Web Tools #518 - SO Survey, Testing Tools, Vue.js, Uncats

SO Survey, Testing Tools, Vue.js, Uncats

Issue #518 • June 22, 2023

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In case you missed it, the Stack Overflow Developer Survey for 2023 is now done and the results have been published. I'm sure some of you took part in the survey when the data were collected in May. This year about 90,000 developers contributed (which is up from the previous three years, though they've had as many as 100,000 before).

You can go through the full results, which this year went deep into AI/ML to look at how developers are thinking about those technologies and using them in their workflows.

Below are some highlights that I found interesting while going through the numbers.

• Learning to code from online resources increased from 70% to 80% since the 2022 survey.
• Rust is the most admired language, with MATLAB being the least admired.
• 70% of all respondents are using or are planning to use AI tools in their development process this year.
• More developers this year are working in-person this year than last year (+2%) but naturally this number is still down overall since prior to 2020.
• Udemy is the most popular learning platform for developer courses. I guess this isn't surprising but I do find that Udemy is often viewed as sort of the 'Walmart of dev course platforms' within the community.
• 48% of respondents have been coding for less than ten years and 24% have worked professionally as coders for 15 to 29 years.
• 33.5% classify as full-stack developers,17.9% are back-end, and only 6.6% are front-end.
• The largest age group among respondents is 25-34 years old.
• For the eleventh year in a row JavaScript is the most commonly-used programming language, with Python and SQL the most common back-end languages.
• For the first time ever, PostgreSQL took over the first place spot from MySQL for most popular database.
• Node.js and React.js are the two most common web technologies used by all respondents.
• Docker is the top-used "other" tool among all respondents (53%) rising from its second place spot last year.
• VS Code is still the top IDE with an increase from 75% to 81% over last year, though Neovim has a higher proportion of users that want to continue using it next year. (BTW - I do a VS Code newsletter if you're interested!)
• 27% of respondents use markdown files as an async tool (third highest behind Jira and Confluence).
• GitHub Copilot is the overall pick for most-used AI developer tool with Tabnine a distant second.
• Zig is the highest-paid programming language to know this year, taking over last year's top paying language, Clojure.
• Those working with Rust, Julia, Erlang, Fortran, Crystal, and Clojure all decreased in median yearly salary since 2022, while all other languages in the survey increased in median yearly salary.
• 25% of respondents believe that AI tools speed up learning new technologies while 27% of respondents either somewhat distrust or highly distrust AI tools for their accuracy of output.
• Of the top 5 countries, Germany has the highest number of workers employed part-time (10%).
• Front-end developers had one of the lowest yearly salaries ($59k) while the top paying roles belong to c-suite executives and engineering managers (both $124k).
• 70% of professional developers code outside of work as a hobby.
• 16% of respondents don't have a Stack Overflow account, 19% have never participated on Stack Overflow, and 45% don't feel like they're part of the Stack Overflow community.