DEV Community Tag Popularity Analysis

Overview

I used the Forem API (https://dev.to/api/tags?per_page=20) to fetch the top 20 tags on the DEV Community platform and analyzed their post counts. Using Python and matplotlib, I generated a horizontal bar chart to visualize the popularity of each tag.

The Chart

Top 5 Tags Summary

Here are the top 5 most popular tags on DEV Community:

Rank	Tag	Post Count
1	#webdev	336,071
2	#programming	233,811
3	#javascript	233,128
4	#ai	188,561
5	#beginners	169,620

Key Insights

#webdev dominates with over 336K posts, nearly 100K more than the runner-up, reflecting the strong web development focus of the DEV community.
#programming and #javascript are neck-and-neck at ~233K posts each, showing that general programming content and JavaScript remain the backbone of developer discussions.
#ai has surged to 4th place with 188K posts, highlighting the massive growth of AI-related content in the developer ecosystem.
#beginners rounds out the top 5 with nearly 170K posts, demonstrating DEV's welcoming nature for newcomers to the field.

How It Was Built

The analysis was built using a simple Python script:

import json
import urllib.request
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# Fetch tags from the Forem API
url = "https://dev.to/api/tags?per_page=20"
req = urllib.request.Request(url, headers={"User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0"})
with urllib.request.urlopen(req, timeout=30) as resp:
    api_tags = json.loads(resp.read().decode())

# Generate horizontal bar chart
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(12, 8))
bars = ax.barh(names, counts, color=colors)
ax.set_xlabel('Number of Posts')
ax.set_title('DEV Community — Top 20 Tag Popularity')
plt.savefig('dev_tag_popularity.png', dpi=150, bbox_inches='tight')