, yeah, my understanding is that there still needs to be some amount of glue code to manipulate the DOM.

I'm a backend developer, so that is less of interest to me than WASI, the WebAssembly System Interface.

Re:

[codemachine]

The same person who designed TypeScript also designed C#, so they have a lot of similarities. The main difference is that C# is compiled for its own runtime rather than being turned into Javascript and run by a web browser.

Is this actually meaningful?

[PubJeezy]

Is this actually meaningful? It sounds like an easily gameable metric with a clear profit motive behind it.

Re:

[i kan reed]

Unfair. It's modestly difficult to game.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

No [wikipedia.org].

Re: I don't program

[Pascoea]

Exactly what part of that is confusing? It's Javascript that adds strict variable typing. In JS you can assign the integer value 1, the string "1", and the string "one" to the same variable. In TS you can't.

Re:

[phantomfive]

The part that is confusing is that the OP doesn't program.

Re:

[Pascoea]

Blows my mind that there are people on this site that have zero exposure to coding.

TypeScript is

[Tablizer]

a JavaScript semi-wrapper doctored to kind of behave like a statically typed language. Think of JS and C# having a love child.

Re:I don't program

[Pseudonymous Powers]

JavaScript doesn't have type checking. This means that when you program your fancy robot surgeon "medbed" in JavaScript, and it asks you to put a scalpel in one gripper and a needle-and-thread in the other, but you decide to put a chainsaw in both instead, it doesn't check to see if it has a scalpel or a needle, it just goes ahead and uses the chainsaws.

TypeScript is JavaScript with type checking to prevent that sort of thing.

Don't build on boiler plate code

[simlox]

It is ok to generate code from some configuration options, but the file with these options is what belongs in Git (along with a build script), not the auto-generated code. The worst thing you can do is to edit autogenerated code: How do you update the code generator and run it without loosing your own code? This kind of code is only for short lived projects.

For web pages, TS is way better than JS

[Tschaine]

But whoever invented Node needs to pay for their crimes.

When I was on a team that owned a service that was written in Typescript, every couple months or so, a bug would get into production and I just look at the fix and think, "how did that even compile?"

And the reason it compiled is that Typescript is encumbered by Javascript's horror show.

The time saved by getting front-end developers to write back-end code with a familiar language is small. You only have to ramp up once, The time wasted by working in a l

Re:

[kackle]

Funny += 1;

Interesting landmark...

[ndykman]

So, the most popular language is one that will no longer bootstraps itself in any significant anyway (remember, PyPy is a thing).

TypeScript creates JavaScript, that code uses an engine and the engines for JavaScript aren't in written in JavaScript. However, the TypeScript compiler was written in TypeScript.

Emphasis on was. It is being ported to Go to address fundamental performance issues. And, yet, if you have a concern about the size or performance of any web app or application based on Electron and the l

Re:

[phantomfive]

It increases programmer employment by reducing productivity.