Launched today, GitHub’s 2025 Octoverse report shows that Australia now ranks as the 19th largest developer community on GitHub, with Aussie developers now belonging to a global network of 180 million developers.

Software is the world’s most powerful export and AI is expanding what developers can do, how fast they can ship, and who can participate:

• New developers quickly utilise AI to help build: 80% of new developers on GitHub use Copilot within their first week, suggesting that AI is providing an entry point for budding developers.
• Developers are shipping more: 2025 marked the most active 12-month period in GitHub history with more than 1.12B contributions to public and open source projects globally. Of this, Australian developers made more than 10.7M open source contributions in the last year.
• AI and agents are the accelerator pedal of global innovation: 5.5M issues were closed in public and private projects in July 2025 (record high, up from 3.4M monthly avg in 2024).

Sharryn Napier, Vice President, APAC, at GitHub: “The story of 2025 isn’t AI versus developers – it’s about AI transforming how developers work. We’re seeing record numbers of projects shipped and meaningful activity this year as AI expands what developers can do and accelerates how fast they can build. More developers moving faster is good news for Australia as we continue to tackle our tech skills shortage and productivity challenges.

“AI has already changed the game. Now, agentic AI is the next leap forward – a powerful productivity lever for Australia’s digital economy, especially when developers embrace it as a true collaborator, unlocking a new wave of innovation and growth.”

Biggest Shift In Programming Languages In Over a Decade

Globally, TypeScript has overtaken Python and JavaScript to become the most used language on GitHub, as developers optimise for safety, scale, and AI readiness within large, complex projects. Contributions in TypeScript grew by over 1 million in 2025 (+66% YoY), driven by frameworks that scaffold projects in TypeScript by default as well as by AI-assisted development.

This is the biggest language shift in over a decade, though overall, Python remains dominant in AI, with contributions growing by 49% YoY to 2.6 million. Python therefore powers half of all new AI projects.

In Australia, JavaScript is still the top programming language, given its versatility and accessibility, making it popular with both amateur and advanced developers. Typescript is growing in popularity however, moving from 11th to 4th in most used languages over the last five years, suggesting that Australian developers are starting to embrace more complex AI programming.

GitHub’s Octoverse report also shows that generative AI has become the new runtime of software development. In 2025 there were 4.3M AI-related repositories created globally (nearly double since 2023); 1.13M public repos imported LLM SDKs (+178% YoY); and there were 1.9M average monthly contributions to AI projects on GitHub (+76% YoY). Australia ranks as the 17th biggest source of AI-repo contributions, showing that Aussie developers are punching above their weight on AI as the 19th largest developer community.

What GitHub’s 2025 Octoverse Report Also Shows

• Open source remains the foundational infrastructure in the AI era: 60% of the top 10 open source projects on GitHub are AI-focused. Aussie developers made 10.7M open source contributions in the last 12 months.
• AI is helping developers close the gap between finding and fixing vulnerabilities: Critical vulnerability fix times dropped 30% from 37 to 26 days; 26% fewer repos received critical alerts year over year.

About GitHub

GitHub is the world’s leading platform for agentic software development — powered by Copilot to build, scale, and deliver secure software. Over 180 million developers, including more than 90% of the Fortune 100 companies, use GitHub to collaborate, and more than 77,000 organisations have adopted GitHub Copilot.