The State of Developer Ecosystem 2021
This report presents the combined results of the fifth annual Developer Ecosystem Survey conducted by JetBrains. 31,743 developers from 183 countries or regions helped us map the landscape of the developer community.
Here you can find the latest trends in the tech industry, as well as interesting facts about tools, technologies, programming languages, and many other facets of the programming world.
Key Takeaways
JavaScript is the most popular language.
Python is more popular than Java in terms of overall usage, while Java is more popular than Python as a main language.
The top-5 languages developers are planning to adopt or migrate to are Go, Kotlin, TypeScript, Python, and Rust.
The top-5 languages developers were learning in 2021 were JavaScript, Python, TypeScript, Java, and Go.
Ruby, Objective-C, and Scala have all decreased in popularity over the last 5 years.
The 5 fastest growing languages are Python, TypeScript, Kotlin, SQL, and Go.
A majority of the respondents (71%) develop for web backend.
Please note that some aspects of the survey methodology changed between editions. In 2021 we extended geographical coverage, which resulted in differences in the shares of some languages. For example the share of PHP is 3 percentage points higher, and Python and Java are a bit lower in new regions than in the initial countries.
Over the last 5 years, developers’ preferences with respect to operating systems have remained constant.
This question was shown to all respondents who use Windows as their operating system.
There are languages not listed in this table that are popular in some regions: Delphi is the primary language of 3% of the developer population in Brazil, for example, while Ruby (9%), Swift (6%), and Scala (4%) are popular in Japan.
Gender and development
The Other option includes non-binary, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming as well as other — write in and prefer not to say option. Although the sample is too small to make any reliable conclusions from it.
Women are more likely than men to be involved in data analysis, machine learning, and UX/UI design or research. Women are less likely than men to be involved in infrastructure development and DevOps, system administration, or Deployment.
This question was only shown to respondents who develop for desktop platforms.
Migration
Immigration rate = the number of people working in a region who were born in a different region / the total number of people working work in that region
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