Surge CEO Edwin Chen says AI is creating "100x engineers" who can outperform traditional software developers by orders of magnitude. Chen argued that AI coding tools multiply the productivity gains already seen in Silicon Valley's "10x engineers," who can produce ten times the work of their colleagues through faster coding, harder work, and fewer distractions.

Chen said AI efficiencies compound these factors to reach 100x productivity levels. The CEO, whose company reached $1 billion in revenue without venture capital funding, believes this could enable billion-dollar single-person companies, extending beyond the $10 million single-person startups that already exist.

AI coding service Replit deleted a user's production database and fabricated data to cover up bugs, according to SaaStr founder Jason Lemkin. Lemkin documented his experience on social media after Replit ignored his explicit instructions not to make code changes without permission.

The database deletion eliminated 1,206 executive records representing months of authentic SaaStr data curation. Replit initially told Lemkin the database could not be restored, claiming it had "destroyed all database versions," but later discovered rollback functionality did work. Replit said it made "a catastrophic error of judgement" and rated the severity of its actions as 95 out of 100. The service also created a 4,000-record database filled with fictional people and repeatedly violated code freeze requests.

Lemkin had initially praised Replit after building a prototype in hours, spending $607.70 in additional charges beyond his $25 monthly plan. He concluded the service isn't ready for commercial use by non-technical users.

Twitter co-founder/Block CEO Jack Dorsey isn't just vibe coding new apps like Bitchat and Sun Day. He's also "invested $10 million in an effort to fund experimental open source projects and other tools that could ultimately transform the social media landscape," reports TechCrunch," funding the projects through an online collective formed in May called "andOtherStuff: [T]he team at "andOtherStuff" is determined not to build a company but is instead operating like a "community of hackers," explains Evan Henshaw-Plath [who handles UX/onboarding and was also Twitter's first employee]. Together, they're working to create technologies that could include new consumer social apps as well as various experiments, like developer tools or libraries, that would allow others to build apps for themselves.

For instance, the team is behind an app called Shakespeare, which is like the app-building platform Lovable, but specifically for building Nostr-based social apps with AI assistance. The group is also behind heynow, a voice note app built on Nostr; Cashu wallet; private messenger White Noise; and the Nostr-based social community +chorus, in addition to the apps Dorsey has already released. Developments in AI-based coding have made this type of experimentation possible, Henshaw-Plath points out, in the same way that technologies like Ruby on Rails, Django, and JSON helped to fuel an earlier version of the web, dubbed Web 2.0.

Related to these efforts, Henshaw-Plath sat down with Dorsey for the debut episode of his new podcast, revolution.social with @rabble... Dorsey believes Bluesky faces the same challenges as traditional social media because of its structure — it's funded by VCs, like other startups. Already, it has had to bow to government requests and faced moderation challenges, he points out. "I think [Bluesky CEO] Jay [Graber] is great. I think the team is great," Dorsey told Henshaw-Plath, "but the structure is what I disagree with ... I want to push the energy in a different direction, which is more like Bitcoin, which is completely open and not owned by anyone from a protocol layer...."

Dorsey's initial investment has gotten the new nonprofit up and running, and he worked on some of its initial iOS apps. Meanwhile, others are contributing their time to build Android versions, developer tools, and different social media experiments. More is still in the works, says Henshaw-Plath.

"There are things that we're not ready to talk about yet that'll be very exciting," he teases.

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Intel has quietly pulled the plug on Clear Linux OS, officially ending support for the once-promising Linux distribution that it had backed for nearly a decade. Effective immediately, the company says it will no longer provide any updates, security patches, or maintenance for the operating system. In a final blow, the Clear Linux OS GitHub repository is now archived in read-only mode.

The move was announced with little fanfare, and for users still relying on Clear Linux OS, there's no sugarcoating it... you need to move on. Intel is urging everyone to migrate to an actively maintained Linux distribution as soon as possible to avoid running unpatched software. "Rest assured that Intel remains deeply invested in the Linux ecosystem, actively supporting and contributing to various open-source projects and Linux distributions to enable and optimize for Intel hardware," the company said in a statement. "A heartfelt thank you to every developer, user, and contributor who helped shape Clear Linux OS over the last 10 years. Your feedback and contributions have been invaluable."

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev has said that the majority of his company's new code is written by AI, with "close to 100%" of engineers using AI code editors. Speaking on the 20VC podcast, Tenev estimated around 50% of new code at the trading platform is AI-generated.

Tenev said the 50% figure is imprecise due to advanced "agentic" code editors that have made it difficult to distinguish human-written from AI-generated code. The company has progressed from GitHub Copilot to Cursor and now Windsurf, where "nearly all of the code is written by AI," he said. Tenev estimated only a "minority" of new code at Robinhood is written by humans.

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Blender 4.5 has arrived and it's a long-term support release. That means users get two full years of updates and bug fixes, making it a smart choice for anyone looking for stability in serious projects. Whether you're a solo artist or part of a studio pipeline, this version is built to last. Here's a list of key features and changes in this release:

- Vulkan backend replaces OpenGL (faster, smoother UI)
- Adaptive subdivision up to 14x faster with multithreading
- New Geometry Nodes: Camera Info, Instance Bounds
- GPU-accelerated compositor nodes with standardized inputs
- New Boolean solver: Manifold (cleaner, faster mesh operations)
- UV maps visible in Object Mode + improved selection behavior
- Grease Pencil render pass and Geometry Nodes integration
- Improved file import support: PLY, OBJ, STL, CSV, VDB
- Deprecations: Collada, Big Endian, legacy .blend, Intel Mac support
- Cycles OptiX now requires NVIDIA driver v535+
- New shader variants for add-on developers (POLYLINES_*, POINT_*)
~500 bug fixes across all major systems

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Android is changing how it gives developers access to early features. The company is replacing its old Developer Preview model with a new Canary channel that provides rolling updates all year long. This new approach is meant to give developers earlier and more consistent access to experimental tools and APIs.

Previously, Developer Previews had to be manually flashed onto devices. They only ran during the earliest stages of each release cycle and stopped once Android entered the beta phase. That meant promising features that were not quite ready for beta had nowhere to go and no way to collect feedback. The Canary channel solves that by running in parallel with the existing beta program and delivering over the air updates automatically.

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Red Hat has introduced a new option that gives developers a fast lane to enterprise-grade Linux without needing to go through IT. The new release, called Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Business Developers, is now available for free. It offers direct, self-serve access to the same operating system used in production environments, specifically for business-focused development and testing.

The offering is part of the Red Hat Developer Program and is designed to reduce friction between development and operations teams. Developers can now build and test applications on the same platform that powers critical systems across physical servers, virtual machines, cloud deployments, and edge devices. [...] Each registered user can deploy up to 25 instances, whether virtual, physical, or cloud-based. The program includes signed and curated developer content such as programming languages, open source tools, and databases. Red Hat also includes Podman Desktop, its go-to container development tool, allowing users to work with containers that can closely match production environments.

While access is free, developers can choose to purchase support plans that tap into Red Hat's Linux expertise. This could appeal to developers working in business units or teams that want to build quickly without waiting on formal IT approval. This new option complements Red Hat's existing free Developer Subscription for Individuals and the Enterprise Developer Subscription for Teams, which is available through Red Hat reps or partners.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: The Linux Foundation announced at the Open Source Summit in Denver that it will now host the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol. Initially developed by Google and now supported by more than 100 leading technology companies, A2A is a crucial new open standard for secure and interoperable communication between AI agents. In his keynote presentation, Mike Smith, a Google staff software engineer, told the conference that the A2A protocol has evolved to make it easier to add custom extensions to the core specification. Additionally, the A2A community is working on making it easier to assign unique identities to AI agents, thereby improving governance and security.

The A2A protocol is designed to solve one of AI's most pressing challenges: enabling autonomous agents -- software entities capable of independent action and decision-making -- to discover each other, securely exchange information, and collaborate across disparate platforms, vendors, and frameworks. Under the hood, A2A does this work by creating an AgentCard. An AgentCard is a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) metadata document that describes its purpose and provides instructions on how to access it via a web URL. A2A also leverages widely adopted web standards, such as HTTP, JSON-RPC, and Server-Sent Events (SSE), to ensure broad compatibility and ease of integration. By providing a standardized, vendor-neutral communication layer, A2A breaks down the silos that have historically limited the potential of multi-agent systems.

For security, A2A comes with enterprise-grade authentication and authorization built in, including support for JSON Web Tokens (JWTs), OpenID Connect (OIDC), and Transport Layer Security (TLS). This approach ensures that only authorized agents can participate in workflows, protecting sensitive data and agent identities. While the security foundations are in place, developers at the conference acknowledged that integrating them, particularly authenticating agents, will be a hard slog. Antje Barth, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) principal developer advocate for generative AI, explained what the adoption of A2A will mean for IT professionals: "Say you want to book a train ride to Copenhagen, then a hotel there, and look maybe for a fancy restaurant, right? You have inputs and individual tasks, and A2A adds more agents to this conversation, with one agent specializing in hotel bookings, another in restaurants, and so on. A2A enables agents to communicate with each other, hand off tasks, and finally brings the feedback to the end user."

Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, said: "By joining the Linux Foundation, A2A is ensuring the long-term neutrality, collaboration, and governance that will unlock the next era of agent-to-agent powered productivity." Zemlin expects A2A to become a cornerstone for building interoperable, multi-agent AI systems.

Following a week of X and YouTube complaints, Apple has further reduced the transparency of its Liquid Glass design in the latest iOS 26 developer beta, making navigation bars, buttons, and tabs more opaque to improve readability. The Verge reports: "iOS 26 beta 3 completely nerfs Liquid Glass," AppleTrack developer Sam Kohl says in a post on X. "It looks so much cheaper now and feels like Apple is backtracking on their original vision." Others ask Apple to "stop ruining" Liquid Glass and call the new design a "step backwards." Some users in the beta found that the transparency level can vary depending on the app they're using.

This is still just a developer beta, so it's likely that Apple will continue to make tweaks before it releases iOS 26 to the public in September.

Software developer Anton Zaides argues that software engineers have had it easy over the decades and the "best profession" on earth deserved the wake up call. He writes:It's not just one of the hardest times, it's also one of the most exciting.

I'm hugely optimistic about the software engineering career. All those companies started by vibe-coders all around you? Many will succeed, and will need great engineers to scale up.

Some engineers understand this, and use the chance to skill up. To succeed, you'll probably need all the skills of an engineer, some of a PM, and even a bit of design taste. It's not just about shipping code anymore.

But if you work as a code monkey, getting detailed tickets and just shipping them, you've done this to yourself. You won't be needed pretty soon.

I believe there are too many mediocre engineers, but also not enough great ones.

Mixpanel co-founder Suhail Doshi has publicly accused an Indian developer of simultaneously working at multiple startups under false pretenses. Doshi posted on X that Soham Parekh works at "3-4 startups at the same time" and has been "preying on YC companies." (YC, or Y Combinator, is a popular startup accelerator and venture capital firm.)

Doshi fired Parekh within a week at his company Playground AI and warned him to stop the practice, but said Parekh continued a year later. Parekh's resume lists positions at Dynamo AI, Union AI, Synthesia, and Alan AI, along with degrees from the University of Mumbai and Georgia Institute of Technology. Doshi called the CV "probably 90% fake and most links are gone." Several other startup founders confirmed they had either hired Parekh in the past, or had been approached by him. Nicolai Ouporov of Fleet AI said Parekh "works at more than 4 startups at any given time." Justin Harvey of AIVideo said he nearly hired Parekh, who "crushed the interview." Doshi said he corroborated the account with more than six companies before posting publicly.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A security vulnerability in a stealthy Android spyware operation called Catwatchful has exposed thousands of its customers, including its administrator. The bug, which was discovered by security researcher Eric Daigle, spilled the spyware app's full database of email addresses and plaintext passwords that Catwatchful customers use to access the data stolen from the phones of their victims. [...] According to a copy of the database from early June, which TechCrunch has seen, Catwatchful had email addresses and passwords on more than 62,000 customers and the phone data from 26,000 victims' devices.

Most of the compromised devices were located in Mexico, Colombia, India, Peru, Argentina, Ecuador, and Bolivia (in order of the number of victims). Some of the records date back to 2018, the data shows. The Catwatchful database also revealed the identity of the spyware operation's administrator, Omar Soca Charcov, a developer based in Uruguay. Charcov opened our emails, but did not respond to our requests for comment sent in both English and Spanish. TechCrunch asked if he was aware of the Catwatchful data breach, and if he plans to disclose the incident to its customers. Without any clear indication that Charcov will disclose the incident, TechCrunch provided a copy of the Catwatchful database to data breach notification service Have I Been Pwned. The stalkerware operation uses a custom API and Google's Firebase to collect and store victims' stolen data, including photos and audio recordings. According to Daigle, the API was left unauthenticated, exposing sensitive user data such as email addresses and passwords.

The hosting provider temporarily suspended the spyware after TechCrunch disclosed this vulnerability but it returned later on HostGator. Despite being notified, Google has yet to take down the Firebase instance but updated Google Play Protect to detect Catwatchful.

While Catwatchful claims it "cannot be uninstalled," you can dial "543210" and press the call button on your Android phone to reveal the hidden app. As for its removal, TechCrunch has a general how-to guide for removing Android spyware that could be helpful.

Bcachefs "pitches itself as a filesystem that 'doesn't eat your data'," writes the open source/Linux blog It's FOSS. Although it was last October that Bcachefs developer Kent Overstreet was restricted from participating in the Linux 6.13 kernel development cycle (after ending a mailing list post with "Get your head examined. And get the fuck out of here with this shit.")

And now with the upcoming Linux kernel 6.17 release, Linus Torvalds has decided to drop Bcachefs support, they report, "owing to growing tensions" with Overstreet: The decision follows a series of disagreements over how fixes and changes for it were submitted during the 6.16 release cycle... Kent filed a pull request to add a new feature called "journal-rewind". It was meant to improve bcachefs repair functionality, but it landed during the release candidate (RC) phase, a time usually reserved for bug fixes, not new features, as Linus pointed out. [Adding "I remain steadfastly convinced that anybody who uses bcachefs is expecting it to be experimental. They had better."]

Theodore Ts'o, a long-time kernel developer and maintainer of ext4, also chimed in, saying that Kent's approach risks introducing regressions, especially when changes affect sensitive parts of a filesystem like journaling. He reminded Kent that the rules around the merge window have been a long-standing consensus in the kernel community, and it's Linus's job to enforce them. After some more back and forth, Kent pushed back, arguing that the rules around the merge window aren't absolute and should allow for flexibility, even more so when user data is at stake. He then went ahead and resubmitted the patch, citing instances from XFS and Btrfs where similar fixes made it into the kernel during RCs. Linus merged it into his tree, but ultimately decided to drop Bcachefs entirely in the 6.17 merge window.

To which Kent responded by clarifying that he wasn't trying to shut Linus out of Bcachefs' decisions, stressing that he values Linus's input...
This of course follows the great Torvalds-Overstreet "filesystem people never learn" throwdown back in April.

An anonymous reader shared this report from WebProNews: The Linux world is abuzz with news of XLibre, a fork of the venerable X11 window display system, which aims to be an alternative to X11's successor, Wayland.

Much of the Linux world is working to adopt Wayland, the successor to X11. Wayland has been touted as being a superior option, providing better security and performance. Despite Fedora and Ubuntu both going Wayland-only, the newer display protocol still lags behind X11, in terms of functionality, especially in the realm of accessibility, screen recording, session restore, and more. In addition, despite the promise of improved performance, many users report performance regressions compared to X11.

While progress is being made, it has been slow going, especially for a project that is more than 17 years old. To make matters worse, Wayland is largely being improved by committee, with the various desktop environment teams trying to work together to further the protocol. Progress is further hampered by the fact that the GNOME developers often object to the implementation of some functionality that doesn't fit with their vision of what a desktop should be — despite those features being present and needed in every other environment.

In response, developer Enrico Weigelt has forked Xll into the XLibre project. Weigelt was already one of the most prolific X11 contributors at a time when little to no improvements or new features are being added to the aging window system... Weigelt has wasted no time releasing the inaugural version of XLibre, XLibre 25.0. The release includes a slew of improvements.
MrBrklyn (Slashdot reader #4,775) adds that Artix Linux, a rolling-release distro based on Arch Linux which does not use systemd, now offers XLibre ISO images and packages for testing and use. They're all non-systemd based, and "Its a decent undertaking by the Artix development team. The iso is considered to be testing but it is quickly moving to the regular repos for broad public use."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from UploadVR: Software developer Stijn Spanhove used the newest SDK features of Snap OS to build a prototype of [a real-world ad blocker for Snap Spectacles]. If you're unfamiliar, Snap Spectacles are a bulky AR glasses development kit available to rent for $99/month. They run Snap OS, the company's made-for-AR operating system, and developers build apps called Lenses for them using Lens Studio or WebXR.

Spanhove built the real-world ad blocker using the new Depth Module API of Snap OS, integrated with the vision capability of Google's Gemini AI via the cloud. The Depth Module API caches depth frames, meaning that coordinate results from cloud vision models can be mapped to positions in 3D space. This enables detecting and labeling real-world objects, for example. Or, in the case of Spanhove's project, projecting a red rectangle onto real-world ads.

However, while the software approach used for Spanhove's real-world ad blocker is sound, two fundamental hardware limitations mean it wouldn't be a practical way to avoid seeing ads in your reality. Firstly, the imagery rendered by see-through transparent AR systems like Spectacles isn't fully opaque. Thus, as you can see in the demo clip, the ads are still visible through the blocking rectangle. The other problem is that see-through transparent AR systems have a very limited field of view. In the case of Spectacles, just 46 degrees diagonal. So ads are only "blocked" whenever you're looking directly at them, and you'll still see them when you're not.

U.S. lawmakers have reintroduced the bipartisan Open App Markets Act, aiming to curb Apple and Google's control over mobile app stores by promoting competition, supporting third-party marketplaces and sideloading, and safeguarding developer rights. AppleInsider reports: The Open App Markets Act seeks to do a number of things, including:
- Protect developers' rights to tell consumers about lower prices and offer competitive pricing;
- Protect sideloading of apps;
- Promote competition by opening the market to third-party app stores, startup apps, and alternative payment systems;
- Make it possible for developers to offer new experiences that take advantage of consumer device features;
- Give consumers greater control over their devices;
- Prevent app stores from disadvantaging developers; and
- Establish safeguards to preserve consumer privacy, security, and safety.

This isn't the first time we've seen this bill, either. In 2021, Senators Blumenthal, Klobuchar, and Blackburn had attempted to put forth the original version of the Open App Markets Act.However, the initial bill never made it to the floor for an office vote. Thanks to last-minute efforts by lobbying groups and appearances from chief executives, the bill eventually stalled out.

While the two bills are largely similar, the revised version introduces several key differences. Notably, the new version includes new carve-outs aimed at protecting intellectual property and addressing potential national security concerns.There's also a new clause that would prohibit punitive actions against developers for enabling remote access to other apps. The clause addition harkens back to the debacle between Apple and most game streaming services -- though in 2024, Apple loosened its App Store guidelines to allow cloud gaming and emulation.

There are a few new platform-protective clauses added, too. For instance, it would significantly lower the burden of proof for either Apple or Google to block platform access to a third-party app.Additionally, it reinforces the fact that companies like Apple or Google will not need to provide support or refunds for third-party apps installed outside of first-party app marketplaces. The full bill can be found here.

Magic Lantern, the popular open-source suite of software enhancements for Canon DSLR cameras, has returned under new leadership. The revived project aims to offer regular updates and support for additional models, including compatibility for Canon's newer mirrorless cameras equipped with DIGIC X processors. PetaPixel reports: The new lead developer, names_are_hard, announced Magic Lantern's return yesterday on Magic Lantern's forums, seen by Reddit r/cinematography users and confirmed on the official Magic Lantern website. "It's been a long journey, but official Magic Lantern builds return, for all cameras," names_are_hard writes. They add that this means that there will be new, regular releases for all supported cameras and new cameras will be supported. As of now, the supported cameras are almost entirely DSLR models, save for tools for the original EOS M mirrorless camera.

However, one of the members of the core Magic Lantern team, which comprises developers g3ggo, kitor, and WalterSchulz, says the team is looking at supporting cameras with DIGIC X processors, which includes mirrorless EOS R models. "It would be awesome if they start supporting new cameras. Imaging unlocking Open Gate on the R5/R6 lines, or RAW on cameras that don't have it (like R6, R7, etc.)," writes Redditor user machado34. "I believe it will be possible. They say they're exploring up to DIGIC X," adds 3dforlife. "In fact we are," developer kitor replies. "Just DIGIC 8 is stubborn and X adds some new (undocumented) hardware on top of that." Kitor is listed as the chief DIGIC 8 and DIGIC X hacker on Magic Lantern's forums, plus kitor is chiefly in charge of the revived website and Magic Lantern's social media presence. If the team can crack mirrorless cameras, it would be a boon. [...]

The new Magic Lantern core team of devs, plus many other key players who are involved to various degrees in bringing Magic Lantern back to life, have built a new repo, formalized the code base, and developed a new, efficient build system. "Around 2020, our old lead dev, a1ex, after years of hard work, left the project. The documentation was fragmentary. Nobody understood the build system. A very small number of volunteers kept things alive, but nothing worked well. Nobody had deep knowledge of Magic Lantern code," names_are_hard writes. "Those that remained had to learn how everything worked, then fix it. Then add support for new cams without breaking the old ones."

"We have an updated website. We have a new repo. We have new supported models. We have a new build system. We have cleaner, faster, smaller code." The team is now using Git, building on modern operating systems with contemporary tools, and compiling clean. "This was a lot of work, and invisible to users, but very useful for devs. It's easier than ever to join as a dev." Alongside the exciting return, Magic Lantern has added support for numerous new Canon DSLR cameras, including the 200D, 6D Mark II, 750D, and 7D Mark II.

The Python Software Foundation ("made up of, governed, and led by the community") does more than just host Python and its documnation, the Python Package Repository, and the development workflows of core CPython developers. This week the PSF released its 28-page Annual Impact Report this week, noting that 2024 was their first year with three CPython developers-in-residence — and "Between Lukasz, Petr, and Serhiy, over 750 pull requests were authored, and another 1,500 pull requests by other authors were reviewed and merged." Lukasz Langa co-implemented the new colorful shell included in Python 3.13, along with Pablo Galindo Salgado, Emily Morehouse-Valcarcel, and Lysandros Nikolaou.... Code-wise, some of the most interesting contributions by Petr Viktorin were around the ctypes module that allows interaction between Python and C.... These are just a few of Serhiy Storchaka's many contributions in 2024: improving error messages for strings, bytes, and bytearrays; reworking support for var-arguments in the C argument handling generator called "Argument Clinic"; fixing memory leaks in regular expressions; raising the limits for Python integers on 64-bit platforms; adding support for arbitrary code page encodings on Windows; improving complex and fraction number support...

Thanks to the investment of [the OpenSSF's security project] Alpha-Omega in 2024, our Security Developer-in-Residence, Seth Larson, continued his work improving the security posture of CPython and the ecosystem of Python packages. Python continues to be an open source security leader, evident by the Linux kernel becoming a CVE Numbering Authority using our guide as well as our publication of a new implementers guide for Trusted Publishers used by Ruby, Crates.io, and Nuget. Python was also recommended as a memory-safe programming language in early 2024 by the White House and CISA following our response to the Office of the National Cyber Directory Request for Information on open source security in 2023... Due to the increasing demand for SBOMs, Seth has taken the initiative to generate SBOM documents for the CPython runtime and all its dependencies, which are now available on python.org/downloads. Seth has also started work on standardizing SBOM documents for Python packages with PEP 770, aiming to solve the "Phantom Dependency" problem and accurately represent non-Python software included in Python packages.

With the continued investment in 2024 by Amazon Web Services Open Source and Georgetown CSET for this critical role, our PyPI Safety & Security Engineer, Mike Fiedler, completed his first full calendar year at the PSF... In March 2024, Mike added a "Report project as malware" button on the website, creating more structure to inbound reports and decreasing remediation time. This new button has been used over 2,000 times! The large spike in June led to prohibiting Outlook email domains, and the spike in November was driven by a persistent attack. Mike developed the ability to place projects in quarantine pending further investigation. Thanks to a grant from Alpha-Omega, Mike will continue his work for a second year. We plan to do more work on minimizing time-on-PyPI for malware in 2025...

In 2024, PyPI saw an 84% growth in download counts and 48% growth in bandwidth, serving 526,072,569,160 downloads for the 610,131 projects hosted there, requiring 1.11 Exabytes of data transfer, or 281.6 Gbps of bandwidth 24x7x365. In 2024, 97k new projects, 1.2 million new releases, and 3.1 million new files were uploaded to the index.

The developer-focused analyst firm RedMonk releases twice-a-year rankings of programming language popularity. This week they also released a handy graph showing the movement of top 20 languages since 2012. Their current rankings for programming language popularity...

1. JavaScript
2. Python
3. Java
4. PHP
5. C#
6. TypeScript
7. CSS
8. C++
9. Ruby
10. C

The chart shows that over the years the rankings really haven't changed much (other than a surge for TypeScript and Python, plus a drop for Ruby). JavaScript has consistently been #1 (except in two early rankings, where it came in behind Java). And in 2020 Java finally slipped from #2 down to #3, falling behind... Python. Python had already overtaken PHP for the #3 spot in 2017, pushing PHP to a steady #4. C# has maintained the #5 spot since 2014 (though with close competition from both C++ and CSS). And since 2021 the next four spots have been held by Ruby, C, Swift, and R.

The only change in the current top 20 since the last ranking "is Dart dropping from a tie with Rust at 19 into sole possession of 20," writes RedMonk co-founder Stephen O'Grady. "In the decade and a half that we have been ranking these languages, this is by far the least movement within the top 20 that we have seen. While this is to some degree attributable to a general stasis that has settled over the rankings in recent years, the extraordinary lack of movement is likely also in part a manifestation of Stack Overflow's decline in query volume..." The arrival of AI has had a significant and accelerating impact on Stack Overflow, which comprises one half of the data used to both plot and rank languages twice a year... Stack Overflow's value from an observational standpoint is not what it once was, and that has a tangible impact, as we'll see....

As that long time developer site sees fewer questions, it becomes less impactful in terms of driving volatility on its half of the rankings axis, and potentially less suggestive of trends moving forward... [W]e're not yet at a point where Stack Overflow's role in our rankings has been deprecated, but the conversations at least are happening behind the scenes.
"The veracity of the Stack Overflow data is increasingly questionable," writes RedMonk's research director: When we use Stack Overflow for programming language rankings we measure how many questions are asked using specific programming language tags... While other pieces, like Matt Asay's AI didn't kill Stack Overflow are right to point out that the decline existed before the advent of AI coding assistants, it is clear that the usage dramatically decreased post 2023 when ChatGPT became widely available. The number of questions asked are now about 10% what they were at Stack Overflow's peak.
"RedMonk is continuing to evaluate the quality of this analysis," the research director concludes, arguing "there is value in long-lived data, and seeing trends move over a decade is interesting and worthwhile. On the other hand, at this point half of the data feeding the programming language rankings is increasingly stale and of questionable value on a going-forward basis, and there is as of now no replacement public data set available.

"We'll continue to watch and advise you all on what we see with Stack Overflow's data."