GitHub has seen its UK user base surge past 4 million in 2024 as the developer platform turns to a host of new AI tools to turbocharge its future growth.

The Microsoft-owned business has seen a 19% jump in the number of UK developers on the platform, up from 3.4 million last year. Britain currently ranks as the fifth-largest developer community on GitHub, and the largest developer population in the EMEA region, projected to keep its place at least until 2028. The UK is also the fifth-highest contributor to open source projects on GitHub.

Martin Woodward, VP of developer relations at GitHub, told UKTN: “The UK ranks very high in terms of its open source contribution and it has a strong history there, and we have lots of companies within the UK that are using GitHub for work, and that’s not just the UK-specific entities but US entities and other international entities that are based in the UK.

“If you walk around Canary Wharf, they’re all using GitHub because it’s particularly good at connecting teams together and the UK is one of those markets where we do that a lot…we bridge the US and APAC and EMEA.

“Where we are seeing huge growth is in things like the research community…it’s the maker communities coming together and building on GitHub, the data scientists, the researchers and the mathematicians.”

It comes as GitHub unveiled a range of new AI-powered tools and upgrades to its platform at its annual Universe conference in San Francisco, the most eye-catching of which was a new low-code tool called Spark which allows users to develop their own web apps at unprecedented speed with the support of AI assistance.

The use of AI tools like GitHub Copilot continues its rapid rise, with 73% of open source respondents reporting they use these tools for coding or documentation. With the involvement of AI-assisted and low-code tools, GitHub has predicted that the share of the global population who are developers could one day rise to as much as one billion.

Jonathan Carter, GitHub Next lead, told UKTN: “We still have a lot to explore in terms of reaching that billion but I think there’s a couple paths. One is the demand for software developers will only continue to grow: there’s not even close to a shortage in opportunity for creating value through software and AI just helps us with that.

“But also we believe the definition of what a developer is can be expanded as with other crafts: you don’t need to be a chef to care about making a home-cooked meal and you don’t have to be a mechanic to enjoy working on your car.

“And we believe that when you look at software there is so much practical value but also enjoyment and creativity to be had that we want to make it such that more people can be developers in the sense that they’re creating things for themselves and for others, and if we can do that, then there’s clearly a lot of people who could represent that path to a billion.”

“Where we’re at today is undoubtedly an epoch in how we build things,” Woodward added.

“I’m jealous of this generation that’s coming up, because I’m able to learn these new technologies much quicker now because I have AI to help me.

“As a learner AI assists you in exposing you to all this stuff so quickly, and your ability to ship stuff is so much faster now.”

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