‘I code in my dreams too’, say developers in Jetbrains State of Developer Ecosystem 2019 Survey

Last week, Jetbrains published its annual survey results known as The State of Developer Ecosystem 2019. More than 19,000 people participated in this developer ecosystem survey. But responses from only 7000 developers from 17 countries were included in the report. The survey had over 150 questions and key results from the survey are published, complete results along with the raw data will be shared later. Jetbrains prepared an infographics based on the survey answers they received. Let us take a look at their key takeaways:

Key takeaways from the survey

Java is the most popular primary programming language.

Python is the most studied language in 2019.

Cloud services are getting more popular. The share of local and private servers dropped 8% and 3%, respectively, compared to 2018.

Machine learning professionals have less fear that AI will replace developers one day.

44% of JavaScript developers use TypeScript regularly. In total, a quarter of all developers are using it in 2019, compared to 17% last year.

The use of containerized environments by PHP developers is growing steadily by 12% per year.

73% of Rust devs use a Unix / Linux development environment, though Linux is not a primary environment for most of them.

Go Modules appeared recently, but already 40% of Go developers use it and 17% want to migrate to it.

71% of Kotlin developers use Kotlin for work, mainly for new projects (96%), but more than a third are also migrating their existing projects to it.

The popularity of Vue.js is growing year on year: it gained 11 percentage points since last year and has almost doubled its share since 2017.

The most frequently used tools for developers involved in infrastructure development is Docker + Terraform + Ansible.

The more people code at work, the more likely they are to code in their dreams.

Developers choose Java as their primary language

The participants were asked 3 questions about their language preference. Firstly, they were asked about the language they used last year, second they were asked about their primary language preference and, finally, they were asked to rank them.

The most loved programming languages among developers are Java and Python. Second place is a tie between C# and JavaScript.

Common secondary languages include HTML, SQL, and Shell scripting. A lot of software developers have some practice with these secondary languages, but very few work with them as their major language. For example, while 56% practice SQL, only 19% called it their primary language and only 1.5% rank it as their first language.

Java, on the other hand, is the leading ‘solo’ language. 44% of its users use only Java or use Java first. The next top solo language is JavaScript, with a mere 17%.

Android and React Native remain popular among mobile developers, Flutter gains momentum

For mobile operating system preference 83% participants said they used Android as their preferred operating system followed by iOS which is 59%.

Two thirds of mobile developers use native tools to develop for mobile OS. Every other developer uses cross-platform technologies or frameworks. 42% said they use React native as a cross platform mobile framework. Interestingly Flutter was at the 2nd place with 30% of audience preferring to use. Other included Cordova, Ionic, Xamarin, Unity etc.

Other takeaways from the survey and few fun facts

The most interesting question asked in this year’s survey was if developers code in their dreams. 52% responded Yes to this question which means the more people code at work (as a primary activity), the more likely they are to code in their dreams.

Another really interesting fact was revealed when they were asked if AI will replace developers in future. 57% of participants responded that partially AI may replace programmers, but those who do Machine learning professionally were more skeptical about AI than those who do it as a hobby. 27% think that AI will never replace developers, while 6% agreed that it will fully replace programmers and another 11% were not sure.

There were other questions like which is the most preferred operating system for the development environment. 57% of participants said they prefer Windows, followed by 49% for macOS and 48% for Unix/Linux.

When asked about what types of applications do developers prefer to develop. Major chunk went to Web based Back-end applications, followed by Web front-end, mobile applications, libraries and frameworks, desktop applications, etc.

41% responded No to the question about if they contributed to open-source projects on a regular basis. Only 11% said they contribute to open source on a regular basis that is every month.

71% have Unit tests in their projects and 16% responded that they do not have any tests in their projects that is about among the fully employed senior developers.

Source code collaboration tool is used regularly among the developers with 80% preference to it. Other tools like Standalone IDE, Lightweight Desktop Editor, Continuous Integration or Continuous Delivery tool, Issue tracker etc are also used by developers regularly.

Demographics of the survey

The demographics of the survey had 69% of people who are fully employed with a company or an organization. 75% were developer/programmer/software engineer. 1 in 14 people who were polled occupied a senior leadership role. Two thirds of the developers practice pair programming. The survey also revealed that the more experienced people spent less time on learning new tools / technologies / programming languages. The gender ratio participants is not revealed.

Check out the infographic to know more about the survey results.

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