JavaScript is the Most Popular Language, with Ruby Coming in Second

I was surprised at first, as I had initially assumed the graph was referring to Node.js. Then I facepalmed when I realized that, obviously, most of that is client-side JavaScript.

Ruby is well ahead of Python, which is way down in the #5 slot, below Java and shell scripts. Considering how many times Redditors have tried to tell me that Python has a larger and more active community, despite my previous observations, I found it amusing. (I’m a fairly recent adopter of the Ruby language, which I chose to invest time in learning—over Python—partially because of its large, thriving community of developers.)

PHP, strangely, is even lower on the list than Python. PHP is definitely used more widely than either Ruby or Python, yet its found in comparatively few repositories on GitHub. There are a few points of speculation I take away from this:

• There isn’t too much overlap between Git users and PHP users. One could argue that since a large portion of PHP users are beginner developers, they haven’t picked up source control yet.
• The average PHP developer could be working on closed source projects for one reason or another. Either for work reasons or because they haven’t been bitten by the FOSS bug yet. Or they’re working on a hobby project that’s going to be The Next Big Thing, and they want to keep it closed.
• There’s a difference between active developers creating unique projects, and end users dropping in a pre-made script to run. Sure, PHP definitely has the widest install base. It’s astronomical. But how many developers out there choose to work with it to create open source projects?

Setup was a little bit of a hassle at first, due to some dependency issues with the development version I was trying to install. I would definitely recommend downloading the stable version from GitList.org. The installation instructions are simple enough, though the script seems to prefer having its own domain or subdomain. (GitList doesn’t use absolute URLs, and there is no documented configuration option to set a base directory other than the domain root.)

Once you get it up and running, it’s a convenient way to view commits. I’d probably be using it regularly if I wasn’t already hosting my private repositories on BitBucket.

Despite its usefulness, however, the initial learning curve puts off some people. It can be a little difficult to wrap your head around if you’re not already familiar with the concept of version control.

That’s where Try Git comes in. It aims to teach you the basics of Git with an interactive tutorial that features an in-browser command prompt. The tutorial walks you through different commands, and helps you see how everything works.

If you’re not using Git yet, check it out! And keep in mind that there are alternatives to GitHub if you don’t want to host your code publicly. You can use Git locally, on your own server, or a service like BitBucket that doesn’t charge for private repositories.

While it does make sense to pay for a tool if you use it extensively for commercial purposes, you may not be ready to if you’re an indie developer just beginning a project that won’t hit the shelves for awhile. Also, if you’re using it for versioning and deploying websites, you may not want to have all of your source be public.

GitHub’s business model is primarily the sale of premium accounts with varying numbers of allowed private repositories, starting at $7/month for five private repositories and up to one collaborator. It’s not a bad deal at all, as GitHub is by and large open source projects, but you may still want to find a better offer. Fortunately, there are a couple of solid competitors.

BitBucket

BitBucket is very much like GitHub, functionally. It has the same sort of social collaboration tools, and most of the same features. But that’s where the differences end. Their pricing scheme is to give you all of the repositories you could possibly want, both public and private, while charging to add extra collaborators to your private repositories. You get five for free, and can upgrade to ten for $10/month, twenty-five for $20/month, etc.. Oh, and they support both Git and Mercurial.

I’ve been using BitBucket lately for some of my projects, and it’s been great so far.

Beanstalk

Beanstalk only does private repositories, offering plans limited by disk space and the number of repositories, as well as the number of authorized users. Aside from their 100MB single-repository trial plan, their offerings start at $15/month for 3GB of space, 10 repositories and 5 users. One of their unique selling points is their integration with tools like Basecamp and Lighthouse. They also have quite a few corporate customers.