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December Highlights

I think it's safe to say that the World experienced unprecedented change this year with the Covid-19 Pandemic and the response to it. But, even with a shift to remote work, and a strong software job market, the tools and technologies that Software Developers used in 2020 remained very similar to the tools used in prior years. Looking at the job postings from Hacker News, this data reveals very little change from what was found in 2019.

Starting at the top of the rankings, the top three for December, 2020 are the exact same as the top three from December, 2019 with React, Python and AWS taking their usual positions. TypeScript did take a jump into the top 5, but as an extension of the JavaScript ecosystem, it's essentially taken JavaScript's spot. Otherwise 9 of last December's Top 10 are in the Top 10 this December.

For those that live on the bleeding edge, it may have even been a disappointing year since there was no obvious breakout tech in 2020. Where 2019 had TypeScript and 2018 had Kubernetes, there was nothing that experienced a similar meteoric rise in 2020.

Looking ahead to 2021, what technologies should we be keeping an eye on?

Top 10 Programming Languages

  1. Python
  2. TypeScript
  3. JavaScript
  4. Go
  5. Ruby
  6. Java
  7. C++
  8. Kotlin
  9. Rust
  10. C

Compare Top 10 Programming Languages

Server-side Frameworks

Compare Rails, node.js, PHP and Django

JavaScript Frameworks

Compare React, Angular, Vue, and Ember

SQL Databases

Compare Postgresql, MySQL and SQL Server

NoSQL Databases

Compare Mongodb, Elasticsearch, Cassandra and DynamoDB

Big Data

Compare Storm, Hadoop and Spark

Messaging

Compare Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS and Kinesis

DevOps Tools

Compare Terraform, Chef, Puppet, Ansible and CloudFormation

Virtualization and Container Tools

Compare Docker, Kubernetes, Mesos and Terraform

Cryptocurrency and Blockchain

Compare Blockchain, Bitcoin and Ethereum

Cloud Providers

Compare AWS, GCP and Azure

Deep Learning

Compare TensorFlow, PyTorch and Keras

Total Postings Trend

Rankings and movers

Tech Rank Last Month Change Last Year Change
React 1 1 0 1 0
Python 2 2 0 2 0
AWS 3 5 +2 3 0
TypeScript 4 6 +2 11 +7
Postgresql 5 4 -1 5 0
Full Stack 6 3 -3 6 0
node.js 7 8 +1 7 0
DevOps 8 11 +3 10 +2
golang 9 7 -2 8 -1
JavaScript 10 9 -1 9 -1
Machine Learning 11 10 -1 4 -7
Rails 12 13 +1 17 +5
Ruby 13 16 +3 16 +3
Docker 14 14 0 14 0
Java 15 17 +2 15 0
Kubernetes 16 19 +3 18 +2
AI 17 15 -2 20 +3
iOS 18 18 0 13 -5
Open Source 19 20 +1 27 +8
API 20 22 +2 22 +2
Tech Mentions Rank Last Year Mentions Last Year Rank Change
NumPy 5 98 0 209 +111
WebGL 7 81 1 172 +91
Sass 5 92 1 174 +82
Haskell 9 74 1 154 +80
Pandas 6 89 1 158 +69
PyTorch 9 72 2 138 +66
BigQuery 6 90 2 128 +38
Flutter 6 86 2 124 +38
Ember 10 69 4 105 +36
Cassandra 6 91 3 117 +26
Tech Mentions Rank Last Year Mentions Last Year Rank Change
Objective-C 3 135 8 74 -61
EC2 3 130 7 78 -52
AR 3 129 6 84 -45
Assembly 2 138 5 94 -44
RDS 3 119 7 76 -43
Hadoop 3 123 5 85 -38
Big Data 4 99 9 70 -29
S3 6 88 12 62 -26
Erlang 3 115 5 90 -25
Agile 16 53 26 32 -21