A Redmonk study, combining GitHub and Stack Overflow data, finds TypeScript, Kotlin, and Julia usage is up, while Go, R, Scala, Clojure, Groovy usage is down
This iteration of the RedMonk Programming Language Rankings is brought to you by IBM. From Java to Node.js, IBM remains at the forefront of open source innovation.
Context & Ripple Effects
RedMonk's GitHub-plus-Stack Overflow rankings have a track record of catching language inflections early — Apple's Swift jumped from 58th to 22nd in a single quarter in the same ranking list back in early 2015. This iteration marks the moment TypeScript, Kotlin, and Julia register as usage gainers, while five languages slide at once.
The decliners cluster tellingly: Scala, Clojure, and Groovy are all alternative JVM languages, so their simultaneous fall reads as consolidation around Java itself. And Kotlin's rise here was foreshadowed by Stack Overflow's 2018 survey, which ranked it among developers' most-loved languages before usage followed sentiment.
First-order effects
- Teams building on Go, R, Scala, Clojure, or Groovy face a shrinking talent and library pool as RedMonk's combined GitHub and Stack Overflow signal shows their usage falling, raising hiring and maintenance costs.
- TypeScript and Kotlin convert prior developer affection into actual adoption — Kotlin rode its most-loved status from Stack Overflow's survey into measurable usage growth.
Second-order effects
- Tooling vendors, course providers, and conference organizers redirect resources toward the risers, reinforcing the gap between TypeScript/Kotlin and the declining set in a feedback loop.
- The JVM-alternative retreat pressures JetBrains and other ecosystem players to position Kotlin as the default modern-JVM choice rather than one option among Scala, Clojure, and Groovy.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points to typed layers winning atop dominant runtimes — TypeScript over JavaScript, Kotlin over the JVM — squeezing out standalone languages that ask developers to switch ecosystems entirely.
- If the trajectory holds, TypeScript's climb continues past these rankings: GitHub's own data later shows it overtaking Python and JavaScript as the platform's most-used language among its 180M+ developers ([[a:891994]]).
The trend: Language adoption is consolidating around statically-typed variants of dominant platforms, with RedMonk's dual-source rankings serving as the earliest public signal of each shift.