If you are a software engineer or someone learning or interested in software development you might want to create an account on an instance with other software developers so that your local timeline is full of relevant content.
For Fedidevs I have indexed some of the most popular Mastodon instances and used regexes to try and find accounts that belong to software developers.
I indexed only a small percentage (0.225% by my count 😅) of all Mastodon instances, but this set of instances includes the majority of English-speaking users on Mastodon (see the full list of instances in the FAQ page).
The results
Count Instance
2963 mastodon.social
1083 hachyderm.io
513 mastodon.online
447 ruby.social
441 mstdn.social
377 fosstodon.org
361 infosec.exchange
343 mas.to
335 phpc.social
258 techhub.social
No surprise that mastodon.social is on top here. It's one of the largest Mastodon instances with more than 1 million users. That's 1/6 of Mastodon's total users according to mastodon.help. Even though mastodon.social has the most developers of any instance, it also has the most users so the percentage of developers is not that high and your local timeline will most likely not have content relevant to you.
hachyderm.io is an LGBTQIA+ and BLM safe space focused on tech industry professionals worldwide.
mastodon.online is another very popular general purpose instance.
phpc.social and ruby.social are instances for people interested in Ruby and PHP programming languages.
fosstodon.org a community for anyone interested in technology; particularly free and open source software. The custom emojis on this instance are amazing 👌
infosec.exchange focuses on info/cyber security. If that's what you are interested in this is probably the best instance for you!
techhub.social is primarily for passionate technologists, but according to the instance description everyone is welcome.
Breakdown by popular languages
Python developers
Count Instance
562 mastodon.social
294 hachyderm.io
124 fosstodon.org
108 mastodon.online
100 mas.to
99 infosec.exchange
97 mstdn.social
73 techhub.social
48 mastodon.gamedev.place
35 mastodon.worldCount
The Python community has recently started to migrate away from Twitter and a lot of prominent Python community members no longer post on Twitter.
Besides the two largest instances most Python developers seem to hang out on fosstodon.org. This is where some of the largest Python-related accounts live, including the official account for the Python Software Foundation, Michael Kennedy, Brett Cannon, and others.
JavaScript developers
Count Instance
448 mastodon.social
299 hachyderm.io
95 techhub.social
89 mas.to
84 phpc.social
82 mastodon.online
74 fosstodon.org
73 mstdn.social
59 ruby.social
38 infosec.exchange
The top two largest instances for JavaScript developers are the same as the Python ones, but fosstodon.org isn't as popular with JavaScript developers as it is with Python developers.
Rust developers
Count Instance
458 hachyderm.io
226 mastodon.social
57 mastodon.gamedev.place
52 mas.to
49 infosec.exchange
42 mastodon.online
38 fosstodon.org
30 mstdn.social
28 techhub.social
17 chaos.social
Rust developers seem to prefer hachyderm.io over mastodon.social and it seems to be the only programming language with these instances switched.
Ruby developers
Count Instance
478 ruby.social
151 mastodon.social
118 hachyderm.io
25 mastodon.online
24 mas.to
18 mstdn.social
17 infosec.exchange
15 techhub.social
13 mastodon.world
12 fosstodon.org
No surprise that Ruby developers prefer the ruby Mastodon instance - ruby.social.
PHP developers
Count Instance
370 phpc.social
200 mastodon.social
38 fosstodon.org
38 mas.to
36 hachyderm.io
31 mastodon.online
24 mstdn.social
15 infosec.exchange
13 mastodon.gamedev.place
12 techhub.social
Similar to Ruby developers PHP developers also have their instance phpc.social. Unlike the Ruby community, it seems like the PHP community is more spread out and the official PHP instance takes up a smaller percentage of users than the ruby.social instance in the Ruby community.
Other popular languages
Fedidevs also allows filtering by Java, C#, Golang, and others. But the amount of accounts isn't as high as the ones listed in this article so I've omitted it for brevity. Let me know if you would still want to see the statistics for these in the comments below.
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