As they have done in the past few years, StackOverflow released the results of their 2016 developer survey. The data, culled from the responses of over 50,000 developers and coders around the world, sketches a pretty good picture of what your average developer looks like these days. It also offers some interesting insight into where the industry is heading, based on the responses to questions about the favored new and upcoming technologies.
Although a lot of the data from the survey is promising, such as the fact that an overwhelming 69% of developers reported to be self-taught, there are still some less-than-exciting suspicions that are confirmed in the survey’s results. The main concern, perhaps, is that the female developers are still woefully underrepresented, making up only 5.8% of the responders. The industry is aware of this issue and is trying to fix it via women in tech conferences and scholarships for female developers. But, the fact that the number one position held among female responders was “designer” at 12.4% while “executive” only clocked in at 2.1% shows there’s still a long way to go when it comes to solving the gender disparity in tech.
Troubling or surprising results aside, it is always interesting to see exactly where the typical developer (if there is such a thing) stands in today’s tech environment. Here’s a breakdown of what your average developer around the world looks like in 2016.
JavaScript Stays Strong While Interest In Other Technologies Is Growing Too
This is perhaps due to the fact that many of the survey’s responders were web developers, but it’s nonetheless noteworthy that JavaScript is still the most popular programming language among developers. This suggests that there’s still a strong emphasis on web development (JavaScript has been the top technology for the past three years), but what’s also surprising is the grasp on JavaScript. It was not only the most popular language for frontend developers — at a whopping 90.5% — but is also now the favored technology for back-end developers, edging out SQL by a margin of 54.5% to 53.3%.
Moreover, JavaScript shows no signs of loosening its grip in this race, as it showed its influence even among technologies growing in popularity. For example, Facebook’s React, a JavaScript library devoted to user interfaces, saw an enormous 311.3% increase in use from the previous year. Other budding technologies were shown lots of respect in the results as well, though, such as Apache’s Spark, which was listed as the technology that brought in the highest earnings per developer. This data suggests that while there are still heavyweights in the industry, the booming technologies of the future might just now be coming out of their shells.
Apple’s Hot, Microsoft’s Not
If the results of the Stack Overflow survey told us anything, it’s that Apple products and services are becoming increasingly popular among developers. Mac OS X is the most favored operating system, clocking in at 26.2% while Windows 7, Linux, and Windows 10 all followed closely behind at 22.5%, 21.7%, and 20.8% respectively. The big loser here is Windows 7, which fell from 33.8% last year. On top of that, Apple’s Swift app programming language is one of the “Most Loved” technologies among developers, coming in second behind Rust with 72.1%, while Microsoft’s Visual Basic app language won the “Most Dreaded” award, with 79.5% of responders saying they would prefer not to use it anymore.
Along with Windows 7’s and Visual Basic’s drop in popularity, Microsoft also fared poorly in other areas of the survey. Windows Phone technology did poorly as well, dropping 65.2% in popularity, which made it the biggest loser in the “Trending Tech” category. This looks especially bad given that Google’s Android, another mobile-centric technology, was reported as being one of the top technologies at Stack Overflow. While Microsoft has certainly not fallen off the map, it does appear to be losing some ground in the wake of Apple’s technologies.
Developers Are (Mostly) Young, but Still Professional
Gender disparity aside, one particularly noteworthy aspect of the Stack Overflow survey was the fact that most developers around the world are relatively young. In the United States, the median age of the general labor force was close to 40 years old in most cases, but the median age for developers was only 32 years old. The global numbers, meanwhile, were even younger, with the average age of developers being 29.6 years old and the median being 27.
Despite the relative youth of the industry (which makes sense given technology’s comparative newness to the global workforce), the vast majority of developers reported being “gainfully employed,” which Stack Overflow qualified as being full-time, self-employed, or freelance. Of the 91% of developers who fall in this category, 67.8% of them were employed full-time, showing that programming and development are becoming more entrenched in traditional labor markets. This is interesting, given the fact that a huge chunk of the workforce is self-educated. It suggests that while having a degree is important (PhD’s and Master’s degrees in computer science or a related field did bring in the highest salaries in the U.S.), there is still an emphasis on technical proficiency over all else. Additionally, job titles such as “rockstar,” “ninja,” and “guru” saw their numbers slip this year, suggesting that an air of professionalism is becoming more apparent in the workforce.
While many of the new survey’s results point to interesting developments coming in the tech workforce, some things never change. For example, the maximum “developers just want to code” still holds true. As the top two answers on the survey for “takeaways” from a tech job were “Learning New Technologies” and “Building Something New,” which far outweighed factors like “Getting Promoted” and “Having My Own Office.” With results like these, 2016 is shaping up to be a very dynamic and interesting year for programmers and developers.
This is a Guest Contribution by David Jones from Splashpress Media Blog.
About David Jones:
David Jones is Operations and Business Development Manager for Splashpress Media blog network and a beginner Python programmer in his spare time. You can follow him on Google+ .
Originally published at www.cloudways.com on April 28, 2016.
