The developer role is changing radically, and these figures show how

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Microsoft-owned GitHub says it now has more than 100 million developers using the code-hosting service to contribute to software projects. 

GitHub's user numbers are up from 73 million in 2021 and 40 million in 2019, which was a year after Microsoft acquired it for $7.5 billion, with 28 million users, and gained cross-platform desktop development framework Electron.

If GitHub's 100 million users are all active developers, it perhaps reflects how the nature of software development is changing. 

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SlashData, for example, estimates there are 24 million active developers worldwide. Some 19 million of these professionals are using JavaScript, and most are using Microsoft's overlay, TypeScript. Statista estimates there are 28 million developers globally. IDC says the 10 million developers building in Java account for 75% of the world's full-time developers. 

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But Thomas Dohmke, GitHub's CEO, says there needs to a broader definition of the developer role compared to 2007, when the first line of code was committed to GitHub. This suggestion is similar to Microsoft chief Satya Nadella's mantra since taking the helm of the tech giant in 2014 -- he believes every business is a software business.  

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