[BREAKING CHANGE] New Top Language Detection Method

[anuraghazra]

As you all might know there are various bugs/issues regarding the top languages calculation.

The problem

The main issue i see is that people often get confused by how the calculations are done.

Currently the top languages are calculated based on how much code in bytes you have in a particular language and then we choose the top languages.
This method is the main reason people are confused about the calculations, because normally users perceive how much they code in languages by how many repositories they have with that particular language.

Quirks with the current calculation method

• Confusion about the calculations. (Top Languages Card not working properly #136 (comment))
• Repositories might have vendor code or auto generated code which would make the calculations wrong. ([Top Languages] Blog repositories(xxxx.github.io) should not be counted. #153)
• If some language have exaggerated code bytes then it becomes the dominant language. (Top language card not showing Python #358 (comment))
• Users aren't satisfied with the method.

The Solution

The most straight forward solution I see is that instead of calculating how much code they have, we can calculate how many repositories they have with the languages.

Related issues

#432 #403 #270 #136 #358

[saurabhdaware]

Not sure but the current methods seems right to me. Imagine having 2 HTML, JS repositories with more 51% HTML in both.

According to the new proposed method, I wouldn't know JavaScript.

So in my opinion, the current method makes more sense.

[anuraghazra]

@saurabhdaware We would not just take the primary language of the individual repo, we would also calculate top 10 langs of individual repos too.

That is we are already doing :-

github-readme-stats/src/fetchers/top-languages-fetcher.js

Line 14 in 6e73a00

languages(first: 10, orderBy: {field: SIZE, direction: DESC}) {

So it would look like -:

HTML ---------- some%
Javascript ------ some%

[saurabhdaware]

I am not sure if I understood. Wouldn't calculating top 10 languages of each repository same as calculating how much code the user has in bytes? that's how GitHub calculates the percentage as well no?

[anuraghazra]

No we would just "count" them and in current method we get the "language.size" reduce and sum it up and then sort it.

[saurabhdaware]

Oh ok so in this example

Imagine having 2 HTML, JS repositories with more 51% HTML in both.

I would have
51% HTML
49% JavaScript
right?

[anuraghazra]

Repo 1 - JS x1 & HTML x1
Repo 2 - JS x1 & HTML x1

HTML - 50%
JS - 50%

We would just count them.

[saurabhdaware]

Oh cool. Seems good to me then.

[DenverCoder1]

I think I like this new way better. I did one very large C# project earlier this year and now it says C# is my top language (over 52%) even though it is definitely not what I do the most of.

[DenverCoder1]

If there are people that are more happy with the current way, there could possibly be an additional parameter that will switch between the different calculation modes?

[anuraghazra]

If there are people that are more happy with the current way, there could possibly be an additional parameter that will switch between the different calculation modes?

Unfortunately we cannot do that, it would make the logic complex & we would have two different statistics. it would hamper the consistency.

[anuraghazra]

I will firstly publish experimental query param to enable this and then if people likes it i would make it default.