TOP 5 Findings from Stack Overflow Developer Survey
Another year, another Stack Overflow Survey. The second most important announcement for every programmer (The first being the release of Diablo 4). The results of the 2023 Stack Overflow survey have been released, and like many others, we have gone through it and cherry picked some interesting parts. Stack Overflow conducted its first survey in January 2011, which became necessary due to its growth in 2010, to understand and recognize its user base beyond Google Analytics numbers. At that time, with a 90% completion rate, 2,532 responses were collected. Now, 13 years later in 2023, nearly 90,000 developers participated in the survey. Since new and updated extracts have been published on the topic during this period, we have tried to highlight the most significant and interesting changes from the report. The complete survey results are available at this link.
TOP 1 – AI has entered the topic areas
The themes have remained the same year after year, but this year, a new topic has been added, and that is none other than the widely discussed AI. Stack Overflow wanted to see beyond the hype and understand the developers' feelings about artificial intelligence. The majority of respondents identified productivity enhancement as the biggest advantage of artificial intelligence, followed by accelerated learning in second place and improved code accuracy in fourth place. Interestingly, the role of artificial intelligence in increasing efficiency came in third place, but we feel that this response option is closely related to productivity enhancement, which took first place.
Regarding the use of AI, there were 89,184 responses, and surprisingly, 29.4% answered that they neither use nor plan to use artificial intelligence. Probably all the John Connors. This means that 70% of developers already use or plan to use AI. There seems to be some uncertainty in the field of AI development tools because the number of responses to individual questions did not reach 40,000, while for technological questions, this number averaged over 70,000. Similar skepticism was observed regarding the accuracy of AI tools, with nearly 31% of respondents being on the fence, neither trusting nor distrusting the accuracy, and over 25% expressing distrust. We and probably you have also experienced some "special" answers to well-formulated prompts.
TOP 2. – JavaScript has remained undefeated among the most used programming languages for 11 years
Among the respondents (87585 answers), 63.61% use JavaScript, with HTML/CSS coming in second on the list with nearly 53%. Not surprisingly, this year saw a change in the 3rd position, as the popularity of Python has been steadily increasing over the past three years, securing its place with 49.28%. In web technologies, Node.js and, of course, our personal favorite and livelihood cornerstone, React.js, are the two most common "frameworks." This applies to professional developers as well as those learning to code. If you are a beginner, don't be discouraged by the steep learning curve. Instead, read our articles and alleviate your pain. Still, React has been closing the gap with Node.js and increasing its advantage over jQuery compared to last year. Not surprisingly (😉😉 Next.js13).
TOP 3 – The percentage of developers learning to code through online resources has increased by another 10%
It was interesting for us to see how age influences the differences in learning methods. Therefore, it is no wonder that respondents overwhelmingly indicated online resources as their primary learning method. Only among those over 55 years old, books are more popular than online resources, and workplace training plays a significant role in this age group as well. Regarding online resources, technical documentation and Stack Overflow are the most important sources of knowledge, followed by blogs in third place, while tutorial videos have fallen off the podium, which was surprising to us since they are a great way to see theory put into practice. However, be aware that if you don't buy more instructional books, there won't be any new funny O RLY book parodies either!
TOP 4. – Docker is the most commonly used tool this year among others
Docker has emerged as the most used tool among respondents, surpassing its second-place ranking from the previous year. This year, npm took the second spot, and a new tool called Pip reached the third position, immediately following as the second favorite among coding learners. Pip and npm are often used by students learning popular languages like JavaScript and Python, so it's not surprising that Docker ranks third among coding learners. While we would have expected a decrease in npm usage, it seems that this prediction is still pending.
TOP 5. – Rust is the most admired language
Stack Overflow presented us with a new visualization, giving birth to the "Admired and Desired" category analysis. The essence of this analysis is to provide a better understanding of the gap between the proportion of respondents who would like to use a technology ("desired") and the proportion of users who have already used the technology in the past year and wish to continue using it ("admired"). Considering this, Rust emerged as the most admired programming language, with over 80% of its users expressing their intention to continue using it in the next year. On the other hand, MATLAB was the least admired language, with only 18.33% of its users wanting to use it again.
TOP 5+1. – Zig became the highest-paid language
Zig appeared as the highest-paid language for developers, making its debut on the list this year. Clojure, which previously held the top position, experienced a 10% decrease compared to the previous year. PHP and Dart developers continue to be underpaid compared to other languages with similar levels of experience, although Dart salaries saw a 20% increase compared to the previous year. The annual average salaries of JS and TypeScript developers rank towards the lower and middle positions in the global landscape. We can understand them.
Summary
To conclude our summary, let's share a few interesting facts. Over the past five years, there have been questions related to gender, race, or sexual orientation, but this year, only age was included in the demographic data. Perhaps it's time to accept that developers are also humans. 43% of professional developers are aged 25-34, but we can see that over half of the coding learners are aged 18-24. There has been a slight change in the work environment, with hybrid work taking the first place, followed closely by remote work at 41.41%, which increased by 2% compared to in-person work. We can reasonably assume that many people are tired of remote work caused by the pandemic and long for their workplaces. Or it’s just Elon Musk with multiple votes.
Furthermore, it's good news that responses to the survey came from almost every country in the world. This demonstrates the popularity of Stack Overflow, as it is used globally by the developer community for deepening knowledge and sharing expertise.
