Every year we conduct two global, independent developer surveys engaging more than 30,000 developers. We track development trends across platforms, revenues, apps, tools, languages etc. The 18th Developer Economics survey ran from November 2019 to February 2020 with more than 17,000 developers and tech-makers participating, allowing us to analyze and understand development trends on major areas such as mobile, cloud, desktop, IoT, web, augmented and virtual reality, machine learning and games. 

It’s no secret that we are data-enthusiasts. Data is in our DNA.

After each survey wave, we transform these data into graphs and insights and offer part of them as resources to our developer community. Our methodology is founded on 9 essential and non-negotiable qualities:  magnitude, impartiality, inclusivity, consistency, substantive, engagement, diligence, confidence and breadth. See more on how our methodology allows us to understand and profile developers.

Our goal is not only to help the world understand developers but also to add value to all the developers out there, by offering them the necessary insights to benchmark themselves and make smarter business decisions based on current development trends.

So let’s have a look at what our developers are saying, shall we?

Starting from some basic insights, it is important to know in which age group our respondents belong: 35% of developers worldwide are between 25 and 34 years old. The second largest demographic – almost 28%- is the young developers, aged 18 to 24 years old. 

What age group are you in?

Just over half of our respondents reported having less than 5 years of coding experience. As our research covers both professionals and amateurs such as hobbyists and students, the experience mix makes perfect sense and is representative of the coding skills of the global developer population. We find that the young and relatively inexperienced are the first to jump into emerging sectors drawn by the hype, and they play a key role in their evolution.

How many years have you been working on software projects?

Focusing on programming language preferences of mobile and backend developers, we find that Java is the third option for backend developers, while the most popular choice of mobile developers. The first choice of backend developers is instead Javascript with over half using it for cloud development. 

Which programming languages do you use to write code that runs on the device in your mobile apps?

Which programming languages do you use to write code that runs on the server?

When it comes to front-end frameworks or libraries for web applications most programmers use jQuery (49.7%) and Bootstrap (48%). Other frameworks our respondents stated they’re using are React (42.9%), Vue (28%) and Angular (2+) (25.2%). 

What about trends in augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR)? Almost half of the developers working on AR/VR use C#. Moreover, as is typical of a still-emerging sector, almost 60% of respondents said they are hobbyists in this field.
Last but not least game development. Developers mostly prefer to create adventure and action game apps with 44% of respondents choosing each of these. 36% create Arcade games while almost 23% choose Role Playing or Strategy games.

Which categories do your games fit in?

For more insights from our latest survey, you can check out the Developer Economics graphs dashboard. It’s also a great opportunity to benchmark yourself against the global average. 
Enjoy!

Looking for a more thorough report analysing the developer population and trends? Download our next State of the Developers Nation report 18th Edition. You will find it here.