The Developer Nation Pulse report is based on our global online developer survey designed, produced, and carried out by SlashData over ten weeks between December 2021 and February 2022. Our estimations state that as of Q1 2022, there are 31.1 million active software developers worldwide. Discover in-depth insights on developer trends, technology preferences, and emerging technology patterns crafting the developer ecosystem in 2022.

The categorization of developers by age shows a positive trend with a fair amount of enthusiasm, with youth under 18 at 2.89%. We can see a substantial rise in the main working-age categories listed 18-24 (29.9%) and the most significant spike in the 25-34 age group (31.9%).

The sharp decline of developers with less than 10% in the 45-54 age group reflects shifting priorities that one can attribute to factors like rapid changes in technologies, burnout, health issues, or just plain boredom. With an all-hands approach in today's development, many developers quit development and move to management.

Men typically dominate the technology industry, and to date, there is a lack of diversity. The gender of the developer community seems male-dominated, with 81.7% male versus females at just 17.4%. Moreover, women in software development have dropped to 17.4% from 19.5% six months ago, which may be a pandemic impact. Software organizations are taking initiatives to improve diversity and select more women in the hiring exercises.

Underrepresentation of women starts from the academic side, with fewer women opting for technology stream subjects. It further narrows down on the supply side regarding having women software developers. We should see an improvement in the coming years with diversity inclusion and women's foundations working to close the gap.

Online learning seems to be gaining ground with increasing educational platforms delivering quality courses. With lower internet costs and increased accessibility to online content, we are witnessing a massive spike of 63.8% in the self-taught coding category. Undergraduate degrees mainstream at the second spot, with 41.1% showing strong demand for software engineering courses. We can also see that traditional methods like on-the-job training and post-graduate courses are still quite prominent.

The rise in self-taught development shows the high enthusiasm and increasing level of developers with initiatives that the start-up ecosystem and emerging technologies are boosting. The availability of online learning is driving the self-taught revolution with high possibilities of innovative solutions.

Microsoft being an industry leader overall, comes second place with 35%, while  Amazon/AWS takes third place with an impressive 22.6% proving its dominance in the cloud services market. Microsoft is an industry leader, while Amazon AWS leads the cloud services market and has an impressive 35% market share. Social media platforms and their integration possibilities with Meta (Facebook) and Twitter trail at 17.1% and 15.4%, respectively.

The high-quality developer tools and solutions from the industry leaders and the variety of support available make Google a preferred choice for development. Google has over 70% of the market share in search engines, and it has a transcending effect across all its services. The rise of developer communities is also powering the push for technology preferences.

Software development is a promising career, and the data showing close to 60% of developers have less than five years of experience. Another probable reason is many young software engineers are self-taught, as seen earlier, and they get earlier into software development, creating a boost in the graph. Developers with over six years of experience number at 41% as per our survey. 

As developers get senior, they move into other managerial; roles and diversify into non-software development activities, resulting in fewer senior developers doing hands-on software development or coding.

Open source is the leading motivation for software developers, with a stunning 48.9% citing 'Learning to code better' as the primary motivating factor. 36% of the developers use open source software and subsequently get interested in improving it, while 28.4% feel a sense of purpose in contributing to the open-source community. The availability of expert help in code reviews and open source community support are positive factors.

Open source projects are a great source of learning opportunities as the code is publicly accessible and offers more control, flexibility, and security, besides an active community with experts ready to help developers become better coders.

The ‘programmer’ role is central to software development, as seen in the graph with close to 50%. The engineering team lead and architects’ roles reflect the typical pyramid structure in management, with figures less than 10%.

The increased accessibility to learning programming from multiple channels and education platforms has led to enthusiastic people leaping to programming.

JavaScript is the most popular programming language, as shown in the graph with 56%. Python and Java follow closely behind. Python is rising in popularity due to its versatility for many solutions, especially web applications, data science, and machine learning.

JavaScript is a modern programming language and is one of the most sought-after skills for web development. The popularity of JavaScript created several libraries and frameworks like React JS and jQuery implementation.

The growth of AI-assisted software shows unprecedented opportunities for value creation. An impressive 66.7% of developers are using, learning about, or at least interested in AI, followed closely by other emerging technologies like computer vision, robotics, cryptocurrencies, and Blockchain apps.

DevOps usage is on the rise, with nearly 50% of developers using continuous integration. Other developer involvement types include monitoring, approving code deployments, infrastructure management, and automated testing activities.

DevOps developers empower companies to maximize productivity through automation, and DevOps skills are hugely in demand today.

As per our survey, most programmers, around 50%, get involved in DevOps activities. Other roles like tech leads, architects, and data scientists have comparatively lesser involvement in the DevOps lifecycle.

 DevOps is a more technical activity from coding to testing to deployment, moving through an automated integration approach. 

Software products and SaaS apps show the most extensive involvement in DevOps, with a massive 45.2%. Other industry sectors like BI, financial services, education, and telecom have far less involvement in DevOps as they are not product-centric.

Augmented reality (AR)/ Virtual reality (VR) is a fast-growing area. Developers involved in AR/VR prefer to code primarily in JavaScript and Python, although Java, C++, and C# follow on that list with a very even distribution. Developers in AR/VR were formally into game programming, but now AR/VR enhances value in various sectors by showcasing products and creating digital experiences.

Developers can start their AR/VR career with JavaScript, and the availability of various SDKs helps develop applications.

Regarding no-code/low-code tools, Microsoft and Google are neck-to-neck in usage, with Microsoft having a marginal increase followed by others. As the usage in this audience also includes non-developers, the LC/NC tool usage gets driven by organisations with the most popular tools from Microsoft and Google.

In the Developer Nation Community, we aim to create a space where software creators can set the right foundations for their careers. In this endeavour, they can learn how they stack up against emerging software development trends, get tips, discover professional growth opportunities, and plan their next moves wisely. Our Developer Nation Surveys help us further understand software engineers to support them and help developers learn opportunities for their personal growth and make an impact by voicing their opinions about tools and technologies directly to the people at the service of software creators.

In Developer Nation, we have been supporting developers and organizations that help developers since 2019. So far, we've supported the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Black Girls Code, Techfugees, CoderDojo, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Code Camp, Mozilla Foundation, The Nature Conservancy,   and Women in Big Data (South Africa). We donate $1,800-$2,000 to each organization every six months during our Global Developer Surveys.

How we choose where to donate:

Developers who participate in our survey get to choose the organization they wish to support. Within the questions they answer, there is one for them to select the cause closest to their heart. Each developer taking the survey raises the donation amount by $0.10. 

Based on the donation choices of the developers participating in our 22nd Developer Nation survey, we can proudly announce our donation to each program, as shown below. We are excited to know that we have such a diverse community that, apart from empowering others to enter the developer ecosystem, is also mindful of our natural ecosystem:

Free Code camp $588.00
Girls who code $384.00
Free Software Foundation $364.00
Greenpeace $241.00
The Nature Conservancy $241.00
Code.org $180.00

Any feedback to add as highlight here, relevant to the survey as a learning opportunity?

We LOVE to see what our community has to say and always invite feedback in our surveys.
Our 22nd Developer Nation Survey was no different. More than 20,000 developers took part from 165 countries, and almost 14,000 participants left feedback. We asked developers if there was anything we forgot to ask, whether they enjoyed the experience and how we can improve in our next Developer Νation Survey. Here is a blast from the past on developer feedback.We want to make sure we bring value to you with the insights and data shared through the Developer Nation Pulse Report.

If there is anything you would like us to add or have any other feedback to help us improve, please share your input here.