Author: Konstantinos Korakitis

Categories
Community Languages

Size of Programming Language Communities in Q3 2021

Ranking of programming languages popularity

Following our latest Developer Nation Survey, results are in and our State of the Developer Nation report 21st edition is now available! More than 19,000 developers from around the world participated and shed light on how they learn, the tools they use, how they are involved in emerging technologies, but also what would make them switch employers, among other topics.

As always, programming languages are a beloved subject of debate and one of the first topics we cover. The choice of language matters deeply to developers because they want to keep their skills up to date and marketable. It matters to toolmakers too, because they want to make sure they provide the most useful SDKs.

It can be hard to assess how widely used a programming language is. The indices available from players like Tiobe, Redmonk, Stack Overflow’s yearly survey, or GitHub’s Octoverse are great, but offer mostly relative comparisons between languages, providing no sense of the absolute size of each community. They may also be biased geographically or skewed towards certain fields of software development or open source developers.

The estimates we present here look at active software developers using each programming language; across the globe and across all kinds of programmers. They are based on two pieces of data:

  • First, our independent estimate of the global number of software developers, which we published for the first time in 2017. 

We estimate that, as of Q3 2021, there are 26.8 million active software developers in the world

  • Second, our large-scale, low-bias surveys which reach tens of thousands of developers every six months. In the surveys, we have consistently asked developers about their use of programming languages across ten areas of development, giving us rich and reliable information about who uses each language and in which context.
Size of programming language communities in Q3 2021.
*JavaScript includes CoffeeScript and TypeScript

JavaScript’s popularity has skyrocketed

JavaScript is the most popular programming language community by a wide margin. Nearly 16.5M developers are using it globally. Notably, the JavaScript community has been growing in size consistently for the past several years. 4M developers joined the community in the last year – by far the highest growth in absolute terms across all languages – and upwards of 2.5M developers joined in the past six months alone. Even in software sectors where JavaScript is not among developers’ top choices, like data science or embedded development, about a fourth of developers use it in their projects.

Back in 2020 we suggested that learning Python would probably be a good idea. It still is. Since it surpassed Java in popularity at the beginning of 2020, Python has remained the second most widely adopted language behind JavaScript. Python now counts 11.3M users after adding 2.3M net new developers in the past 12 months. The rise of data science and machine learning (ML) is a clear factor in Python’s popularity. 

More than 70% of ML developers and data scientists report using Python

Java is the cornerstone of the Android app ecosystem as well as one of the most important general-purpose languages. Although it has been around for more than two decades now, its traction among developers keeps steadily growing. Since mid-2018, nearly 2.5M developers have joined the Java community, which now counts 9.6M developers.

Rust is rising fast

The group of major, well-established languages is completed with C/C++ (7.5M), PHP (7.3M), and C# (7.1M). Of these, PHP has grown the fastest in the past six months, with an influx of 1M net new developers between Q1 and Q3 2021. C and C++ are core languages in embedded and IoT projects for both on-device and application-level coding, whereas PHP is still the second most commonly used language in web applications after JavaScript. On the other hand, C# is traditionally popular within the desktop developer community, but it’s also the most broadly used language among AR/VR and game developers, largely due to the widespread adoption of the Unity game engine in these areas.

Rust has formed a very strong community of developers who care about performance, memory safety, and security. As a result, it grew faster than any other language in the last 24 months. Rust has nearly tripled in size from just 0.4M developers in Q3 2019 to 1.1M in Q3 2021. 

Rust is mostly used in embedded software projects but also in AR/VR development, most commonly for implementing the low-level core logic of AR/VR applications.

In previous editions of the State of the Developer Nation report, Kotlin has consistently been identified as a rising star among programming languages. Kotlin’s audience has doubled in size over the last three years – from 1.5M developers in Q2 2018 to nearly 3M in Q3 2021. This trend is largely attributed to Google’s decision to make Kotlin its preferred language for Android development. Kotlin is currently the third most popular language in mobile development, behind JavaScript and Java.

Ranking of programming language communities from 2018 until 2021.

The more niche languages – Go, Ruby, Dart, and Lua – are still much smaller, with up to 2M active software developers each. Go and Ruby are important languages in backend development, but Go has grown slightly faster in the past year, both in absolute and percentage terms. Dart has also seen a significant uptick in its adoption in the last year. This has been fuelled predominantly by the increasing adoption of the Flutter framework in mobile development. Finally, Lua was the second fastest growing language community in the past two years, behind Rust, mainly attracting AR/VR and IoT developers looking for a scripting alternative to low-level languages such as C and C++.

You can read more about programming languages communities in the State of the Developer Nation report 21st edition.

Categories
Analysis

Infographic: Programming languages adoption trends 2021

Infographic: Programming Language adoption trends 2021

In our last infographic, JavaScript was the most popular programming language. What has changed in terms of the sizes in the last six months? You can find the answers in this infographic with key findings from our Developer Economics 20th edition survey, which ran between November 2020 and February 2021 and reached 19,000 developers worldwide.

Javascript is the queen of programming languages

JavaScript is the most popular programming language by some distance, with nearly 14M developers using it globally. More importantly, the JavaScript community has been growing in size consistently for the past three years. Between Q4 2017 and Q1 2021, more than 4.5M developers joined the community – the highest growth in absolute terms across all languages. Even in software sectors where JavaScript is not among developers’ top choices, like data science or embedded development, about a fourth of developers use it in their projects.

Python is conquering the world

Since it surpassed Java in popularity at the beginning of 2020, Python has remained the second most widely adopted language behind JavaScript. Python now counts just over 10M users, after adding 1.6M net new developers in the past year alone. That’s a 20% growth rate, the highest across all the large programming language communities of more than 6M users. The rise of data science and machine learning (ML) is a clear factor in Python’s popularity. Close to 70% of ML developers and data scientists report using Python. For perspective, only 17% use R, the other language often associated with data science.

Kotlin’s rise continues

The fastest growing language community in percentage terms is Kotlin. In fact, it’s one of the two communities – the other being Rust – that has grown more than two-fold over the last three years, from 1.1M developers in Q4 2017 to 2.6M in Q1 2021. This is also very

evident from Kotlin’s ranking, where it moved from 11th to eight place during that period – a trend that’s largely attributed to Google’s decision to make Kotlin its preferred language for Android development. Even so, Kotlin still has a long way to go to catch up with the leading language in mobile development, Java; there are currently twice as many mobile developers building applications in Java than in Kotlin.

Swift was recently outranked by Kotlin, after attracting slightly fewer net new developers in the second half of 2020 (100K vs 300K). Even so, Swift is currently the default language for development across all Apple platforms, which has led to a stagnation in the adoption of Objective C. This gradual phase-out of Objective C from the Apple app ecosystem is also matched by a significant drop in its rank, from ninth to 12th place. 

The more niche languages – Go, Ruby, Rust, and Lua – are still much smaller, with up to 2.1M active software developers each. Go and Ruby are important languages in backend development, but Go has grown slightly faster in the past year, both in absolute and percentage terms. Rust has formed a very strong community of developers who care about performance, memory safety, and security. As a result, it grew faster than any other language in the last 12 months, more than doubling in size. Finally, Lua was also among the fastest growing language communities in the last year, mainly attracting AR/VR and IoT developers looking for a scripting alternative to low-level languages such as C and C++.

Sign up to our community to have your say in our next developer survey.

Infographic: Programming languages adoption trends 2021
Categories
Languages

Infographic: Programming languages adoption trends 2020

What do developers value in open source?

Languages are a beloved subject of debate and the kernels of some of the strongest developer communities. The choice of programming language matters deeply to developers because they want to keep their skills up to date and marketable. They matter to toolmakers too, because they want to make sure they provide the most useful SDKs. So which programming languages had notable changes in adoption trends in the last 3 years? Find the answers in our infographic with key findings from our Developer Economics 19th edition survey, which ran in June-August 2020 and reached 17,000 developers in 159 countries. 

JavaScript is the most popular programming language

As of Q3 2020, 12.4M developers globally were using JavaScript. We also estimate that in mid-2020 there were 21.3M active software developers in the world. So, 58% of all developers use JavaScript. Notably, the JavaScript community has been growing in size consistently for the past three years. Between Q2 2017 and Q3 2020, nearly 5M developers joined the community – by far the highest growth in absolute terms across all languages. Even in software sectors where JavaScript is least popular, like data science or AR/VR, over a fifth of developers use it in their projects. 

It’s a good idea to learn Python

For the second half-year period in a row, Python is the most widely adopted language behind JavaScript. Python now counts 9M users, after adding 2.2M net new developers in the past year alone, outranking Java at the beginning of 2020. The rise of data science and machine learning (ML) is a clear factor in its popularity. An impressive 77% of ML developers and data scientists currently use Python. For perspective, only 22% use R, the other language often associated with data science.

What’s new with Java and other well- established programming languages?

Java, with over 8M active users worldwide, is the cornerstone of the mobile app ecosystem – Android – as well as one of the most important general-purpose languages. It’s adoption may have remained stable in the past six months but, in the overall picture, the Java community has gained 1.6M developers since mid-2017, which corresponds to a 24% growth.

The group of major, well-established languages is completed with C/C++ (6.3M), PHP (6.1M) and C# (6M). The fact that C# lost three places in the ranking of language communities during the last three years is mostly explained by its slower growth compared to C/C++ and PHP. C and C++ remain core languages in IoT projects (for both on-device and application-level coding), whereas PHP is still the second most commonly used language in web applications, after JavaScript. On the other hand, C# may be sustaining its dominance in the game and AR/VR developer ecosystems, but it seems to be losing its edge in desktop development – possibly due to the emergence of cross-platform tools based on web technologies.

Android developers behind Kotlin growth

Kotlin is one of the fastest growing language communities, having increased more than two-fold in size since the end of 2017, from 1.1M in Q4 2017 to 2.3M in Q3 2020. This is also very evident from Kotlin’s ranking, where it moved from 11th to ninth place during that period – a trend that’s largely attributed to Google’s decision to make Kotlin its preferred language for Android development. 

Swift surpassed Kotlin in popularity this year, after attracting slightly more net new developers in the first half of 2020 (400k vs 300k). Since Swift became the default language for development across all Apple platforms, the adoption of Objective C has been decreasing steadily. This phase-out from the Apple app ecosystem is also matched by a significant drop in the rank of Objective C, from ninth to 12th place. 

Finally, the more niche languages – Go, Ruby, Rust, and Lua – are still much smaller, with up to 1.5M active software developers each. Ruby and Lua have been around for more than two decades now, but their communities have essentially stopped growing in the last three years. On the contrary, Go and Rust appear to be actively adding developers, although it is still unclear whether the two languages will climb the programming language ranking in the coming period.

What’s your favourite programming language? Take our Developer Economics 20th edition survey to support your choice!

Infographic: Programming languages adoption trends 2020
Categories
Tools

DevOps CI/CD usage trends

DevOps CI/CD usage trends

To understand DevOps CI/CD usage trends, SlashData has, over the past three and a half years, tracked the usage of continuous integration & delivery (CI/CD) tools and services among mobile, desktop and web developers. While DevOps is technically a culture rather than a set of tools, CI/CD is at the core of the collaboration process between operations and developers. These tools enable some of the most important benefits of the shift to this new culture. As can be seen in the chart below, the majority of developers are not using these tools and usage is not growing. 

While many firms in various studies have indicated that they are adopting DevOps, our data suggests that this shift in culture is not ubiquitous across organisations. Has the use of CI/CD tools reached as many developers as it can or are there certain market barriers?

CI/CD Usage

% of developers using CI/CD tools

DevOps CI/CD usage trends - CI/CD adoption trends by mobile, web and desktop developers

Profile of CI/CD users

Understanding the profile of developers using CI/CD compared to those that are not can provide more insight into why usage is not as high as one might expect. In general, developers who use CI/CD tools are professionals working for companies with larger development teams and are more experienced compared to developers not using CI/CD.

Data from our most recent survey shows that developers that are using CI/CD tools are much more likely to be professional developers than those that are not. Web developers using CI/Cd tools are 20 percentage points more likely to be professional developers compared to developers not using these tools. For mobile and desktop developers this differential is 22 and 18 percentage points respectively.

DevOps CI/CD usage trends - Profile of CI/CD users DE % of users and non-users of CI/DE who are professional developers

Our most recent survey also shows that 46% of developers using CI/CD tools work for organisations with more than 20 people involved in software development. This compares to only 32% of CI/CD non-users who work for firms with more than 20 developers. The fact that CI/CD users are less likely to work in smaller developer teams points to lower demand at small firms. This may be due to less complex development operations requiring less automation and integration of developer and IT teams.

DevOps CI/CD usage trends - Number of people involved in software development in company

58% of developers using CI/CD tools work for firms with 10 or more people involved in software development

How big are the development operations adopting CI/CD?

Developers who use CI/CD are also more experienced than developers who have not integrated CI/CD into their development process. Of web developers using CI/CD, 44% have six or more years of experience compared to just 28% of developers who are not using CI/CD. For desktop developers, we see the same trend, with 49% of these developers using CI/CD possessing six or more years of experience compared to 34% of developers who are not using CI/CD. Mobile developers using CI/CD are slightly less experienced, but the overall trend holds true, with 49% of developers using CI/CD having three or more years of experience, 17 percentage points more than those not using CI/CD.  

Experience in web development, desktop development and mobile development

As developer operations adopt DevOps culture, to improve the odds of success, developers should have an understanding of the entire development process. This may be easier for more experienced developers to manage. 

While some may struggle, other developers have fully embraced the shift to DevOps and bring a variety of skills to the table and have carved out a role as a DevOps specialist.

The DevOps Specialist

DevOps specialists play an important role in driving DevOps culture and are often evangelists. These practitioners are relatively uncommon with only 5% of developers in our survey identifying as having this job. This lack of evangelists and experts may be an important factor limiting the culture shift throughout an organisation.

Finding professionals with diverse skill sets to occupy these roles may be contributing to the low number of DevOps specialists. One of the keys to successful DevOps implementation is merging of cultures so it is important that professionals driving the process have an understanding of and empathy for how both IT and developers work. 

Developers who identify as a DevOps specialist are a diverse group and indicate that they play additional roles in organisations beyond just DevOps specialist. The majority of survey respondents identify as software developers but DevOps specialists are 8 percentage points more likely to also be a software developer compared to developers who do not identify as a DevOps specialist.

DevOps specialists are also much more likely to be architects, administrators (both data and system), engineers and testers. These skills play an important role in the implementation of DevOps. Architects are needed to automate processes, administrators are required to manage release schedules and testers and QA engineers are needed to test software as it moves through each step of the iterative development process.

What else do DevOps specialists do?

DevOps CI/CD usage trends - What else do DevOps specialists do? % of DevOps specialists in other roles vs developers that are not DevOps specialists

Digging deeper into the DevOps specialist’s skill sets we can also observe that many have more than one role beyond DevOps specialist. From the table below we can see how these developers describe themselves and how their roles overlap. Twenty-three per cent of DevOps specialists are both programmers and system administrators and 27% are programmers and architects. Having development skills and an understanding of how to manage and design systems are an important combination of skills for leading a DevOps strategy. 

DevOps specialists’ additional roles

DevOps specialists' additional roles

While DevOps is a very popular strategy already adopted by many organisations, based on the number of developers using CI/CD tools, not all developers are buying in. The DevOps culture has been slower in reaching less experienced developers and ones at smaller firms. The need for more experienced professionals with diverse skills may be a barrier to more developers benefiting from DevOps tools such as CI/CD. 

If you are interested in learning more, here is some additional reading.You can voice your opinion in our current survey to shape the next State of the Developer Nation report and contribute to future DevOps CI/CD usage trends.

Categories
Languages

The Queen of Programming Languages with 11M+ Users

Programming Languages
The Queen of Programming Languages with 11M+ Users

The choice of programming language matters deeply to developers because they want to keep their skills up to date and marketable. Programming Languages are a beloved subject of debate and the kernels of some of the strongest developer communities. They matter to toolmakers too, as they want to make sure they provide the most useful SDKs.

Here is an update on Programming Language Communities, from our State of the Developer Nation Report 17th Edition.

It can be hard to assess how widely used a programming language is. The indices available from players like Tiobe, Redmonk, Stack Overflow’s yearly survey, or Github’s Octoverse are great, but mostly offer only relative comparisons between languages, providing no sense of the absolute size of each community. They may also be biased geographically, or skewed towards certain fields of software development, or open source developers.

The estimates we present here look at active software developers using each programming language, across the globe and across all kinds of programmers.

They are based on two pieces of data:

First, our independent estimate of the global number of software developers, which we published for the first time in 2017. We estimate that in mid 2019 there are 18 million active software developers in the world.

Second, our large-scale, low-bias surveys which reach tens of thousands of developers every six months. In the surveys, we consistently ask developers about their use of programming languages across ten areas of development, giving us rich and reliable information about who uses each language and in which context.

JAVASCRIPT REMAINS QUEEN OF PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES

11M+ developers use Javascript

The most popular programming language by a wide margin is Javascript, including derivatives like TypeScript and CoffeeScript. The Javascript community counts over 11 million active developers. Even in software sectors where Javascript is least popular like machine learning or on-device code in IoT, over a fifth of developers use it for their projects. 

Programming language communities Q2 2019
Programming language communities Q2 2019

The rise of machine learning is a clear factor in the success of Python:

8 in 10 machine learning developers use Python in their work (compared to just 25% using R, the other language often associated with data science). Java, of course, is a cornerstone of the mobile app ecosystem (Android) as well as a great general-purpose language.

Language use is not static: developers drop and adopt new languages all the time

It would appear that it is not meaningful to speak of “Java developers” or “Python developers” in any fundamental sense, other than that they use those languages at a certain point in time. While we see a net decline in the use of most languages by our repeat respondents, some languages reverse that trend and show significant growth. The first of these is Kotlin, which we are confident to say is the rising star in the programming language firmament.

Kotlin’s rank among programming languages moved from 11th to 8th place in just a year, and one in ten developers now use the language.

Rank of programming language communities 2017-2019
Rank of programming language communities 2017-2019

Tracking the ever-changing landscape of the software development ecosystem is why we run our Developer Economics surveys twice a year and there is one live right now. To track changes on programming languages, tools and platforms we need you to share with us your coding experiences!  We would be very interested to know what programming languages, hardware, frameworks and platforms you use, and the types of projects you’re working on.

Has the new Oculus Quest piqued your interest and restarted the heart of VR development? Or is AR and mixed reality where it really is? Help us tell the technology leaders what you think, and by doing so become part of the change you want to see in the tools you use.

Categories
Tools

An Agile Software World

agile software

Since the emergence of the first agile software development methods more than 20 years ago, development teams around the world have undergone a significant cultural shift. The traditional waterfall approach to running software projects sequentially has been gradually replaced by iterative project management styles. This has enabled organisations of all sizes to scale successfully by remaining resilient in a business environment full of uncertainties. Agile methodology appears to be transforming companies across sectors, but is it really the dominant trend in the software industry nowadays? And if it is, which particular implementations of agile are the most widely used by developers?

 

To gain more insight into the above questions, we asked 11,700+ developers in our latest Developer Economics survey about the project management methodologies they follow in software development. The data we collected provides clear evidence that agile is indeed the most commonly adopted practice in the software industry.

Agile project management

Agile is an umbrella term used for processes like Scrum and Kanban that emphasise short release cycles, rapid response to changing requirements and continuous improvement through regular customer feedback, as described in the Agile manifesto of 2001. According to our survey data, more than half (58%) of developers say they follow a project management methodology that can be classified as agile.

By comparison, the once ruling waterfall methodology is currently used by only 15% of developers. Waterfall’s biggest advantage, i.e. its sequential approach, is also its greatest limitation: in projects where the goals are not clear from the beginning and requirements change continuously, waterfall fails to adapt and deliver results quickly.

 

SCRUM IS LEADING THE AGILE REVOLUTION

Scrum was conceived in the mid 1990s as a response to the shortcomings of waterfall and is now the most popular project management methodology, followed by 37% of developers. As a framework that puts the core principles of agile into practice, Scrum enables teams to break down large, complex projects into a series of smaller iterations (or sprints) and ship high quality products faster and more frequently.

Kanban is another prominent agile project management framework, although its popularity is significantly lower – nearly half of Scrum’s (20% vs 37%). The two methodologies share some of the same core values but have very different implementations. Most notably, Kanban is lighter on structure as it’s not constrained by fixed-length iterations, but instead it prioritises continuous delivery of work to customers (even multiple times per day) as long as the capacity of the team permits it.

Only 6% of developers blend the concepts of Scrum and Kanban into Scrumban, indicating that agile hybrids are not common. Agile-waterfall hybrids, in contrast, are the second most popular choice for developers (21%). This is most likely a sign that many organisations remain skeptical towards agile development and prefer a slower transition to it by mixing some of the less controversial agile techniques with the traditional waterfall method.

Other well-established frameworks such as Feature-driven development (FDS), Extreme programming (XP) and Lean are used by about 10% of developers, whereas Adaptive software development (ASD) and Dynamic systems development method (DSDM) – both outgrowths of the early Rapid application development method – appeal to more niche audiences. Interestingly 23% of developers don’t use any specific methodology in their projects, although – as one may expect – it’s mostly amateurs who do so (40%) and to a much lesser extent professionals (17%). Another 19% of developers (18% of professionals) do not follow any specific project management process for some of their side projects, which in most cases are hobby endeavours.

Our data reveals that developers tend to follow multiple methodologies across their projects (2.7 on average), with Scrum being the most frequently co-used framework along with other methodologies. This implies that Scrum often acts as a “touch point” for development teams landing on the world of agile or as a starting choice before transitioning to less structured agile processes. For example, 66% of developers using Kanban and 57% using XP also use Scrum, as opposed to only 36% and 13% of Scrum followers also using Kanban and XP, respectively. Among developers following the waterfall model, more than 40% also use either Scrum or an agile-waterfall hybrid (like Scrummerfall) while the adoption of any other framework is below 25%. It seems that Scrum’s simplicity, clearly defined roles and timeboxed nature attract development teams who want a smoother transition from traditional waterfall to more flexible approaches.

Agile_Software_World

You can read the latest full State of the Developer Nation report here, and help shape the trends by taking the 18th Developer Economics survey here