The State of Developer Ecosystem 2023

This report is the culmination of insights gathered from 26,348 developers from all around the globe. The world of developers is vast and diverse, making it an endlessly fascinating realm for exploration and learning. Through yearly research initiatives like this one, our goal is to explore this captivating world, uncover valuable insights about developers and their craft, and then share these facts with the community.

Within the State of Developer Ecosystem Report, you'll find information covering a wide range of topics, from programming languages, tools, and technologies to demographics and fun facts. We'll also take a look at the unique lifestyle of developers, shedding light on their passions and interests.

This year, we've also extended our inquiry to AI. We've examined developers’ views on AI, their concerns, the commonly used features of AI assistants, and the current adoption of AI-enhanced tools.

This is a public report, and its contents may be used as long as the source is appropriately credited.

Share:

The raw data from our DevEco 2023 survey is now available. Download, explore, and glean your own insights

Highlights

Most used programming languages over the last 7 years and adoption potential for 2024

Which programming, scripting, and markup languages have you used in the last 12 months?

2017201820192020202120222023Likely to adopt
65%64%69%70%69%65%61%3%JavaScript
32%41%49%55%52%53%54%5%Python
60%55%61%61%60%54%52%1%HTML / CSS
42%47%56%56%54%49%52%2%SQL
47%51%50%54%49%48%49%3%Java
29%40%39%37%34%34%1%Shell
12%17%25%28%29%34%34%6%TypeScript
17%18%20%27%23%25%25%4%C++
20%22%24%22%21%23%21%4%C#
15%16%17%23%19%20%19%2%C
30%26%29%27%32%20%18%1%PHP
8%12%18%19%17%19%17%9%Go
2%9%16%17%14%16%15%6%Kotlin
2%5%7%6%9%10%10%Rust
9%8%11%9%7%7%6%4%Swift
10%8%11%8%6%5%4%2%Ruby
7%5%6%5%3%3%3%1%Scala
7%5%6%4%3%3%2%0%Objective-C
0%70%

JavaScript’s subtle dip in popularity

Over the last three years, the three top languages have stayed the same, but the JavaScript share has been decreasing consistently. It’s plausible to assume that it will continue to decline slightly, as JavaScript programmers report a higher likelihood of learning another language than other programmers.

Trust in Rust: A story of growth

Rust is the only commonly used language to set a new popularity record this year. Aspiring to replace C++ with its strict safety and memory ownership mechanisms, Rust might initially edge out Go, as every sixth Go user is thinking about adopting Rust. Along with Scala, Rust stands out as the language that the fewest programmers want to migrate from.

Objective-C is objectively retired

Having lost two-thirds of its users in recent years, Objective-C appears to be reaching its end of life. The language had a good run from its introduction in 1984 until Apple released its successor, Swift, in 2014. With other cross-platform languages, such as Kotlin, Dart, and more, iOS developers are spoiled for choice and have few reasons to hang on to Objective-C.

For more detailed insights, please see the Languages section.

Share of top-paid employees by primary language

Top-paid employees are those whose salaries are in the top quartile in their country or region.

60%

Scala

50%

Go

41%

Kotlin

40%

C++

40%

Rust

38%

C

38%

Shell scripting

In 2023, Scala, Go, and Kotlin developers rank as the top three highest-paid categories. Employers are recognizing the value of specialists who can navigate the complexities of these languages, resulting in a competitive landscape where developers in Scala, Go, and Kotlin stand out as the top earners.

Gender distribution in tech over the last 3 years

202120222023
93%91%91%Male
5%5%5%Female
1%1%1%Non-binary, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming
1%2%2%Prefer not to say
1%93%

Since 2021, our survey data has consistently shown no improvement in the share of female developers. That only 5% of developers are women indicates an enormous gender gap in the industry. To ensure equal opportunities and representation for all, we as a community should come up with new approaches to address gender diversity issues.

Notably, in 2023, South Korea is showing a promising trend with 14% of female programmers under the age of 30. It is likely a result of strategic, long-term government policies in place since the mid-1990s aimed at promoting gender equality and encouraging women to pursue careers in IT.

Read more about gender balance, salaries, geography, and other developer trends in the Demographics section.

The complex landscape of generative AI services

Do you agree with the following statements?

59%

I have security concerns about using AI generation services

53%

I am ready to use cloud-based AI generation services for work tasks

42%

I have ethical concerns about using AI generation services

40%

Local or offline AI tools are unlikely to reach the quality and performance of cloud-based solutions

28%

My company’s policy limits the use of cloud-based AI tools

19%

I am worried that AGI (artificial general intelligence) will be hostile to humans

77%

of developers use ChatGPT.

46%

of developers use GitHub Copilot.

How frequently do you use the following features of the existing AI assistants for coding?

Quite oftenFrom time to timeRarelyNever
26%33%17%24%Asking general questions about software development in natural languages
24%37%24%15%Generating code
19%26%22%33%Generating code comments or code documentation
18%26%21%36%Explaining bugs and offering fixes for them
14%27%22%37%Explaining the code
12%21%24%42%Generating tests
11%21%19%48%Search in natural language queries for code fragments
9%17%21%53%Performing code review
9%16%19%55%Summarizing recent code changes to understand what happened more quickly
9%20%23%47%Refactoring code
9%17%20%54%Generating CLI commands by natural language description
6%12%20%62%Generating commit messages
6%62%

The most common way developers use an AI assistant is to ask general questions about software development using natural language.

How likely is it that you would delegate the following activities to an AI assistant (in an ideal world where the performance of an AI assistant is humanlike)?

I would delegate itI am not sure yetI would still do it myself
56%23%21%Writing code comments or code documentation
56%26%18%Writing tests
55%26%19%Searching for code fragments inside the codebase
50%23%27%Writing commit messages
46%23%31%Internet searches
35%34%31%Performing actions in CLI
34%31%35%Performing code reviews
34%31%35%Refactoring
31%28%41%Understanding recent code changes
30%30%40%Debugging
23%26%51%Understanding the code
17%28%54%Writing code
17%56%
AI assistant

JetBrains AI Assistant

AI Assistant provides AI-powered features for software development. The JetBrains AI service transparently connects IDE users to different large language models (LLMs). AI Assistant is context-aware and helps developers complete their tasks faster, boosting productivity.

Try for free
NEW

For more about artificial intelligence usage in software development in 2023, see our brand new AI section.

Mental health in the developer community

In 2023, developers who are no strangers to burnout show a stronger interest in their mental health, with a 7 percentage points higher engagement compared to those who haven't experienced burnout. They are also 6 percentage points more likely to use self-monitoring apps or devices to track their physical activity and sleep quality.

Interestingly, burnout-affected developers find that factors related to mental health, such as self-organization and time management, significantly impact their coding productivity. Conversely, developers who haven't faced burnout link their productivity boosts to factors less connected to mental health, such as learning new IDEs and upgrading IDE functionality.

73%

of developers have experienced burnout in their career.

For more in-depth information on mental health in the developer community, go to the Developers’ Lifestyles section.

Learning and development

Have you ever switched your career field to IT?

75%

No, IT has always been my primary field

22%

Yes, I worked in another field before switching to IT

3%

Other

Which of the following educational institutions or resources allowed you to take your first step toward becoming a developer?

58%

Formal education

10%

Books

10%

Free online courses or code schools

7%

Blogs, community forums

6%

Offline courses, code schools

4%

Paid online courses or code schools

2%

Codecamps, user groups, meetups

3%

Other

Our Developers’ Lifestyles section has more on the latest trends in developer education and training.

Data science and machine learning

How did you learn data science, machine learning, or data engineering?

56%

I studied independently

41%

I studied programming or data analytics at a university

36%

I completed online courses

19%

I transitioned from a software engineering job

4%

Other

As you can see from the two charts above, in 2023, most developers reported that they primarily learned programming in universities and other formal educational institutions. On the other hand, in the fields of data science, machine learning, or data engineering, more than half of respondents reported being self-taught.

In which of the following data-related activities are you involved?

46%

Data visualization

43%

Gathering data / data scraping

33%

Exploratory data analysis

31%

Machine learning modeling

31%

Data pipelines

23%

Machine learning operations

21%

Storage architecture

18%

Data orchestration

2%

Other

15%

None

Check out the Data Science section for more insights into data science, data analytics, and machine learning.

DevOps and cloud development trends

What cloud services do you use?

This question was shown only to those respondents who reported hosting in cloud services.

61%

60%

Amazon Web Services

25%

25%

Microsoft Azure

23%

22%

Google Cloud Platform

10%

11%

Alibaba Cloud

9%

8%

DigitalOcean

10%

5%

Heroku

63%

of developers use Docker.

Explore infrastructure development, hosting, containers, configuration management tools, and infrastructure provisioning insights in our DevOps section.

Software testing

58%

of respondents involved in testing activities report that they develop automated tests.

46%

of respondents use test case design as part of their testing process.

What types of tests do you have in your projects?

63%

Unit

47%

Integration

34%

End-to-End

32%

Performance

1%

Other

15%

None

You can learn more about the testing practices used by developers and QA engineers in the Testing section.

Open-source projects

41%

of respondents have contributed to open-source projects; 20% do it more or less regularly.

See the Development section for additional facts on open-source, cross-platform, static analysis, and other topics.

Remote and collaborative development

49%

of respondents engage in remote development.

61%

report to have practiced collaborative development, with 45% having done so online and 30% face to face.

What tools do you use for remote simultaneous collaborative development?

67%

Video call with screen sharing

28%

Editor / IDE with collaboration feature

24%

Remote desktop

1%

Other

11%

None

Learn more in the Remote Development section.

Communication tools

For which of the following types of tools do you use the mobile app version?

20192020202120222023
74%77%75%66%64%Instant messaging / Video calling
75%78%76%66%60%Email
16%24%38%39%34%Video conferencing
39%42%41%40%33%Calendars
4%4%3%4%4%Corporate portal
4%5%4%3%3%Service desk / Helpdesk
8%6%7%14%15%None
3%78%

Mobile app usage for communication tools has clearly been taking a dive after peaking in 2020 and 2021. The probable reason is that more employees are returning to the office, which many companies seem to be encouraging.

Visit the Team Tools section for more on issue-tracking tools, version control systems, CI/CD tools, and communication tools.

Thank you for your time!

We hope you found our report useful. Share this report with your friends and colleagues.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us at surveys@jetbrains.com.