Interest in programming languages hit a decade low on Hacker News.

After Claude Code’s launch, the share of Hacker News upvotes going to titles naming programming languages fell to its lowest level since 2016. AI-related titles gained ground.

Interest in programming languages has trended down, with a historic drop after Claude Code’s launch

We measure interest through Hacker News upvotes on submissions whose titles mention the relevant words. The chart shows their share of all eligible upvotes, counting each link once per month with no score threshold. AI topics use generic terms; GPT, ChatGPT and other brand and company names are excluded as matching terms.

Share of upvotes · trailing three months

Programming languages 4.4%AI topics, generic terms only 11.6%

ChatGPT launch
November 30, 2022
Claude Code launch · research preview
February 24, 2025
Claude Code takeoff · selected reference
December 2025

Legend values are June–August 2026. Each line divides its matching upvotes by all eligible upvotes over the same three months. The topics overlap: a title naming both AI and a language contributes to both lines. Event markers provide context, not a causal estimate.

Around ChatGPT’s launch, language titles accounted for 5.9% of upvotes in September–November 2022, versus 1.9% for AI topics. By June–August 2026, those shares were 4.4% and 11.6% respectively.

The low point came in February–April 2026, after both Claude Code’s initial release and the December 2025 takeoff reference. The series subsequently recovered somewhat, so the latest reading is above the trough. “Decade low” refers to this 2016-onward window: the earliest months of Hacker News had lower readings.

This is attention to language names in titles. It does not measure how much people program, which languages they use, or all programming discussion on HN. A falling share can reflect other topics gaining upvotes even without an equivalent drop in language posts.

Rust gets 1.7× Python’s submission share on Hacker News

Rust gained ground over the decade; Python and JavaScript now sit well below their earlier levels. Compare their share of upvotes or their share of submissions, with repeated links counted once per month in both views.

Share of upvotes Share of submissions

Rust, Python and JavaScript shares of submissions (unique links), January 2016–August 2026. Latest three-month shares: Rust 0.9%, Python 0.5%, JavaScript 0.2%. Dotted vertical lines mark ChatGPT’s launch, Claude Code’s preview launch and the selected December 2025 takeoff reference. — Rust **0.9%**Python **0.5%**JavaScript **0.2%**

All three lines share one vertical scale and the same denominator. Values show June–August 2026. Ratios use unrounded shares. Submission share counts each URL once per month, divided by all eligible unique links.

Looking at upvote shares

Rust leads, but has had higher peaks

Rust ends at 0.9%, versus Python’s 0.4% and JavaScript’s 0.2%. Its highest three-month share in this window was 1.4%, ending March 2021.

Zig has entered the leading group

Zig’s 0.4% share puts it just above Python in the latest three months. This ranks third among the 48 tracked categories, behind Rust and the combined HTML/CSS category.

The long tail has its own rhythms

C++ and Go end at 0.3% and 0.3%. Java is down to 0.1%, from 0.3% at the start of 2016. Smaller languages can move sharply on a handful of high-scoring posts.

Every language, on the same timeline

All 48 tracked categories, ordered by their latest three-month upvote share. Each chart shows both upvote share and submission share. Values beside each name cover June–August 2026.

Rust for scale

Share of upvotesShare of submissions

All charts use Rust’s 0–1.5% axis. Heights are directly comparable; values are unchanged.

Rust

Upvotes 0.9%Submissions 0.9%

HTML/CSS

Upvotes 0.5%Submissions 0.4%

Zig

Upvotes 0.4%Submissions 0.1%

Python

Upvotes 0.4%Submissions 0.5%

C++

Upvotes 0.3%Submissions 0.3%

Go

Upvotes 0.3%Submissions 0.3%

C

Upvotes 0.2%Submissions 0.2%

Lisp

Upvotes 0.2%Submissions 0.1%

Bash/Shell

Upvotes 0.2%Submissions 0.1%

JavaScript

Upvotes 0.2%Submissions 0.2%

Clojure

Upvotes 0.1%Submissions 0.1%

SQL

Upvotes 0.1%Submissions 0.2%

TypeScript

Upvotes 0.1%Submissions 0.2%

Ruby

Upvotes 0.1%Submissions 0.1%

Java

Upvotes 0.1%Submissions 0.1%

Elixir

Upvotes 0.1%Submissions <0.1%

Lua

Upvotes 0.1%Submissions <0.1%

Swift

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions 0.1%

Mojo

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

Julia

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

Gleam

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

Haskell

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions 0.1%

OCaml

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

Nix

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

Assembly

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

C#

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

Prolog

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

PHP

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions 0.1%

Kotlin

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

Odin

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

COBOL

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

Erlang

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

Scala

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

Delphi

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

R

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

MicroPython

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

Fortran

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

MATLAB

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

Ada

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

Dart

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

Visual Basic (.Net)

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

Perl

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

PowerShell

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

F#

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

Groovy

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

VBA

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

GDScript

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

Objective-C

Upvotes <0.1%Submissions <0.1%

Every card covers January 2016–August 2026. Uncheck “Rust for scale” to give each language its own axis, shared by both lines. All axes start at zero. Labels round to one decimal; small nonzero shares that would round to zero are shown as <0.1%. Small individual axes use a power-of-ten multiplier. A title naming several languages contributes to each matching language, so these shares should not be added together.

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About the data

What is measured: Upvotes on surviving URL submissions in our existing Hacker News archive, measured through recorded scores. Titles are searched; comments, article text and URL destinations are not. Most Ask HN and other text-only submissions, deleted/dead posts and HN-internal links are absent. The full archive contains 4,476,541 stored link submissions through September 7, 2026. Charts stop at the last complete month, August.
One link per month: Equivalent URLs count once in each UTC month. URL keys normalize HTTP/HTTPS, hostname case and leading “www”; paths, queries and fragments are retained. A link posted in another month counts again. This is conservative URL deduplication, not a claim that every article has been identified across all its URLs.
Share of upvotes: For each URL and month, the denominator uses its highest recorded score among all eligible submissions. Each topic or language uses the highest score among submissions whose titles match it. A higher-scoring nonmatching repost cannot supply its score. We sum over three months, then divide matching scores by all eligible scores. January 2016 includes November–December 2015. There is no minimum score filter.
Share of submissions: Distinct URLs with at least one matching title, divided by all eligible distinct URLs in the same month. A URL with several matching submissions still counts once. For the three-month line, we divide the sum of monthly matching-link counts by the sum of monthly eligible-link counts, rather than averaging monthly percentages.
Language matching: 42 categories from the 2025 Stack Overflow survey, plus Haskell, Julia, Clojure, Objective-C, Nix and Odin. Rule-based aliases and context checks handle ambiguous names such as Go, C and R. HTML/CSS and Bash/Shell are combined categories. Framework-only titles do not automatically count as their implementation language; Nix includes package-tool mentions. The rules can miss real mentions and retain false positives.
AI matching: Case-insensitive title keywords: AI / AIs; AGI; ASI; artificial intelligence; artificial general intelligence; artificial superintelligence; generative AI / GenAI; machine learning; ML; deep learning; neural network(s); LLM / LLMs; large language model(s). GPT (including numbered versions), ChatGPT and other brand and company names, such as Claude, Gemini, OpenAI and Anthropic, are excluded as matching terms. A title containing those names still qualifies if a listed generic AI term appears. ML is literal and can also match the ML programming language. AI and language categories overlap.
Scores and timing: “Upvotes” uses recorded Hacker News scores as a proxy. These are score snapshots, not a count of raw vote events or votes cast during a particular month. They are assigned to the submission month. Scores combine the archive with documented repairs; exact Algolia scores were retrieved on September 16, 2026 for affected months in late 2022 and December 2025. Only existing archive IDs were updated in the analysis. Some unavailable scores remain unrepaired, and scores are not observed at a uniform post age.
Reading the events: ChatGPT and Claude Code launch dates come from their original announcements. December 2025 is a selected reference for Claude Code’s takeoff, not a measured breakpoint. The chart is descriptive: it cannot isolate an effect of any product launch from wider changes in technology, posting behavior, title wording or voting.

Interest in programming languages hit a decade low on Hacker News.

Rust leads, but has had higher peaks

Zig has entered the leading group

The long tail has its own rhythms

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About the data

HN Reader

The Show HN boom

HN Hall of Fame

HN Wikipedia

HN YouTube

YC beyond .com