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%
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
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.
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%.
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%
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%.
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%
- Natural sciences (biology, chemistry, etc.) – 4.3%
- Mathematics or statistics – 3.6%
- Web development or web design – 3.5%
- Business discipline (accounting, finance, marketing, etc.) – 2.7%
- Humanities (literature, history, philosophy, etc.) – 2%
- 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%
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%
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%
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%
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%
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%
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%
17. What operating system do most developers use?
- Windows – 45.8%
- MacOS – 27.5%
- Linux kernel based – 26.6%
- BSD – 0.1%