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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