GitHub Octoverse 2023: AI, Cloud, and Open‑Source Trends Shaping the Global Developer Landscape

What Does the Mainstream Adoption of New Technologies Mean?

Git was first released in 2005 as a novel open‑source version‑control system and has since become the foundation of modern developer experience, with 93% of developers using it to build and deploy software.

In 2023, GitHub’s data highlights another technology rapidly reshaping that experience: artificial intelligence. More developers are using AI and building AI‑driven applications, positioning AI as the next step in software development.

GitHub sees developers eager to learn by doing; open source accelerates adoption of new technologies, fuels the digital economy, and bridges the gap between experimental and widely‑adopted tools.

This year’s report examines how open‑source activity around AI, cloud computing, and Git is changing developer experience and expanding its impact on individuals and organizations.

GitHub’s Three Major Trends

Developers are heavily using generative AI for building. GitHub observes a growing number of developers experimenting with large‑model providers such as OpenAI; generative‑AI projects entered the top‑10 most‑starred open‑source projects in 2023, and 92% of developers have used or tried AI coding tools.

Developers are operating cloud‑native applications at scale. Use of infrastructure‑as‑code (IaC) workflows, Dockerfiles, containers, and other cloud‑native technologies has risen sharply, with higher standardisation of cloud deployments.

2023 saw the highest number of first‑time contributors. Commercially backed open‑source projects continue to attract the most first‑time contributors, while generative‑AI projects also rank among the top‑10 for first‑time contributions.

Regional Developer Community Growth

GitHub predicts India will overtake the United States as the largest developer community by 2027, with rapid growth across APAC, Africa, South America, and Europe. Tables detail developer counts and year‑over‑year growth percentages for each region.

Explosive Growth of Generative AI in 2023

Generative AI projects doubled in number compared with 2022, with a 148% increase in individual contributions and a 248% rise in project count. Developers worldwide are increasingly using large‑language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT API to build applications.

Most Popular Programming Languages

JavaScript remains the top language, while Python, Java, and TypeScript (which rose to the third‑most‑used language with a 37% increase) also see strong growth. Infrastructure‑as‑code languages like HCL and emerging languages such as Rust, Go, Kotlin, and Lua show notable adoption in new projects.

Developer Activity Drives New‑Technology Adoption

GitHub celebrated over 100 million developers, with a 26% increase in global accounts year‑over‑year. GitHub Actions usage grew 169%, averaging over 20 million minutes per day on public projects, reflecting heightened automation.

More than 80% of contributions go to private repositories, underscoring the value of internal source code alongside open source.

Open‑Source State in 2023

Developers contributed a total of 301 million contributions to open‑source projects, with generative‑AI projects entering the top‑10 most‑starred list for the first time. Commercially backed projects continue to dominate contributor counts.

Adoption of Docker, Terraform, and other cloud‑native tools is widespread, with 4.3 million repositories using Dockerfiles.

Key Takeaways

GitHub is the platform for generative AI development, with AI moving from niche to mainstream.

Developers are running cloud‑native applications at massive scale on GitHub.

GitHub remains the hub where open‑source communities, developers, and companies build software together.