Tag: javascript

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Community Languages

Size of Programming Language Communities in Q3 2021

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.

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.

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.

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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
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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

A Guide to Choose the Right JavaScript Framework for Web Programming

JavaScript frameworks

The platforms of JavaScript probably are the best frameworks for developers as well as business organizations nowadays. Already, there is a vast ocean of JavaScript frameworks, with new ones pouring in constantly.  Frontend developers have difficulty in making up their minds as to which framework to stick to, particularly for single-page apps.

There are so many JavaScript frameworks and libraries to choose from on the web. Among the most popular however include React, Angular, Ember, Meteor, and Vue. The frameworks of JavaScript are preferred over others due to their functionality and interoperability. The libraries offer a better functional approach, good scalability, and most important of all platform independence.

JavaScript at present is used on the client and server-sides. The platform helps in designing an enriched user experience with many features to alter web pages in real-time. For fast web application development, JavaScript is the most preferred and acts as the perfect skeleton for single page applications, enabling developers complete focus on the interface elements, expanding the platform capabilities.

To further determine the best JavaScript framework to choose that best fits your web programming requirements, take a closer look at the five best JavaScript frameworks. 

Five best JavaScript Frameworks


Which JavaScript frameworks are you using? Let us know in our latest Developer Economics survey.

React JavaScript Framework


JavaScript frameworks - React

The brain-child of Facebook: it’s the framework in which the highest viewed social media platform, Facebook is based on. It’s supported by the FB team and also the driving force behind Instagram. It’s the choice of developers for many reasons to create dynamic and high-traffic web apps. 

Deemed as the quickest growing framework, with over 1000 GitHub contributors which increases the use of ReactJS in development with high demand.

React acts as a View in the MVC framework, and could be integrated seamlessly and smoothly into any architecture. One component file has the HTML markup and the business logic. You can either use Flux or a similar JS library for components communication. 

The seamless transfer of data between components is easy with the help of the props objects and the state. Credits to the Virtual DOM and special reconciliation algorithm, front-end gets a considerable boost. Changes could be done by developers in real-time, without having to update the View each time.

Pros:

The major component of boosting performance is the virtual DOM. Since React is framework-friendly, you could integrate it with other frameworks for inflated compatibility and performance. Moreover, it could be utilized on the client and the server-side. 

Cons:

Its flexibility is also its downside. It’s not easy to choose from the overabundance of frameworks. It works only on the MVC Framework’s View layer. 

In spite of the inclusion of the major code libraries, in some instances it still needs more code. And since it’s more of a library instead of framework, data changes need manual processing. 

Angular JavaScript Framework


JavaScript frameworks - Angular

The web-app platform is type-script based, making it exceptionally agile. Led by the Angular team at Google, a community of members and testers, it’s an open-source solution. Referred often as an MVW framework, it’s considered the best to use, particularly among startups and medium-size enterprises.

What sets Angular apart from the rest of the JavaScript frameworks is its two-way data binding, which makes backend changes reflect in real time on the user interface. As the most sought-after apps for Single Page Applications, an Angular JS development company enjoys high demand. 

It’s preferred for hybrid mobile apps as well. Features like switches, sidebars, and overlays integrate dynamic functionality to apps. It came about in 2016 with the version 2.0, the immediate release occurred in Angular 4 in the following year, with updates at regular intervals. Angular 5 was released in 2017 followed by 6 in the middle of 2018, then Angular 7 in September of the same year.



The diagram of the architecture identifies eight major building blocks of Angular 2 app.

Components – are a logical code for a JS app, consisting of a class, template, and metadata. 

Modules – used in creating a particular set of instructions. Rather than coding everything in a single place, you could build individual modules, which depend on the functionality. A module contains an export array, bootstrap array, and an import array as well.

Metadata – has the extra data defined for classes and is defined with a decorator.

Data binding – used for binding classes properties in the components.

Directives – a custom element of HTML. Used for extending the HTML functionality, with two directives as part of the Browser Module module.

Services – service is built to provide common functionality across various program modules. 

Templates – used for rendering the View for an app, consisting of the HTML code required for binding, rendering, and directives.

Dependency injection – used for extending module functionality during runtime.

Pros:

Yields huge performances, which is made possible by type-scripting. It offers libraries and functionalities for nested components, as well as web components support.

Cons:

It modifies a pre-existing DOM, which makes it slow and inefficient compared to React. It maintains a physical distance between the JavaScript driving an app and the HTML rendered.

Vue.js JavaScript Framework


JavavScript frameworks - Vue.js

Was introduced in 2016. It instilled the better parts of React, Angular, and Ember and put into a handy package. Vue’s learning curve was better than Angular and React.

What makes it stand out among the rest is the two-way binding, optional JSX support, Vue-cli, server-side rendering, and more. The ecosystem of the framework is composed of a view-loader as a component, library, Chrome, Vue.js devtools, Firefox, as well as a dedicated library Vuex to manage app state with the framework. Thus, it’s the better option than its counterparts for SPAs and cross-platform solutions.

You might see the Vue library as a combination of React and Angular, and somehow it’s true. It borrows the concepts of both React and Angular concepts. Layouts and logic, together with stylesheets are stored in a file. It also utilizes props objects and states, the same as React.

A reason to opt for Vue over React nonetheless is that React apps used the Redux library. As the app grows in size, building mini changes across files has the tendency to be tedious. This makes the Vue framework more favourable than others.

Pros

A collection of the best parts of the majority of frameworks. Thus, understanding the ease and deployment comes around. Very flexible, as well as facilitates a two-way communication, with a virtual DOM as well.

Cons

The downfall with Vue is its high flexibility. The high integrity makes choosing one for development hard. Most users of the Vue.js framework belong to non-native English speakers’ closed communities. The barrier in language is one of the reasons why developers are wary of using it.

React Native JavaScript Framework


JavaScript frameworks - React Native

It was a breakthrough when it comes to mobile application development. Before React, developing an Android and iOS app required various code sets. The whole deployment and coding functionality varied, and took a big toll on the expenses. 

React Native was launched by Facebook a few years back, revolutionizing the phone apps concept. You could write an app code and deploy at the same time on iOS and Android. The great success was the write once, deploy anywhere concept and React since then has been the foremost choice of native application development.

The framework takes the development of mobile apps to an all-new level, using CSS-like stylesheets, JS code, and HTML tags for lay-outing.

Pros

The concept of one framework, numerous platforms is a great React Native bonus. It has an extremely streamlined UI, and you could make apps faster with them.

Cons

The navigation is a turnoff, and transitions are not smooth either. It lacks the required custom modules for native application development. Native developers moreover are still required to accomplish the task.

Ionic JavaScript Framework


JavaScript frameworks - Ionic

It’s all about performance and nothing else. A cross-platform, and open-sourced, it’s used for developing hybrid mobile apps. A mobile HTML5 framework, it’s solely aimed at performance, using hardware acceleration. What’s great is that it does not require a third-party JS library. 

Ionic could be teamed up with Angular.js for building an interactive application. It comes with a set of its own icon set, called the Ionicons. Then it’s teamed up with reusable HTML classes for building an interactive mobile user interface. The HTML5 framework works with the help of Cordova or PhoneGap. 

Pros

A once code for all Ionic2 Concepts makes it favourable for developing an app.  Moreover, it’s open source and thus free entirely. The open source advantage of the huge developer community, as well as testers ascertain that the framework is top notch at all times. The open source benefit of a big community of developers and testers ensures that Ionic is on the top always.

Cons

Because of the code simplicity, creating an in-app navigation could be burdensome. It’s a very complicated task. The performance of the in-app is swift as the app when developed for individual devices. Because Angular.js is a must for Ionic 2, Angular.js knowledge is a critical factor in app development.

JavaScript is highly favoured among all the other programming languages. A few benefits are the following.

1. Safety. They are in continuous iteration, therefore they have a large community of members, as well as testers. 

2. Expense. Web applications cost an arm and a leg as most frameworks cost more. Most of the frameworks of JavaScript however are free of cost. This lowers the costs of web development drastically.

3. Efficiency. As earlier mentioned, the JavaScript frameworks are cutters of cost. In addition, they are also time savers, credits to the prebuilt functionalities for a faster web application development.

Conclusion

The whole website development community is extremely agile and continuously updates. Every month, a new framework is being released.  Those that are released are under constant upgrades and enhanced with the latest functions. We hope this guide helps you to choose the right JavaScript framework for you.

Author Bio:

Olivia D. is a technology observer, writer and blogger. Being a tech geek, she keeps a close watch over the industry focusing on the latest technology news and gadgets. Follow me on Twitter.

Are you using a JavaScript framework? Let us know in our latest Developer Economics survey.

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Tips

Professional Front-end Developer Guide to the development triangle

Professional Front-end Developer Guide to the development triangle

If you’re interested in dabbing your toes in the front-end development, this post if for you. Our community is rich with developers covering all major areas of development, so we reached out to one of our loyal members to share a few front-line tips with you via this mini professional front-end developer guide!

Dominic Myers is a professional front-end developer with a wealth of experience. He spends most of his day being fascinated by, developing and implementing the newest trends in web development, primarily HTML, CSS and JavaScript, or whatever will get the job done. Here he shares his professional front-end developer guide to the front-end development triangle.

A Professional Front-end Developer Guide

I’ve spent the past couple of years writing, editing (and editing some more) a book about front-end development (which you can purchase here or here), which is finally making it’s slow and ponderous way into the light. That use of words suggests that it’s a vast and weighty tome of a book – and it certainly was when I first submitted it – but after all that editing, it’s finally down to a fighting weight, and I think it’s a better book for that. One thing I was keen to point out is the triangle of technologies we, as front-end developers, need to be conversant. In much the same way that fire isn’t possible without fuel, heat and oxygen, front-end development is impossible without a more than cursory knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript (JS). 

HTML

In the dim and distant past, when attending the introductory lecture for a conversion Computer Science MSc, I didn’t understand why the rest of the students sniggered when someone answered HTML when asked if we had any experience of programming. Once the chuckling had subsided sufficiently, the lecturer was keen to point out that while HTML was not a programming language, with its lack of all those things recognisable as being associated with programming languages such as variables and functions it couldn’t be; it was still a language – be it a markup language. As such, it involves a certain level of abstraction. 

The writer of HTML needs to have an appreciation of the milieu in which it will reside: the browser. Browsers themselves are unusual beasts with all sorts of wild and weird characteristics. The same browser might act differently on different architectures, or in identical hardware but with varying levels of user privileges, or with plugins installed. The unfortunate HTML author might even have to deal with superseded versions of browsers (Yes, IE11, I’m looking at you! I spend a significant amount of time massaging ES6 into ES6 for IE11, most often by hand but sometimes with Babel – but even Babel has its limits).

Along with the vagaries of the browser, an appreciation of what the browser will do with HTML is necessary. It isn’t merely rendered line by line to the user interface; instead, it is converted to Document Object Model (DOM). I like to think of the DOM as something like a tree with a trunk quickly splitting into two – one being something of a stub and the other adorned with a whole plethora of branches, sub-branches and twigs. This second branch is when the HTML writer gets to play, and the palette of elements they get to play with grows larger all the time! I guess my analogy might get strained though, my knowledge of Dendrology is limited, but suffice it to say that there are many HTML elements, some of which have fallen from favour, while still others have found favour and been embraced.

Without this tree as a foundation, front-end development is nigh on impossible. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen CSS or JS courses suggesting that a rudimentary knowledge of HTML is a requirement. Rudimentary knowledge? HTML is our bread and butter and, while we can use CSS to get a `div` to behave like a `span`, why not use a `span` in the first place? But this brings us neatly to our next side of the triangle: CSS.

CSS

It is arguable that if my fellow student had said CSS instead of HTML, then the laughter might’ve been even louder – this was a few years ago before you say anything. CSS acts as adornment for our DOM tree; it gives its elements’ colour if you will. That’s not to say that altering the colouring is its limit – but it’s still essential. Also, please take note of when they were laughing; CSS was then not Turing Complete (footnote: Turing Completeness denotes a language where a question is asked and answered – there is no guarantee how long that answer might take though). CSS3 was demonstrably Turing Complete in 2011, though follow through on the links please, its a fascinating read.

CSS3 is profoundly compelling and allows the canny front-end developer to avoid all sorts of weird and wonderful JS trickery. Trees in autumn can be bare and stark but can still hold a beauty all their own, but trees in the flush of Spring, Summer and Autumn are nigh on always a delight to behold. CSS serves as the foliage and, while I appreciate aesthetics plain HTML I love decorated trees, all the while knowing that without the foundation of HTML – the trunk and branches if you will – all that gorgeous adornment would be on the ground, blowing in the wind. 

via GIPHY

CSS has taken over from JS in some areas, though there is still a tendency for front-end developers to reach for JS rather than utilise CSS.

I can understand this: if all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If I can do something quick and dirty using JS rather than research the CSS technique, then I used to do that. I did before I clocked just how performant it was to use the native capabilities inherent in CSS, it’s lightning-fast so learn and use it, please!

That brings us nicely to the next side of our triangle: JS.

JS

I dread to imagine what the reaction would’ve been to my fellow student saying JavaScript. I dare say snorts of derision rather than any form of laughter. JS has a history of being seen as something of a joke language, which is a shame as it is rather elegant – especially now.

If HTML is the bare tree and CSS is the foliage, then JS allows us to act like tree surgeons with superpowers! With JS we can make all sorts of alterations to the DOM (the DOM is, after all, merely an API for HTML). We can add, subtract and alter the constituents of the HTML with JS, we have superpowers with JS. But take heed of my caution above regarding CSS, just because you can do something with JS, first please check you can’t do the same thing with CSS! After all, with great power comes great responsibility! 

via GIPHY

There is an excess of books and courses on JS and the frameworks and libraries that have sprung up about it. Strangely, such an overabundance can present something of a barrier to those seeking to enter front-end development. With a whole feast presented to you, it’s easy to find an old and obsolete resource and end up eating something well past its sell-by date, getting food poisoning and resolving to give it up as a bad job.

But, should you find something bright, shiny and new and that works off the bat, or drink the kool-aid by some other route, the sheer power of JS can mean that you leave good old HTML and CSS by the roadside. You might even get tempted to start implementing some CSS-in-JS and never have to touch a CSS file throughout your career, only looking at the MDN Web Docs to find out what the JS name for a CSS property is.

Thoughts

I think it is this disconnect between JS and the other two sides of the triangle that prompted Chris Coyier to write about “The title ‘Front-End Developer’ is obsolete.”. Something of a provocative title and one that he doesn’t endorse but uses as a launchpad to explore the confusion regarding the term “front-end developer”. Most, if not all, job postings for front-end developers will ask for one of three things: Angular, React or Vue. That list is likely to change though, and it’ll change at a rate of knots, in much the same way as the things themselves and their associated toolchains will also change. Sometimes the postings won’t even mention HTML or CSS or will suggest candidates should know SCSS, further alienating those whose bread and butter is HTML and CSS.

Does this mean that we’re looking at a further sub-division within development? The need for developers dedicated to working with the front-end led to a separation of developers into front- and back-ends. Are we now seeing a further split between HTML and CSS developers and JS developers, with HTML and CSS developers getting short shift? I’m not so sure TBH, those dedicated JS developers do generate HTML and CSS, but do so via JS, leading to a further question of how well they appreciate the nuances of both HTML and CSS? Perhaps more of a focus during preparation for the career on these would suffice. HTML is rock solid, and CSS standardised nowadays so the necessity of knowing how anything other than evergreen browsers interprets identical HTML and CSS.

I’m not sure about what to do to address the situation of this further fracturing, or even if it’s worth discussing – I’m just conscious of it, and I’m wary of losing something. JS gives you superpowers and enables the canny developer to spin a whole DOM out of nothing, made up of HTML and CSS. The superpowered JS has some mean powers but still, in the end, relies upon a thorough knowledge of both HTML and CSS, it isn’t a one-man-band. All three together and employed skillfully are an orchestra with a profound impact and rich timbre. We owe it to ourselves as developers to embrace the full triangle. a cursory knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript (JS). 

About

Dominic Myers is a front-end developer with a wealth of professional experience. He spends most of his day being fascinated by, developing and implementing the newest trends in web development, primarily HTML, CSS and JavaScript, or whatever will get the job done. He shares his knowledge online via his blog and forums such as Stack Overflow.

If you are involved in front-end and want to share your views, visit our latest survey and help shape the trends.

Did you enjoy this professional front-end developer guide? Do you have a topic that you are passionate about and would like to share with our developer audience in our blog? Get in touch!

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Languages

Infographic: Top programming language communities

programming language communities

Which programming languages the developer nation uses the most? Our data reveal which programming language communities are rising faster than others, which are dropping down the rankings, and which are the new additions to the club! Take a look at our infographic containing key findings from our Developer Economics Q4 2019 survey. 

First of all, let’s all hail for our two years in a row queen, ? JavaScript. The JavaScript community counts more than 12 million users worldwide with an increase of 33% over the last two years.

Among the top programming languages, Python and Kotlin have climbed up faster than any other. With a slow and steady rise Python finally managed to edge out Java, counting 8.4 million users and ranking as the second most used language. When it comes to Machine Learning, Python is the first choice of the developer community, chosen from more than 70% of developers involved in ML. Meanwhile, Kotlin has shown significant growth, it nearly doubled in size in the past two years, finding its way into mobile and AR/VR programming.

After almost 10 years of its launch date and a head to head race with Ruby, Go (or Golang) managed to enter the club of the top 10 most used languages, counting 1.4 million users. Another up and coming language making its way mostly through the AR/VR field is Rust exceeding half of million users.

Let’s not forget that developers are dropping languages all the time. The practice of programming is not static. Even though Swift and Objective-C have been used significantly by the Apple community it seems that the developers are slowly abandoning them. On a similar trend, Ruby and Lua seem to have the biggest decrease (30% & 40%).

Check out our infographic which highlights the top trending programming language communities:

programming language communities

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

Looking for a more thorough report on programming language communities? Check out our free State of the Developer Nation Q4 2019 report examining also different topics such as Contribution to Open-Source Software, DevOps Participants and Adoption, Machine Learning, Augmented & Virtual reality and Emerging technologies.

Also, here you can view the latest global average data trends on major development areas.

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Community Platforms

Decoding development trends: The 17th State of the Developer Nation Report is out

Decoding development trends: The 17th State of the Developer Nation Report is out

Every six months, the Developer Economics Survey captures the voice of more than 20,000 developers globally. Our surveys engage developers working across mobile, desktop, IoT, cloud, web, game, AR/VR, machine learning development and data science, decoding development trends.

The 17th Developer Economics survey ran between June and  August 2019. The data analysed provided really interesting insights about the different developer profiles out there.

For instance, one in three developers are all-rounders. Only one in five declare themselves as specialists. There are almost four times as many introverts (37%) as extroverts (10%) among developers. This is a significant difference from the 2:1 ratio in favour of extroverts found in the wider community.

We also included several unusual labels, uncovering, for example, that there are double the number of night owl developers than early birds (29% compared to 14%).. What time is it with you right now?

2X night owl developers compared to early birds (29% compared to 14%

Javascript remains the Queen

Looking, into programming language trends we found that JavaScript remains the queen with a community of over 11M active developers. On the second tier we have Java (6.9M) and Python (6.8M).

Our data challenges the assumption that developers’ language use is relatively stable over time. Instead, it seems that developers drop and adopt new languages all the time, depending on their needs and on their running projects.

Kotlin is the rising star among programming languages. It moved up from 11th to 8th place in just a year.

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Growing interest and adoption in 5 emerging technologies

We saw a significant increase in developers’ involvement and adoption of five technologies in the 6 month period ending Q2 2019. These are DevOps, mini-apps, computer vision, cryptocurrencies, and fog/edge computing. For DevOps in particular, the percentage of developers who are either interested in it, learning about it, or have already adopted it increased from 66% to 70%.

Computer vision, on the other hand, saw a noticeable growth in the number of developers involved in it.  Meanwhile, the share of those developers who are actually adopting it increased only slightly.

Interest in robotics and quantum computing also increased.

However, the share of interested developers that are working on the technology dropped.

ŸInterest and adoption in blockchain applications other than cryptocurrency, conversational platforms/voice search, drones and biometric technologies remains constant.
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Streaming games and extending reality

ŸJust 16% of professional and 10% of hobbyist game developers say they are actively working on designing games for streamers to live-stream their gameplay to an audience. Gameplay streaming is mostly associated with brand promotion and revenue generation. Therefore, the difference between professional and hobbyist interest is to be expected.

One in five AR/VR game developers design for gameplay streaming. This might be because they are the most comfortable with different models for their games, on emerging hardware and across new business channels.

Decoding development trends across regions and screens

  • 2 out of 5 app developers in Asia build apps for messaging platforms and/or chatbots.
  • 34% of mobile developers used cross-platform frameworks in the last 12 months (40% of professional mobile developers, 33% of hobbyists and students).
  • Almost one in four mobile developers opt to use React Native.
  • 31% of mobile developers whose primary target is iOS are using React Native. This compares with 21% of those who primarily target Android.

You can read the full State of the Developer Nation report here.

We look forward to decoding development trends in our next report. You can help shape the trends by taking the 18th Developer Economics survey here!

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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.

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Languages

JavaScript remains the Queen of Programming Languages

programming languages

Welcome to another update on programming languages communities. The choice of programming language matters deeply to developers because they want to keep their skills up to date and marketable. 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 SDΚs.

languages_graph

 

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. Second, our large-scale, low-bias surveys which reach more than 20,000 developers every six months. In the survey, we consistently ask developers about their use of programming languages across nine areas of development1, giving us rich and reliable information about who uses each language and in which context.

JavaScript is and remains the queen of programming languages. Its community of 11.7M developers is the largest of all languages. In 2018, 2.5M developers joined the community: the highest growth in absolute numbers and more than the entire population of Swift, Ruby, or Kotlin developers, amongst others. New developers see it as an attractive entry-level language, but also existing developers are adding it to their skillset. Even in software sectors where Javascript is least popular like machine learning or on-device code in IoT, over a quarter of developers use it for their projects.

Python has reached 8.2M active developers and has now surpassed Java in terms of popularity. It is the second-fastest growing language community in absolute terms with 2.2M net new Python developers in 2018. The rise of machine learning is a clear factor in its popularity. A whopping 69% of machine learning developers and data scientists now use Python (compared to 24% of them using R).

Java (7.6M active developers), C# (6.7M), and C/C++ (6.3M) are fairly close together in terms of community size and are certainly well-established languages. However, all three are now growing at a slower rate than the general developer population. While they are not exactly stagnating, they are no longer the first languages that (new) developers look to.

Java is very popular in the mobile ecosystem and its offshoots (Android), but not for IoT devices. C# is a core part of the Microsoft ecosystem. Throughout our research, we see a consistent correlation between the use of C# and the use of Microsoft developer products. It’s no surprise to see desktop and AR/VR (Hololens) as areas where C# is popular. C/C++ is a core language family for game engines and in IoT, where performance and low-level access matter (AR/VR exists on the boundary between games and IoT).

PHP is now the second most popular language for web development and the fifth most popular language overall, with 5.9M developers. Like Python, it’s growing significantly faster than the overall developer population, having added 32% more developers to its ranks in 2018. Despite having (arguably) a somewhat bad reputation, the fact that PHP is easy to learn and widely deployed still propels it forward as a major language for the modern Internet.

The fastest growing language community in percentage terms is Kotlin. It grew by 58% in 2018 from 1.1M to 1.7M developers. Since Google has made Kotlin a first-class language for Android development, we can expect this growth to continue, in a similar way to how Swift overtook Objective-C for iOS development.

Other niche languages don’t seem to be adding many developers, if any. Swift and Objective-C are important languages to the Apple community, but are stable in terms of the number of developers that use them. Ruby and Lua are not growing their communities quickly either.

Older and more popular programming languages have vocal critics, while new, exciting languages often have enthusiastic supporters. This data would suggest that it’s not easy for new languages to grow beyond their niche and become the next big thing. What does this mean for the future of these languages and others like Go or Scala? We will certainly keep tracking this evolution and plan to keep you informed.

The Developer Economics survey is now Live.
Have your say in which should be the next programming language Queen and you may win amazing prizes and gear. Discover more.

Want more developer insights on programming languages?

The State of Developer Nation report is free to download.

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Business

Infographic: Developers are dreaming of a smarter tomorrow

infographic, state of developer nation, de14, developer economics, developer research, free report, developer survey

As most of you know, we recently published our brand new State of the Developer Nation report 14th edition. Findings are based on the insights from our Developer Economics survey which ran in Q4 2017. The survey reached over 21,700 developers in 169 countries, asking them to share their experiences with tools, platforms, developer communities, resources, and emerging tech.

What’s new in the State of the Developer Nation 14th edition?

For the first time, the State of the Developer Nation report presents the estimate for the number of active software developers using JavaScript, Python, Java, C#, PHP, Ruby, Swift and other major programming languages, across the globe and across all kinds of programmers. We revealed that JavaScript is the most popular programming language, used by close to 10M developers, followed by Java (7.3M active developers), C# (6.3M), and C/C++ (5.7M). Python has reached 6.3M active developers and is climbing up the ranks, recently surpassing C# in popularity. The rise of machine learning is a factor in its popularity. 

In this edition, we also reveal which emerging tech will have the most impact in the next 5 years, what lies in the future of serverless platforms, and which is the most promising AR/VR hardware among developers.

Check out our infographic which highlights the key findings from the report and don’t forget to share it!

state of the developer nation, developer economics, developer survey, slashdata, de14, developer research, infographic