The State of Developer Ecosystem 2019
Key Takeaways
Java
The most popular primary programming language
JavaScript
The most used overall programming language
Go
The most promising programming language
Go started out with a share of 8% in 2017 and now it has reached 18%. In addition, the biggest number of developers (13%) chose Go as a language they would like to adopt or migrate to.
Python
Most studied language
27% of respondents have started or continued to learn Python in the last 12 months.
What programming languages have you used in the last 12 months?
The programming languages with the most love are Java and Python. Second place is a tie between C# and JavaScript. But if the results are normalized by sample size, C# is the most loved language.
What are your primary programming languages?
Choose no more than 3 languages.
We asked three questions about the languages people used. First, we asked about the use of any last year, second we asked about the primary languages (up to three) and, finally, we then asked to rank them.
There appears to be a group of ‘secondary’ languages – ones used mainly as an additional language – which include HTML, SQL, and Shell scripting. A lot of software developers have some practice with these secondary languages, but very few work with them as their major language. For example, while 56% practice SQL, only 19% called it their primary language and only 1.5% rank it as their first language.
Java, on the other hand, is the leading ‘solo’ language. 44% of its users use only Java or use Java first. The next top solo language is JavaScript, with a ‘mere’ 17%.
Which operating systems are your development environments?
What types of applications do you develop?
Do you contribute to open-source projects?
What types of tests do you have in your projects?
16% of developers don't have any tests in their projects. Among fully-employed senior developers though, that statistic is just 8%.
Like last year, about 30% of developers still don't have unit tests in their projects.
Mobile
For which mobile operating systems do you develop?
Two thirds of mobile developers use native tools to develop for mobile OS. Every other developer uses cross-platform technologies or frameworks.
Which cross-platform mobile frameworks do you use?
Tools
Which of the following tools do you regularly use?
89% of developers customize their IDEs in some way.
Even more developers have joined the Dark side: 83% prefer the Dark theme for their editor or IDE. This represents a growth of 6 percentage points since last year for each environment.
Fun
Do you code in your dreams?
The more people code at work (as a primary activity), the more likely they are to code in their dreams.
Cats or dogs?
Where are you taking this survey?
You completed our survey at home, at work, in university classes, during recess at school, on vacation, in a bar, and even from the hospital. Thank you!
Do you code on weekends?
Self-employed, Students and Trainees code on weekends more often than others do.
Do you expect AI (artificial intelligence) to replace developers in the future?
Those who do Machine learning professionally are more skeptical about AI than those who do it as a hobby. 27% of the former think that AI will never replace developers, while only 21% of the latter concur.
What is your commute to work / university like?
What type of fuel does your vehicle use?
The ‘other’ fuel turned out to be ethanol or alcohol for most.