How the Pandemic Reshaped GitHub: 2020 Trends and Future Predictions

2020 is ending, and the COVID‑19 pandemic has changed many aspects of life, including software development.

Programmers were less affected because they can work from any computer, and many even spent more time on projects. This is reflected in GitHub’s 2020 reports (community, productivity, security).

GitHub

GitHub, Microsoft’s code‑hosting platform, now serves tens of millions of developers worldwide. The 2020 reports show that the number of users exceeded 56 million, open‑source projects grew about 40 % faster, and Python remained the most popular language, with 361 832 contributors from 202 countries.

During the early months of the pandemic, the average time to merge a pull request increased, but after March it dropped sharply as more developers devoted time to open‑source work.

New open‑source repositories also surged, with a 40 % increase in May compared with the previous year.

Experts predict that by 2025 more than 100 million users will share projects on GitHub.

The share of contributions from the United States fell to 22.7 %, while China and India rose to 9.76 % and 5.2 % respectively. In 2015 the U.S. contributed 30.4 %, Germany 7.3 % and the UK 5.8 %.

By 2025 the U.S. share is expected to drop to 16.4 %, with China and India increasing to 13.3 % and 7.9 %, and contributions from South America and Africa also rising.

Active user trends show a decline in North America but growth in other regions.