Four cities in Florida, Jacksonville, Cape Coral, North Port, and Tampa, just made the list of the nation’s fastest-growing coding hubs. Coddy Tech, in a study of the 75 largest U.S. metro areas, spotted a surge of interest and new jobs in these places.
Cape Coral grabbed the fifth spot, North Port landed at ninth, and Jacksonville and Tampa also placed in the top ten. The Sun Belt dominated the rankings, snagging nine out of the ten top spots.
Albuquerque, New Mexico, took first place for momentum, while San Antonio and Houston followed close behind. San Antonio saw its software developer jobs soar, up 73% since 2022.
Coddy Tech ranked cities based on several factors: growth in software developer jobs, how often people searched online for coding topics, and a jump in hackathon activity.
The study didn’t just look at growth; it also scored metros on how established their coding communities are. For that, researchers checked search interest, how many developers use GitHub, the concentration of software developers, demand for coding boot camps, and how active the local hackathon scene is.
Austin topped that list, with San Jose and Seattle right behind. Both Austin and San Jose pulled ahead of the rest by over 20 points.
Coddy Tech adjusted the data to account for population differences, measuring how densely coding activity was clustered, not just which places are biggest.
One thing to keep in mind: The study ties coding activity to metro areas, but that doesn’t mean local conditions are always the driving force. Also, because GitHub users enter their location manually, the data isn’t perfect; there’s some over- or under-counting.
Click here to check out the full study and all the rankings online.
