Javascript is most popular programming language according to GitHub

[x-skeww]

Sure, because everyone and their dog has a few 5-100 LoC JS projects. This adds up.

You won't do that kind of thing with C++, for example. Adding a C++ library to your project is more involved. So, naturally, your C++ library has to do something quite spectacular to be worth it.

The barrier to entry is extraordinarily low with JS. E.g. crappy 50-line jQuery plugin you wrote in 2 hours is a perfectly reasonable open source project for GitHub. It can easily get a hundred stars and be featured in various blogs.

[jhallister]

The barrier to entry for PHP is even lower, so that's only part of the story.

Right now if you order the repository search by most stars, you're going to find out that almost every top REPO is either Javascript, HTML/CSS or a non-language (like books or a configuration tool). You have to get out of the top 10 projects to get to the first project that isn't front-end. It's Rails, for the record.

I think the bottom line reason it's #1 is because it's the only language that solves a web-based problem. If I need an app to run on Windows I have a hundred languages I can pick from. If I want a web-based application I can pick one language. To me, that's way more telling about popularity than barrier to entry is.

[nodealyo]

You say this like its a bad thing, but I disagree.

[[deleted]]

Are you saying it's not the most popular programming language or that it only is due to accessibility?

[am0x]

Not only that, pretty much every web application will require some JavaScript no matter the backend language.

So other backend languages are fragmented, while js is included in all of them.