Source: Stack Overflow A few days ago, Stack Overflow, a reputable website in the IT community, published the results of its annual survey, in which more than 65,000 professional programmers took part. By reading them, you will get an idea of the current situation in the software development industry in 2020.
1. Average age of a developer
15-19 years old – 1.2%
20-24 years old – 16.6%
25-29 years old – 29.5%
30-34 years old – 21.9%
35-39 years old – 14.0%
40-44 years – 7.5%
45-49 years old – 4.2%
50-54 years old – 2.5%
55-59 years old – 1.5%
Over 60 years old – 1.1%
Even though almost 46% of developers are under 30 years of age, the number of older people is not that small. Approximately every 20th programmer is over 50 years old.
2. Average age based on country of residence
USA – 33.7 years
UK – 33.1 years
Canada – 32.2 years
Netherlands – 31.9 years
Germany – 30.9 years
France – 30.4 years
Brazil – 29.4 years
Poland – 28.9 years
India – 26.0 years
As you can see, developers from the USA are older than their colleagues from other countries. The average Indian coder is more than 7 years younger than an American.
3. Coding experience
Australia – 16.9 years
UK – 16.1 years
USA – 15.8 years
Netherlands – 15.0 years
Canada – 14.4 years
Germany – 14.3 years
France – 13.0 years
Poland – 11.5 years
Brazil – 11.5 years
India – 8.1 years.
It turned out that Australians have more experience in programming than residents of other countries. The average Indian developer has the least professional experience.
4. Number of years that have passed since the start of programming training
Less than 5 years – 10.5%
5-9 years – 29.2%
10-14 years – 22.7%
15-19 years old – 13.2%
20-24 years old – 9.8%
25-29 years old – 5.1%
30-34 years old – 4.0%
35-39 years old – 3.0%
40-44 years old – 1.8%
45-49 years old – 0.4%
50 years or more – 0.3%.
Statistics show that most professional developers began learning code between 5 and 14 years ago.
5. Vocational education
Bachelor - 49.3%
Master - 26.5%
Incomplete higher education – 11.5%
Completed secondary education – 4.5%
Availability of a scientific degree (Candidate of Sciences, Ph.D, Ed.D) – 3.3%
Bachelor with postgraduate courses (Associate degree) – 3.2%
Doctor of Science (JD/MD) – 1.4%
I do not have any completed education – 0.7%
Primary school – 0.5%
The results show that about 75% of developers have at least a bachelor's degree, and many have also earned a master's degree. Although 11.5% of respondents dropped out of college, the total number of programmers who studied at a college or university is almost 90% of the total.
6. Professional specialization
Back-end developer – 55.2%
Full-stack developer – 54.9%
Front-end developer – 37.1%
Web developer – 23.9%
Mobile application developer – 19.2%
DevOps specialist – 12.1%
Database administrator – 11.6%
Designer – 10.8%
System administrator – 10.6%
System application developer – 9.6%
Data or business analyst – 8.2%
Data scientist or ML specialist –8.1%
Tester – 8.0%
Data engineer – 7.6%
Academic expert or researcher – 7.2%
Teacher – 5.9%
Game or graphics developer – 5.6%
Engineering manager – 5.5%
Product manager – 5.1%
Scientist – 4.2%
Site reliability engineer – 3.9%
Senior executive/VP – 2.7%
Marketing specialist – 1.3%
7. Average time to write code depending on specialization
Based on professional specialization, Senior executive/VP (senior executive vice president) have the most coding experience. On average, they have been programming for 16.5 years. From 10 to 13.8 years of experience have (in descending order): Engineering managers, system administrators, system application developers, database administrators, Site reliability engineers, DevOps specialists, teachers, Data or business analysts. Those with the least coding experience (on average 8 years) are: academic experts or researchers, mobile application developers, Data scientists or ML specialists, full-stack and back-end developers, testers.
8. At what age did you write your first line of code?
Under 10 years old – 8.9%
10-11 years – 10%
12-13 years old – 16%
14-15 years old – 19.2%
16-17 years old – 16.3%
18-19 years old – 14.7%
20-21 years old – 6.3%
22-23 years old – 3%
24-25 years old – 2.1%
26-27 years old – 1%
28-29 years old – 0.7%
Over 30 years old – 1.7%.
Of all respondents, more than 54% wrote their first line of code by age 16. People who wrote their first line of code over the age of 20 make up 13% of all respondents.
9. Specialization of vocational education
Computer science, computer engineering or software development – 61.9%
Other engineering discipline (e.g. consumer electronics, mechanics, etc.) – 9.3%
Information systems, IT or system administration – 8.0%
Social sciences (anthropology, psychology, political science, etc.) – 1.8%
Visual or performing arts (graphic design, music, performing arts, etc.) -1.4%
Did not report their specialization of education – 0.9%
Healthcare – 0.5%
Statistics show that a computer science major is the surest path to a career as a software developer. However, other specializations, including the humanities, are not so rare.
10. Geographical affiliation
According to Stack Overflow, the regional breakdown of the 65,000 respondents is as follows:
Europe – 24,688 people
Asia – 16400
North America – 15570
South America – 3070
Africa – 2709
Australia and Oceania – 1570
11. Gender
Men – 91.7%
Women – 7.7%
Gender not specified – 1.2%
Although only 7.7% of professional developers identified as women, this figure is up from last year. In 2019, women accounted for 7.5% of the total number of respondents. The largest number of female developers live in the United States - 11.8%, and the smallest in Poland (4.7%) and Brazil (5.8%).
12. Most commonly used programming language
JavaScript – 69.7%
HTML/CSS – 62.4%
SQL – 56.9%
Python – 41.6%
Java – 38.4%
Bash/Shell/PowerShell – 34.8%
C# – 32.3%
TypeScript – 28.3%
PHP – 25.8%
C++ – 20.5%
C – 18.2%
Go – 9.4%
Kotlin – 8.0%
Ruby – 7.5%
VBA – 6.5%
Swift – 6.1%
R – 5.5%
Assembly – 4.9%
Rust – 4.8%
Objective-C – 4.4%
Scala – 3.9%
Dart – 3.7%
Perl – 3.3%
Haskell – 1.8%
Julia – 0.9%
Almost 70% of professional developers mostly work in JavaScript. This language has been the most used since Stack Overflow started conducting an annual survey. So the result is not surprising. However, there are some interesting changes being observed. The popularity of the Dart language is growing, which, together with Flutter, is increasingly used for developing mobile applications. There is also a growing use of the Kotlin language, which emerged as an alternative to Java.
13. Developers' favorite programming language
Rust – 86.1%
Typescript – 67.1%
Python – 66.3%
Kotlin – 62.9%
Go – 62.3%
Julia – 62.2%
Dart – 62.1%
C# – 59.7%
Swift – 59.5%
JavaScript – 58.3%
SQL – 56.6%
Bash/Shell/PowerShell – 53.7%
HTML/CSS – 53.5%
Scala – 53.2%
Haskell – 51.7%
R – 44.5%
Java – 44.1%
C++ – 43.4%
Ruby – 42.9%
PHP – 37.3%
C – 33.1%
Assembly – 29.4%
Perl – 28.6%
Objective-C – 23.4%
VBA – 19.6%
For the past 4 years, Rust has been the most favorite programming language for developers. The high-performance language, which turned 5 years old this month, is actively used in the Mozilla Firefox browser. TypeScript, a statically typed version of JavaScript, also has a strong fan base, making it the second most popular language.
14. The programming language developers want to learn next
Python – 30%
JavaScript – 18.5%
Go – 17.9%
TypeScript – 17.0%
Rust – 14.6%
Kotlin – 12.6%
Java – 8.8%
C++ – 8.6%
SQL – 8.2%
C# – 7.3%
Swift – 6.6%
HTML/CSS – 6.5%
Dart – 6%
R – 5.1%
Ruby – 4.5%
C – 4.3%
Scala – 4.2%
Haskell – 4.2%
Bash/Shell/PowerShell – 3.9%
PHP – 3.5%
Developers who already work in other programming languages are most interested in learning Python, JavaScript, Go, and TypeScript.
15. Best platform for developers
Linux – 76.9%
Docker – 73.6%
Kubernetes – 71.1%
AWS – 66.4%
Raspberry Pi – 66.1%
MacOS – 64.4%
Microsoft Azure – 62.2%
iOS – 61.1%
Google Cloud Platform – 60.9%
Windows – 57.5%
Android – 57.1%
Arduino – 53.2%
Slack Apps and Integrations – 51%
Heroku – 46.2%
IBM Cloud or Watson – 37.8%
WordPress – 33%
Linux is recognized as the most popular platform. 76.9% of developers either use it or express interest in using it in the future. Docker and Kubernetes, although not operating systems, can also be considered popular platforms for creating applications. AWS is recognized as the leader among cloud platforms. In second place is Azure, followed by Google Cloud Platform and IBM Cloud.
16. Which platform are you planning to explore in the future?
Docker – 24.5%
AWS – 20.2%
Kubernetes – 18.5%
Linux – 16.6%
Android – 16%
Google Cloud Platform – 14%
Raspberry Pi – 12.6%
iOS – 10.4%
Microsoft Azure – 9.9%
MacOS – 7.7%
Arduino – 7.4%
Windows – 4.7%
Heroku – 4.4%
Slack Apps and Integrations – 3.3%
WordPress – 2.6%
IBM Cloud or Watson – 2.6%
As it turns out, almost a quarter of all developers want to learn Docker. 24.5% of respondents would like to use this platform for their future project. And interest in AWS is also quite high.
17. What operating system do most developers use?
Windows – 45.8%
MacOS – 27.5%
Linux kernel based – 26.6%
BSD – 0.1%
In 2020, nearly half (46%) of developers still use Windows as their primary desktop operating system. Approximately equal numbers prefer MacOS and Linux.
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