You’ve probably seen the discourse — the doom-scrolling debates about whether AI has made programming obsolete. The “vibe coding” trend where people spin up apps in an evening with AI assistance has everyone from tech bros to your aunt asking: Do we even need to learn programming languages anymore?
At Codecademy, we’ve been on our soapbox saying that AI won’t kill programming since ChatGPT burst on the scene in 2022. Even with sophisticated AI assistants and the best vibes, understanding code is how you direct AI tools, validate their output, and shape the systems that matter in your field.
Which programming language you choose matters more than it used to, and actual developers have been voting with their keyboards. TypeScript is the top programming language of 2025, according to GitHub’s newly released Octoverse 2025 report, which tracks the activity and usage patterns of 180+ million developers.
So, what is it that makes this superset of JavaScript such a popular choice for people on GitHub right now? Read on to learn how TypeScript works, why it’s a go-to language for AI projects, and how to start learning TypeScript at any level right away.
TypeScript just became the most-used language on GitHub
In August 2025, TypeScript overtook both Python and JavaScript to become the #1 most-used programming language on GitHub, the leading online development environment. GitHub called it “the most significant language shift in more than a decade.”
Let’s look closer at the TypeScript stats from the new GitHub report:
- 2.6+ million monthly contributors writing TypeScript
- 66% year-over-year growth (+1 million new contributors in a single year)
- First time a typed JavaScript variant has topped the rankings in GitHub’s history
Stack Overflow’s 2025 Developer Survey backs this TypeScript hype up. When they asked developers “Which programming, scripting, and markup languages have you done extensive development work in over the past year?” here’s what they found:
- 66% said JavaScript
- 43.6% said TypeScript
Nearly half of all developers are already working extensively in TypeScript. Whether you’re looking at GitHub’s usage data or Stack Overflow’s survey, the story is the same: TypeScript has crossed from “popular” to “essential.”
What is TypeScript and what is it used for?
TypeScript is not a different language that competes with JavaScript — it’s a layer on top of JavaScript that adds extra features, then compiles down to regular JavaScript that runs in browsers.
Specifically, TypeScript adds static typing to JavaScript, which is a fancy way of saying it makes you declare what type of data you’re working with (like numbers, strings, objects) before you use it.
Here’s a quick example. In JavaScript, you might write:
javascript
function greet(name) {
return "Hello, " + name;
}
In TypeScript, you’d write:
typescript
function greet(name: string): string {
return "Hello, " + name;
}
See those : string additions? Those are type annotations. They tell TypeScript (and anyone reading your code) that name should be a string, and the function will return a string.
Here’s why it matters: Debugging JavaScript used to be time-consuming, with errors only appearing when you ran your code. TypeScript changed this by catching mistakes, like passing the wrong variable type, before execution. Its type system helps spot bugs, clarify structure, and support refactoring, which is essential for large codebases.
TypeScript runs anywhere JavaScript runs, which is… basically everywhere:
- Front-end web apps (React, Angular, Vue projects)
- Full-stack applications (Next.js, Remix)
- Mobile apps (React Native)
- Back-end servers (Node.js, Express)
- Desktop applications (Electron)
- APIs and microservices
Why is TypeScript a good language for AI?
Typed languages are a great choice for AI systems because type annotations help both LLMs and developers understand context and catch errors before they become problems.
TypeScript has become essential for AI development because of how developers are now building with AI coding assistants like GitHub Copilot and Cursor. When AI generates code, TypeScript immediately flags type mismatches, undefined variables, and incorrect function signatures. A 2025 study found that 94% of errors generated by LLMs in code are type-related. TypeScript catches these LLM errors automatically before your code ever runs, creating a feedback loop that makes AI-assisted development significantly faster and safer.
To be clear, Python still dominates core AI and machine learning work — it powers about 50% of all AI repositories, according to the GitHub report. But as AI has matured, more developers are building on top of foundation models rather than training them. They’re building AI chatbots, RAG applications, AI-powered SaaS tools, and APIs that integrate services like OpenAI and Anthropic.
This is where TypeScript excels. It’s the language of modern application development, and it’s particularly well-suited for the complexity of AI integration. TypeScript saw 77.9% year-over-year growth in AI-tagged projects on GitHub and has become the go-to language for building the interfaces and dashboards that users interact with.