Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
The 2021 State of the
Octoverse
Last year, our approach to remote work reflected a lack of familiarity. We were juggling competing needs in our personal lives and at work while trying to maintain the same levels of productivity before the pandemic.
During 2021, we’ve begun to evolve from merely compensating while hoping for a return to the “old normal” to truly metamorphosing our processes with the awareness of remote work needs.
In this year’s Octoverse Report, our research tells you how to improve your performance and well-being by developing code, creating documentation, and supporting communities in smarter, more sustainable ways.
For the first time, this research combines telemetry from 4M+ repositories and surveys from more than 12,000 developers.
This approach reveals current trends and also gives us predictive results--we can now see with more precision how to achieve successful outcomes for developers, teams, organizations, and communities.
Explore data
Writing and shipping code faster
Creating documentation to support developers
Supporting sustainable communities
What makes developers and teams perform better, be more productive, and have a great developer experience?
We created predictive models based on this year’s survey data to help us understand the impacts of different practices teams use in software development and delivery.
Each section begins by presenting a predictive model supported by survey data, then follows with developer patterns we observe across GitHub’s repositories.
Let’s look back at the code and communities built on GitHub this year...
on GitHub
in 2021
use GitHub Enterprise
created in the last year
merged
Geographical distribution of active users
Decrease 2.3% from last year
Increase 0.3% from last year
Increase 0.7% from last year
Increase of 1.0% from last year
Increase of 0.3% from last year
Decrease 0.1% from last year
Top languages over the years
Improving how we work
In 2021, productivity began returning to pre-pandemic levels while solidifying the paradigm shift of remote and hybrid work.
The workplace is shifting: Survey respondents were asked where they worked before the pandemic and where they expect to work with others after the pandemic. Only about 11% of respondents expect to go back to working collocated, a 30% drop from 41% working in an office before.
Work before and after the pandemic
We present one decimal for simplicity; there may be a rounding difference of 1%.
| Where respondents worked before the pandemic | Where respondents expect to work after the pandemic | |
|---|---|---|
Collocated
In an office all the time or part-time
C
| ||
Hybrid
Some team members in an office and others remote
H
| ||
Fully remote
All team members working remotely
F
| ||
Not applicable
N
|
Collocated
In an office all the time or part-time
Hybrid
Some team members in an office and others remote
Fully remote
All team members working remotely
Not applicable
Automation can enhance sustainability
By removing friction and repetitive tasks through automation, teams perform 27% better in open source and 43% better at work, and developers report higher fulfillment.
Code needs documentation to become a project
Number of repositories with and without README, by repository type
No README
With README
(33,544)
(204,373)
(6,000)
(42,954)
(796,235)
(147,975)
A twist on improving productivity: documentation increases confidence in a project and invites collaboration
Sharing information through READMEs, contribution guidelines, and issues are open source projects’ secret sauce: they invite new contributors and make developers 55% more productive. Enterprises can adopt these best practices to support their teams’ work and jump start inner source initiatives.
Try a new practice:
pull request wrangling
The Kubernetes Docs Special Interest Group (SIG) has great documentation on their contribution process. Given the large developer community they support globally, this isn’t surprising.
Sustainable communities
Developing is about community. Codes of conduct, contribution guidelines, Good First Issues, and respectful language in Discussions signal a community is safe, welcoming, and trusted. Communities with these signals attract more contributors, while also creating a stronger sense of belonging and fulfillment.
Teams with high trust are more likely to have a healthy collaborative culture:
Where respondents contribute code
Future of developer communities
Geographic distribution users by region or country
Click on the menu below to switch between total users of 2020 and 2021.
Developer feedback helps steer GitHub Public Policy commitments
We asked developers which issues matter to them and their communities, to inform the work of our Policy team.
Here is what they said:
-
01
The ability to innovate and tinker without facing legal risk
-
02
Global collaboration, regardless of where developers live
-
03
Inclusion, i.e., ensuring that everyone has equal opportunity to become developers
-
04
Community moderation and healthy online collaboration
-
05
Government investment in and contribution to open source projects
-
Read more
More than 38,000 developers answered, giving us important insights.