Developers who want to try out new programming languages or projects flock to GitHub, the Microsoft-owned service for sharing code and gathering communities around open source software.
Every year, GitHub publishes a report, called $4, which tracks the $4 and projects on the site. Given GitHub's prominence in Silicon Valley and anywhere else code is written, the report is a solid proxy for the larger trends in the industry.
While established languages like JavaScript and Java generally dominate the most-popular lists, GitHub also tracks the up-and-coming rising stars - the languages and frameworks that are growing the fastest in usage.
Stephen O'Grady, principal analyst and co-founder of RedMonk, says that he noticed there were three characteristics in these fastest-growing languages.
First, these languages are versatile. For example, Python can be used for machine learning, data science, and other kinds of data-intensive technical tasks. Second of all, some of these new languages, such as Rust and TypeScript, have special features that promote cybersecurity.
"What we hear when we talk to developers, they meant to use tools that will make their applications more secure by design without investing a ton of effort in them," O'Grady said on-stage at GitHub Universe, the company's annual event in San Francisco, held last week.
The third is that many of these languages are actually based on, or at least compatible with, those that already exist - which helps them attract a community, drawn from those progenitors. For example, TypeScript has proven popular with JavaScript developers, while Kotlin has been a hit with the Java community.
Here are the fastest-growing programming languages around, according to GitHub: