In February 2020 nearly 65,000 developers told us how they learn and level up, which tools they’re using, and what they want.

Read the overview → Methodology →
65,000

This year, we focused on seeking diverse representation while asking for information ranging from technologies and behavior to questions that will help us improve the Stack Overflow community for everybody who codes.

For almost a decade, Stack Overflow’s annual Developer Survey held the honor of being the largest survey of people who code around the world. This year, rather than aiming to be the biggest, we set out to make our survey more representative of the diversity of programmers worldwide. That said, the survey is still big. This year’s survey was taken by nearly 65,000 people.

In our efforts to reach beyond the Stack Overflow network and seek representation from a greater diversity of coders, we advertised the survey less on our own channels than in previous years and sought ways to earn responses from those who may not frequent our sites. This approach included social promotion and outreach to underrepresented coders.

While we saw a lift in underrepresented groups, the difference in representation isn’t as large as we had hoped. There was an uptick in some race and ethnicity groups, notably those of Hispanic or Latino/a/x and Black or of African descent, while other races and ethnicities remained similar or decreased. Similarly, we saw a slight increase in female-gendered respondents, while non-binary, genderqueer, or non-conforming remained the same. We acknowledge that we have a lot of work to do, and the data we obtain in our annual survey helps us make changes and set goals to improve the welcomeness and inclusiveness of our community.

Look for this icon, which highlights differences between developer demographics.

Working with the data at hand, we broke down our analysis by demographics where applicable. Look for the icon to see where demographics have an interesting impact. Also be sure to check out the topics that were new to this year’s survey, like questions regarding DevOps and working overtime.

We also need to point out that this year’s survey was taken in February, before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization and before the virus impacted every country in the world. Please keep the timing of the survey in mind when reviewing information such as job and salary data.

Finally, for those who want to dive into the results yourself, the anonymized results of the survey are available for download under the Open Database License (ODbL). We look forward to seeing what you find—if you share on social media, be sure to tag us!

Key Results

Here are a few of the top takeaways from this year’s results.

After a consistent rise over the last five years, Python fell from second last year to third this year on the list of most loved technologies, being beat out by TypeScript. Rust held the top spot for most loved technology for the fifth year in a row.

Most loved languages

Site reliability engineers and DevOps specialists remain among the highest paid individual contributor roles. 80% of respondents believe that DevOps is at least somewhat important, and 44% work at organizations with at least one dedicated DevOps employee.

Global salaries

52% of respondents think “Hello, old friend” when they search for a coding solution online and find that the first result link is purple because they’ve already visited the link.

Already visited feeling

When asked what steps to take when stuck on a coding problem, 90% of respondents indicated they visit Stack Overflow.

When you get stuck

More than 75% of developers work overtime at least occasionally -- one to two days per quarter. 25% work overtime 1-2 days per week or more.

Overtime

Australia respondents reported the highest average amount of coding experience at 16.9 years, followed by developers in United Kingdom and United States. In correlation, respondents from the United States and United Kingdom maintain the highest average age, at 33.7 and 33.1 years, respectively.

Experience by country

0.3% of respondents had never visited Stack Overflow before taking the survey.

Visiting Stack Overflow

More than 40% of respondents reported that they are members of other online developer communities beyond Stack Overflow.

Other developer communities

More than 15% of people find Stack Overflow at least somewhat more welcome than last year. We still have work to do, but it’s a start.

Engaging together

We still see evidence that people of color are underrepresented among professional developers, but we do see some improvement when we include all developers, not just those who code professionally.

Race and ethnicity

Developer Profile

What we know about the developers who are writing the script for the future

Developer Profile

Geography

Each month, about 50 million people visit Stack Overflow to learn, share, and build their careers. Industry estimates suggest that 20-25 million of these people are professional developers and university-level students. The vast majority of our survey respondents this year said they are professional developers or who code sometimes as part of their work or students preparing for such a career.

See our Methodology section for details on how developers around the world accessed our survey.

Developer Profile

Developer Roles

About 55% of respondents identify as full-stack developers, and about 20% consider themselves mobile developers. The median number of developer type identifications per respondent this year is three, and the most common combinations include back-end, front-end, and full-stack developer. Pairs that are highly correlated include database administrator and system administrator, DevOps specialist and site reliability engineer, academic researcher and scientist, and designer and front-end developer.

Survey weighting is an approach used to analyze survey data when the survey sample doesn't match the underlying population well. For example, in our survey this year, 12% of US respondents identify as women, but data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that women's participation in the software developer workforce is about twice that, more like 20%. We can use survey weighting to adjust for the mismatch between our survey sample and the population of developers. We know that there is a difference in developer type representation by gender, so let's compare the overall proportions in our raw results for the United States with weighted proportions, assuming that we undersampled gender minorities at the rate indicated by the BLS report. When we use weighting, we see small increases in the representation of developer roles that have the most representation from women, like Data Scientists and Academic Researchers, and decreases in others with low representation from women, like DevOps.

We know there are more ways in which our survey sample doesn't match the underlying population of developers than only gender (including frequency of use of Stack Overflow), and the United States is not the only country for which we expect such a mismatch. The reason we're using this specific example of weighting here is that it is one where we know we have systemic sampling issues and we have an estimate about the expected population proportion. We can demonstrate the effect of our survey sample on our results, both in direction and magnitude.

49,370 responses; select all that apply
Developer, back-end 55.2%
Developer, full-stack 54.9%
Developer, front-end 37.1%
Developer, desktop or enterprise applications 23.9%
Developer, mobile 19.2%
DevOps specialist 12.1%
Database administrator 11.6%
Designer 10.8%
System administrator 10.6%
Developer, embedded applications or devices 9.6%
Data or business analyst 8.2%
Data scientist or machine learning specialist 8.1%
Developer, QA or test 8.0%
Engineer, data 7.6%
Academic researcher 7.2%
Educator 5.9%
Developer, game or graphics 5.6%
Engineering manager 5.5%
Product manager 5.1%
Scientist 4.2%
Engineer, site reliability 3.9%
Senior executive/VP 2.7%
Marketing or sales professional 1.3%
10,355 responses; select all that apply
Developer, full-stack 58.0%
Developer, back-end 52.0%
Developer, front-end 36.2%
Developer, desktop or enterprise applications 23.9%
Developer, mobile 13.9%
DevOps specialist 13.9%
Database administrator 12.2%
System administrator 11.6%
Designer 11.5%
Data or business analyst 9.8%
Developer, embedded applications or devices 9.3%
Engineer, data 9.2%
Developer, QA or test 8.8%
Data scientist or machine learning specialist 8.5%
Engineering manager 8.1%
Engineer, site reliability 5.8%
Developer, game or graphics 5.4%
Academic researcher 5.4%
Educator 5.1%
Product manager 5.1%
Scientist 4.6%
Senior executive/VP 3.7%
Marketing or sales professional 1.7%
10,355 responses; select all that apply
Developer, full-stack 57.4%
Developer, back-end 51.0%
Developer, front-end 36.5%
Developer, desktop or enterprise applications 22.9%
Developer, mobile 13.7%
DevOps specialist 13.1%
Database administrator 11.8%
Designer 11.8%
System administrator 11.1%
Data or business analyst 9.9%
Engineer, data 9.0%
Developer, embedded applications or devices 8.8%
Developer, QA or test 8.8%
Data scientist or machine learning specialist 8.6%
Engineering manager 7.7%
Academic researcher 5.5%
Engineer, site reliability 5.5%
Developer, game or graphics 5.4%
Educator 5.3%
Product manager 5.1%
Scientist 4.7%
Senior executive/VP 3.7%
Marketing or sales professional 1.8%

Many developers work on code outside of work. About 78% of our respondents say that they code as a hobby. Other responsibilities outside of software can reduce developers' engagement in coding as a hobby; developers who say they have children or other caretaking responsibilities are less likely to code as a hobby. Respondents who are women are also less likely to say they code as a hobby.

64,416 responses
Yes 78.2%
No 21.8%
12,469 responses
Yes 77.9%
No 22.1%
12,469 responses
Yes 76.5%
No 23.5%

Developer Profile

Experience

There is a wide range of experience among developers who visit Stack Overflow, from seasoned developers who learned to code more than 30 years ago (approximately 15%), to a sizable percentage of developers (17%) who learned how to code less than five years ago. Of the professional developers on Stack Overflow, approximately 40% learned to code less than 10 years ago. See more on how these experience levels vary by gender.

57,684 responses
Less than 5 years 17.0%
5 to 9 years 30.0%
10 to 14 years 20.1%
15 to 19 years 11.4%
20 to 24 years 8.5%
25 to 29 years 4.4%
30 to 34 years 3.5%
35 to 39 years 2.7%
40 to 44 years 1.6%
45 to 49 years 0.4%
50 years or more 0.3%
47,779 responses
Less than 5 years 10.5%
5 to 9 years 29.2%
10 to 14 years 22.7%
15 to 19 years 13.2%
20 to 24 years 9.8%
25 to 29 years 5.1%
30 to 34 years 4.0%
35 to 39 years 3.0%
40 to 44 years 1.8%
45 to 49 years 0.4%
50 years or more 0.3%

65% of respondents have been coding professionally for less than 10 years.

46,349 responses
Less than 5 years 39.6%
5 to 9 years 26.8%
10 to 14 years 14.7%
15 to 19 years 7.6%
20 to 24 years 6.0%
25 to 29 years 2.4%
30 to 34 years 1.6%
35 to 39 years 0.8%
40 to 44 years 0.4%
45 to 49 years 0.1%
50 years or more 0.1%

Technical executives and engineering managers tend to have the most professional coding experience. Among the individual contributor roles, the most experienced developers tend to be system administrators, database administrators, and developers who create desktop and embedded applications. On the other end of the spectrum, web developers, academic researchers, and data scientists tend to have fewer years of experience. Part of this could be explained by the proliferation of coding bootcamps that teach web development and the amount of data scientists entering the field from academia.

Mean of 45,264 responses
Senior executive/VP 16.5
Engineering manager 13.8
System administrator 11.0
Developer, embedded applications or devices 10.9
Database administrator 10.8
Developer, desktop or enterprise applications 10.8
Engineer, site reliability 10.5
DevOps specialist 10.5
Educator 10.5
Data or business analyst 10.0
Scientist 9.9
Designer 9.8
Developer, game or graphics 9.2
Engineer, data 9.1
Developer, QA or test 8.9
Developer, back-end 8.9
Developer, full-stack 8.7
Developer, mobile 8.4
Data scientist or machine learning specialist 8.2
Developer, front-end 8.2
Academic researcher 8.1

Of all of the respondents, over 54% wrote their first line of code, whether it was a web page or a hello world program, by the age of 16. People who wrote their first line of code in their 20s accounted for 13% of the respondents. When looking at the average age by country, respondents from countries such as Brazil and India tend to start writing code a full two years later compared to developers in countries such as Poland and Germany, who on average start coding by the age of 15.

57,900 responses
Younger than 10 years 8.9%
10 to 11 years old 10.0%
12 to 13 years old 16.0%
14 to 15 years old 19.2%
16 to 17 years old 16.3%
18 to 19 years old 14.7%
20 to 21 years old 6.3%
22 to 23 years old 3.0%
24 to 25 years old 2.1%
26 to 27 years old 1.0%
28 to 29 years old 0.7%
30 years old or older 1.7%
Mean of 36,048 responses
India 16.9
Brazil 16.0
France 15.1
United States 15.0
Canada 14.9
Netherlands 14.6
Australia 14.4
United Kingdom 14.3
Poland 14.2
Germany 14.1
Mean of 50,534 responses
Woman 16.9
Man 15.2
Non-binary, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming 13.5

Developer Profile

Education

Approximately 75% of respondents worldwide completed at least the equivalent of a bachelor's degree or higher. This is consistent with what we've seen in previous years.

57,431 responses
Bachelor’s degree (B.A., B.S., B.Eng., etc.) 46.2%
Master’s degree (M.A., M.S., M.Eng., MBA, etc.) 22.8%
Some college/university study without earning a degree 12.6%
Secondary school (e.g. American high school, German Realschule or Gymnasium, etc.) 8.3%
Associate degree (A.A., A.S., etc.) 3.2%
Other doctoral degree (Ph.D., Ed.D., etc.) 2.9%
Primary/elementary school 1.6%
Professional degree (JD, MD, etc.) 1.4%
I never completed any formal education 0.9%
47,744 responses
Bachelor’s degree (B.A., B.S., B.Eng., etc.) 49.3%
Master’s degree (M.A., M.S., M.Eng., MBA, etc.) 25.5%
Some college/university study without earning a degree 11.5%
Secondary school (e.g. American high school, German Realschule or Gymnasium, etc.) 4.5%
Other doctoral degree (Ph.D., Ed.D., etc.) 3.3%
Associate degree (A.A., A.S., etc.) 3.2%
Professional degree (JD, MD, etc.) 1.4%
I never completed any formal education 0.7%
Primary/elementary school 0.5%

There are a variety of academic paths to becoming a professional software developer. Of the respondents that write code professionally and studied at the university level, over 62% have a degree in computer science, computer engineering, or software engineering and just under 10% have a degree in another engineering field. Interestingly enough, almost 10% of the respondents have a business related degree or a degree in a humanities, social science, or fine arts field of study.

50,995 responses
Computer science, computer engineering, or software engineering 61.9%
Another engineering discipline (such as civil, electrical, mechanical, etc.) 9.3%
Information systems, information technology, or system administration 8.0%
A natural science (such as biology, chemistry, physics, etc.) 4.3%
Mathematics or statistics 3.6%
Web development or web design 3.5%
A business discipline (such as accounting, finance, marketing, etc.) 2.7%
A humanities discipline (such as literature, history, philosophy, etc.) 2.0%
A social science (such as anthropology, psychology, political science, etc.) 1.8%
Fine arts or performing arts (such as graphic design, music, studio art, etc.) 1.4%
I never declared a major 0.9%
A health science (such as nursing, pharmacy, radiology, etc.) 0.5%
44,636 responses
Computer science, computer engineering, or software engineering 62.6%
Another engineering discipline (such as civil, electrical, mechanical, etc.) 9.3%
Information systems, information technology, or system administration 7.9%
A natural science (such as biology, chemistry, physics, etc.) 4.4%
Mathematics or statistics 3.6%
Web development or web design 3.3%
A business discipline (such as accounting, finance, marketing, etc.) 2.6%
A humanities discipline (such as literature, history, philosophy, etc.) 2.0%
A social science (such as anthropology, psychology, political science, etc.) 1.8%
Fine arts or performing arts (such as graphic design, music, studio art, etc.) 1.4%
I never declared a major 0.7%
A health science (such as nursing, pharmacy, radiology, etc.) 0.4%

Almost 85% of the respondents that are professional developers feel that formal education is at least somewhat important, which is contrary to the popular idiom that you don't need formal education to become a developer. However, almost 16% believe that it is not at all important or necessary.

48,465 responses
Critically important 9.8%
Very important 24.5%
Fairly important 26.2%
Somewhat important 23.5%
Not at all important/not necessary 16.1%
46,383 responses
Critically important 9.7%
Very important 24.4%
Fairly important 26.4%
Somewhat important 23.7%
Not at all important/not necessary 15.8%

Developer Profile

Demographics

Consistent with the data from last year, we still see evidence that people of color are underrepresented among professional developers. However, we see some improvement when we look at all respondents—not just the ones who code professionally. Despite a gradual change year over year, there is still much work to do to increase participation rates.

45,948 responses; select all that apply
White or of European descent 68.3%
South Asian 10.4%
Hispanic or Latino/a/x 7.6%
Middle Eastern 4.9%
East Asian 4.6%
Black or of African descent 4.5%
Southeast Asian 4.5%
Multiracial 1.7%
Biracial 1.2%
Indigenous (such as Native American, Pacific Islander, or Indigenous Australian) 0.8%
38,257 responses; select all that apply
White or of European descent 70.7%
South Asian 9.6%
Hispanic or Latino/a/x 7.8%
Middle Eastern 4.8%
East Asian 4.2%
Southeast Asian 3.9%
Black or of African descent 3.6%
Multiracial 1.7%
Biracial 1.2%
Indigenous (such as Native American, Pacific Islander, or Indigenous Australian) 0.8%

When looking at gender identity by country, we see various participation rates of professional developers who are women. Consistent with last year's survey, women developers account for almost 12% of developers in the US. In countries such as Germany, Brazil, and Poland, the participation rate is about half of that, which goes to show there is still much work to do to reach appropriate gender representation in the field. Among the respondents that code professionally, almost 92% are men.

51,406 responses; % who identify as women or non-binary
United States 11.8%
Canada 11.0%
United Kingdom 10.9%
Australia 10.1%
Netherlands 8.4%
France 8.0%
India 7.0%
Germany 6.5%
Brazil 5.8%
Poland 4.7%
50,557 responses; select all that apply
Man 91.5%
Woman 8.0%
Non-binary, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming 1.2%
41,809 responses; select all that apply
Man 91.7%
Woman 7.7%
Non-binary, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming 1.2%

We see varying representation from men and women in different developer roles on our survey. All categories have dramatically more developers who identify as men than women, but the ratio of men to women varies. Developer types above the line have respondents that are more likely than average to be men, and those below the dotted line have respondents who are more likely than average to be women. Developers who are data scientists or academic researchers are about 10 times more likely to be men than women, while developers who are system admins or DevOps specialists are 25-30 times more likely to be men than women. Women have the highest representation as front-end developers, designers, data scientists, data analysts, QA or test developers, scientists, and educators.

Developer Role and Gender
The dashed line shows the average ratio of men's to women's participation

When we break down differences in years since learning to code by gender, we notice some retention problems. We see a big drop off at the 10-14 year mark when compared to men, though we've seen some improvement from last year's survey. This is consistent with other research that women leave tech jobs at higher rates than men. If we truly want to make a difference and see gender parity in the industry that is reflective of society, retention is key. It is important to not only hire people from diverse backgrounds, but to also create an environment where they feel included and can thrive.

45,896 responses
Less than 5 years 15.4%
5 to 9 years 29.2%
10 to 14 years 20.5%
15 to 19 years 12.0%
20 to 24 years 9.0%
25 to 29 years 4.7%
30 to 34 years 3.8%
35 to 39 years 2.9%
40 to 44 years 1.7%
45 to 49 years 0.4%
50 years or more 0.3%
3,974 responses
Less than 5 years 25.2%
5 to 9 years 34.7%
10 to 14 years 18.1%
15 to 19 years 8.2%
20 to 24 years 6.6%
25 to 29 years 2.5%
30 to 34 years 2.0%
35 to 39 years 1.3%
40 to 44 years 1.0%
45 to 49 years 0.3%
50 years or more 0.1%
616 responses
Less than 5 years 15.7%
5 to 9 years 32.1%
10 to 14 years 21.6%
15 to 19 years 10.2%
20 to 24 years 9.4%
25 to 29 years 3.4%
30 to 34 years 3.6%
35 to 39 years 1.9%
40 to 44 years 1.1%
45 to 49 years 0.2%
50 years or more 0.6%

Among the respondents, almost 15% said they have some type of anxiety, mood, or emotional disorder. When looking at differences in physical ability, around 2% of respondents are differently-abled, such as being blind / having difficulty seeing or being deaf / having difficulty hearing. This underscores the importance of creating accessible software and creating companies that accomodate differently-abled people.

9,532 responses identified as having a mental difference
I have an anxiety disorder 7.2%
I have a mood or emotional disorder (e.g. depression, bipolar disorder) 7.2%
I have a concentration and/or memory disorder (e.g. ADHD) 5.4%
I have autism / an autism spectrum disorder (e.g. Asperger's) 2.3%
1,284 responses identified as having a physical difference
I am blind / have difficulty seeing 1.1%
I am deaf / hard of hearing 0.7%
I am unable to / find it difficult to walk or stand without assistance 0.3%
I am unable to / find it difficult to type 0.2%

Of the respondents that are professional developers, 70% are under 35 and about 5% are 50 years old or older.

45,446 responses
Younger than 15 years 0.5%
15 to 19 years 5.4%
20 to 24 years 20.3%
25 to 29 years 26.5%
30 to 34 years 19.4%
35 to 39 years 12.4%
40 to 44 years 6.7%
45 to 49 years 3.9%
50 to 54 years 2.3%
55 to 59 years 1.4%
60 years and older 1.3%
38,144 responses
Younger than 15 years 0.0%
15 to 19 years 1.2%
20 to 24 years 16.6%
25 to 29 years 29.5%
30 to 34 years 21.9%
35 to 39 years 14.0%
40 to 44 years 7.5%
45 to 49 years 4.2%
50 to 54 years 2.5%
55 to 59 years 1.5%
60 years and older 1.1%

When we break down the age of the survey respondents by country, we see that developers in North America and Western Europe tend to skew older and have more coding experience compared to other regions.

Mean of 28,492 responses
United States 33.7
United Kingdom 33.1
Canada 32.2
Netherlands 31.9
Germany 30.9
France 30.4
Brazil 29.4
Poland 28.9
India 26.0
Mean of 35,913 responses
Australia 16.9
United Kingdom 16.1
United States 15.8
Netherlands 15.0
Canada 14.4
Germany 14.3
France 13.0
Poland 11.5
Brazil 11.5
India 8.1

Technology

The tools of the trade

Technology

Most Loved, Dreaded, and Wanted

For five years running, Rust has taken the top spot as the most loved programming language. TypeScript is second surpassing Python compared to last year. We also see big gains in Go, moving up to 5th from 10th last year.

VBA, Objective C, and Perl hold the top spots for the most dreaded languages—languages that had a high percentage of developers who are currently using them, but have no interest in continuing to do so.

If we look at technologies that developers report that they do not use but want to learn, Python takes the top spot for the fourth year in a row. We also see some modest gains in the interest in learning Rust.

% of developers who are developing with the language or technology and have expressed interest in continuing to develop with it
Rust 86.1%
TypeScript 67.1%
Python 66.7%
Kotlin 62.9%
Go 62.3%
Julia 62.2%
Dart 62.1%
C# 59.7%
Swift 59.5%
JavaScript 58.3%
SQL 56.6%
Bash/Shell/PowerShell 53.7%
HTML/CSS 53.5%
Scala 53.2%
Haskell 51.7%
R 44.5%
Java 44.1%
C++ 43.4%
Ruby 42.9%
PHP 37.3%
C 33.1%
Assembly 29.4%
Perl 28.6%
Objective-C 23.4%
VBA 19.6%
% of developers who are developing with the language or technology but have not expressed interest in continuing to do so
VBA 80.4%
Objective-C 76.6%
Perl 71.4%
Assembly 70.6%
C 66.9%
PHP 62.7%
Ruby 57.1%
C++ 56.6%
Java 55.9%
R 55.5%
Haskell 48.3%
Scala 46.8%
HTML/CSS 46.5%
Bash/Shell/PowerShell 46.3%
SQL 43.4%
JavaScript 41.7%
Swift 40.5%
C# 40.3%
Dart 37.9%
Julia 37.8%
Go 37.7%
Kotlin 37.1%
Python 33.3%
TypeScript 32.9%
Rust 13.9%
% of developers who are not developing with the language or technology but have expressed interest in developing with it
Python 30.0%
JavaScript 18.5%
Go 17.9%
TypeScript 17.0%
Rust 14.6%
Kotlin 12.6%
Java 8.8%
C++ 8.6%
SQL 8.2%
C# 7.3%
Swift 6.6%
HTML/CSS 6.5%
Dart 6.0%
R 5.1%
Ruby 4.5%
C 4.3%
Scala 4.2%
Haskell 4.2%
Bash/Shell/PowerShell 3.9%
PHP 3.5%
Assembly 2.6%
Julia 2.3%
Objective-C 1.8%
Perl 1.1%
VBA 0.7%

ASP.NET Core is the most loved web framework, beating out React.js. Gatsby, a newcomer on the survey, is already sitting at 5th, being loved by 60% of the respondents.

Although it is amongst the most popular web frameworks, Angular.js is also considered to be the most dreaded.

% of developers who are developing with the language or technology and have expressed interest in continuing to develop with it
ASP.NET Core 70.7%
React.js 68.9%
Vue.js 66.0%
Express 61.9%
Gatsby 60.7%
Spring 57.7%
Django 55.3%
Flask 54.4%
Angular 54.0%
Laravel 51.4%
Ruby on Rails 49.3%
Symfony 45.6%
ASP.NET 36.9%
jQuery 36.5%
Drupal 25.5%
Angular.js 24.1%
% of developers who are developing with the language or technology but have not expressed interest in continuing to do so
Angular.js 75.9%
Drupal 74.5%
jQuery 63.5%
ASP.NET 63.1%
Symfony 54.4%
Ruby on Rails 50.7%
Laravel 48.6%
Angular 46.0%
Flask 45.6%
Django 44.7%
Spring 42.3%
Gatsby 39.3%
Express 38.1%
Vue.js 34.0%
React.js 31.1%
ASP.NET Core 29.3%
% of developers who are not developing with the language or technology but have expressed interest in developing with it
React.js 22.4%
Vue.js 16.4%
Angular 10.6%
Django 9.4%
Angular.js 7.7%
ASP.NET Core 6.6%
Flask 5.4%
Express 5.3%
Spring 4.4%
Ruby on Rails 4.4%
jQuery 4.3%
Gatsby 3.5%
Laravel 3.5%
ASP.NET 2.9%
Symfony 1.5%
Drupal 1.0%

.NET Core and Torch/PyTorch remain the most loved of the other remaining frameworks, libraries and tools. DevOps tools Chef and Puppet are among the most dreaded technologies.

% of developers who are developing with the language or technology and have expressed interest in continuing to develop with it
.NET Core 71.5%
Torch/PyTorch 70.5%
Flutter 68.8%
Pandas 68.4%
Teraform 68.0%
Keras 67.1%
Node.js 66.8%
TensorFlow 65.2%
Ansible 58.5%
React Native 57.9%
Apache Spark 57.5%
Unity 3D 56.0%
Unreal Engine 52.7%
.NET 47.5%
Hadoop 46.4%
Xamarin 45.4%
Puppet 38.5%
Cordova 28.7%
Chef 27.6%
% of developers who are developing with the language or technology but have not expressed interest in continuing to do so
Chef 72.4%
Cordova 71.3%
Puppet 61.5%
Xamarin 54.6%
Hadoop 53.6%
.NET 52.5%
Unreal Engine 47.3%
Unity 3D 44.0%
Apache Spark 42.5%
React Native 42.1%
Ansible 41.5%
TensorFlow 34.8%
Node.js 33.2%
Keras 32.9%
Teraform 32.0%
Pandas 31.6%
Flutter 31.2%
Torch/PyTorch 29.5%
.NET Core 28.5%
% of developers who are not developing with the language or technology but have expressed interest in developing with it
Node.js 18.1%
TensorFlow 17.2%
React Native 14.0%
Flutter 10.7%
Unity 3D 9.2%
.NET Core 8.3%
Torch/PyTorch 6.7%
Unreal Engine 6.3%
Hadoop 5.6%
Apache Spark 5.0%
Pandas 4.8%
Xamarin 4.5%
Teraform 4.3%
.NET 3.8%
Keras 3.7%
Ansible 3.3%
Puppet 1.7%
Chef 1.6%
Cordova 1.5%

Taking a look at database technologies, Redis remains the most loved, followed by PostgreSQL and Elasticsearch. Anecdotally, Stack Overflow has been using both Redis and Elasticsearch in our tech stack for years, since the early days of the company. IBM DB2 ranked as the most dreaded database and MongoDB remains the database technology that developers want to learn the most.

% of developers who are developing with the language or technology and have expressed interest in continuing to develop with it
Redis 66.5%
PostgreSQL 63.9%
Elasticsearch 58.7%
MongoDB 56.0%
Firebase 54.9%
MariaDB 51.3%
Microsoft SQL Server 50.9%
DynamoDB 50.7%
SQLite 49.4%
MySQL 47.1%
Cassandra 43.6%
Couchbase 33.2%
Oracle 33.2%
IBM DB2 23.3%
% of developers who are developing with the language or technology but have not expressed interest in continuing to do so
IBM DB2 76.7%
Oracle 66.8%
Couchbase 66.8%
Cassandra 56.4%
MySQL 52.9%
SQLite 50.6%
DynamoDB 49.3%
Microsoft SQL Server 49.1%
MariaDB 48.7%
Firebase 45.1%
MongoDB 44.0%
Elasticsearch 41.3%
PostgreSQL 36.1%
Redis 33.5%
% of developers who are not developing with the language or technology but have expressed interest in developing with it
MongoDB 19.4%
PostgreSQL 15.6%
Elasticsearch 12.2%
Redis 12.2%
Firebase 9.2%
MySQL 9.0%
SQLite 7.7%
Cassandra 6.2%
DynamoDB 5.5%
Oracle 4.2%
MariaDB 3.7%
Microsoft SQL Server 3.7%
Couchbase 2.4%
IBM DB2 1.1%

Linux remains the most loved platform. Container technologies Docker and Kubernetes rank as the second and third most loved. They are also among the platforms that developers most want to learn, which demonstrates how beloved they are. Wordpress is still the most dreaded, but Slack Apps and integrations, newly added to the list this year, rank high at the number four spot.

% of developers who are developing with the language or technology and have expressed interest in continuing to develop with it
Linux 76.9%
Docker 73.6%
Kubernetes 71.1%
AWS 66.4%
Raspberry Pi 66.1%
MacOS 64.4%
Microsoft Azure 62.2%
iOS 61.1%
Google Cloud Platform 60.9%
Windows 57.5%
Android 57.1%
Arduino 53.2%
Slack Apps and Integrations 51.0%
Heroku 46.2%
IBM Cloud or Watson 37.8%
WordPress 33.0%
% of developers who are developing with the language or technology but have not expressed interest in continuing to do so
WordPress 67.0%
IBM Cloud or Watson 62.2%
Heroku 53.8%
Slack Apps and Integrations 49.0%
Arduino 46.8%
Android 42.9%
Windows 42.5%
Google Cloud Platform 39.1%
iOS 38.9%
Microsoft Azure 37.8%
MacOS 35.6%
Raspberry Pi 33.9%
AWS 33.6%
Kubernetes 28.9%
Docker 26.4%
Linux 23.1%
% of developers who are not developing with the language or technology but have expressed interest in developing with it
Docker 24.5%
AWS 20.2%
Kubernetes 18.5%
Linux 16.6%
Android 16.0%
Google Cloud Platform 14.0%
Raspberry Pi 12.6%
iOS 10.4%
Microsoft Azure 9.9%
MacOS 7.7%
Arduino 7.4%
Windows 4.7%
Heroku 4.4%
Slack Apps and Integrations 3.3%
WordPress 2.6%
IBM Cloud or Watson 2.6%

Technology

Development Environments and Tools

Almost half of the respondents use Windows as their primary operating system. The rest were almost evenly split between MacOS and a flavor of Linux.

46,223 responses
Windows 45.8%
MacOS 27.5%
Linux-based 26.6%
BSD 0.1%

Of the professional developers who responded to the survey, almost 82% use GitHub as a collaborative tool and more than half use Slack.

52,883 responses; select all that apply
GitHub 82.8%
Slack 53.0%
Jira 47.7%
Google Suite (Docs, Meet, etc) 41.5%
Gitlab 37.0%
Confluence 32.4%
Trello 29.6%
Microsoft Teams 25.6%
Microsoft Azure 14.8%
Stack Overflow for Teams 5.8%
Facebook Workplace 3.0%
44,328 responses; select all that apply
GitHub 81.5%
Slack 56.9%
Jira 54.2%
Google Suite (Docs, Meet, etc) 42.6%
Gitlab 38.8%
Confluence 37.0%
Trello 30.6%
Microsoft Teams 28.0%
Microsoft Azure 16.2%
Stack Overflow for Teams 5.2%
Facebook Workplace 2.9%

When researching new tools, over three-fourths of respondents like to try the tool for themselves via a free trial. Social proof is also important, as over 60% of developers ask other developers they know about it or visit developer communities such as Stack Overflow.

37,321 responses; select all that apply
Start a free trial 77.1%
Ask developers I know/work with 67.9%
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 64.0%
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2Crowd 29.9%
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 12.3%
Research companies that have emailed me 5.5%

With regards to technology purchases within their organization, around 57% of respondents have some or a great deal of influence.

39,364 responses
I have a great deal of influence 17.8%
I have some influence 39.1%
I have little or no influence 43.2%

Technology

Top Paying Technologies

Globally, respondents who use Perl, Scala, and Go tend to have the highest salaries, with a median salary around $75k. Interestingly, Perl is amongst the top most dreaded languages, so it's possible that this high salary is to compensate for the dearth of developers who want to use that technology. When looking only at the US, Scala developers tend to have the highest salaries.

Median of 33,534 responses; USD
Perl $76k
Scala $76k
Go $74k
Rust $74k
Ruby $71k
Bash/Shell/PowerShell $65k
Objective-C $64k
Haskell $60k
Julia $59k
Python $59k
Swift $58k
C# $57k
R $57k
TypeScript $57k
Kotlin $54k
SQL $54k
Assembly $53k
C++ $53k
JavaScript $53k
HTML/CSS $52k
VBA $51k
C $50k
Java $50k
PHP $39k
Dart $37k
Median of 7,920 responses; USD
Scala $150k
Go $140k
Objective-C $135k
Kotlin $130k
Perl $130k
Ruby $130k
Rust $130k
C $125k
Swift $125k
Haskell $121k
Assembly $120k
Bash/Shell/PowerShell $120k
C++ $120k
Java $120k
Python $120k
TypeScript $120k
JavaScript $112k
C# $110k
Dart $110k
HTML/CSS $110k
SQL $110k
R $109k
PHP $100k
VBA $97k

Technology

Correlated Technologies

Technologies cluster together into related ecosystems that tend to be used by the same developers. This network graph demonstrates this by showing which technologies are most highly correlated with each other. Similar to last year, we see a large cluster of web development technologies connected via SQL to one for Microsoft technologies, as well as a cluster of operations technologies connected to the Python ecosystem network through Linux.

How Technologies Are Connected

Technology

Learning & Problem Solving

We asked developers how frequently they learn a new language or framework. Around 75% of respondents noted that they learn a new technology at least every few months or once a year. This demonstrates how quickly innovations happen and developers are constantly learning to keep their skills fresh.

56,156 responses
Every few months 37.3%
Once a year 36.8%
Once every few years 23.7%
Once a decade 2.2%
46,320 responses
Every few months 34.9%
Once a year 37.9%
Once every few years 25.1%
Once a decade 2.1%

We asked respondents what they do when they get stuck on a problem. Almost 90% reported that they visit Stack Overflow. This is an encouraging sign that we're succeeding in our mission to help people get access to the knowledge they need to get things done.

54,983 responses; select all that apply
Visit Stack Overflow 90.6%
Do other work and come back later 54.4%
Watch help / tutorial videos 52.8%
Call a coworker or friend 49.9%
Go for a walk or other physical activity 43.3%
Play games 15.0%
Meditate 11.7%
Panic 10.9%
Visit another developer community 10.3%

For the first time, we asked developers how they feel when they search for a coding solution online and the first result link is purple because they already visited the link. About half of respondents chose 'Hello, old friend', which suggests it may be a frequent occurrence for certain tasks. Perhaps this is why over 2.1 million people visited the 'How do I exit the Vim editor?' question on Stack Overflow.

54,803 responses
Hello, old friend 51.6%
Indifferent 18.3%
Amused 15.9%
Annoyed 14.3%

Work

Reminder: this year’s survey was taken in February, before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization and before the virus impacted every country in the world. Please keep the timing of the survey in mind when reviewing information such as job and salary data.

Over 92% of professional developers are employed at least part-time. Roughly 12% of all respondents say they are students.

63,854 responses
Employed full-time 70.9%
Student 12.2%
Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 8.9%
Not employed, but looking for work 3.7%
Employed part-time 3.5%
Not employed, and not looking for work 0.5%
Retired 0.4%
52,370 responses
Employed full-time 82.8%
Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 9.5%
Employed part-time 3.1%
Student 2.1%
Not employed, but looking for work 2.1%
Not employed, and not looking for work 0.2%
Retired 0.1%

India has an noticeably higher proportion of students compared to other countries that are well-represented in the survey data. In all of these locations, more than 70% of developers are employed full-time.

12,417 responses
Employed full-time 78.6%
Student 8.9%
Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 6.3%
Not employed, but looking for work 2.9%
Employed part-time 2.2%
Retired 0.7%
Not employed, and not looking for work 0.5%
8,323 responses
Employed full-time 73.1%
Student 16.0%
Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 4.9%
Not employed, but looking for work 4.2%
Employed part-time 1.6%
Not employed, and not looking for work 0.3%
Retired 0.0%
4,324 responses
Employed full-time 77.3%
Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 9.7%
Student 8.3%
Employed part-time 1.9%
Not employed, but looking for work 1.8%
Retired 0.6%
Not employed, and not looking for work 0.5%
3,870 responses
Employed full-time 70.3%
Student 14.7%
Employed part-time 6.7%
Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 6.5%
Not employed, but looking for work 1.3%
Not employed, and not looking for work 0.3%
Retired 0.2%
2,181 responses
Employed full-time 72.3%
Student 13.4%
Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 7.4%
Not employed, but looking for work 3.4%
Employed part-time 2.5%
Retired 0.6%
Not employed, and not looking for work 0.4%

For the first time this year, we asked respondents how often they work overtime or beyond the formal time expectation of their job. Over 75% of developers work overtime at least occasionally, defined as one to two days per quarter.

43,231 responses
Never 10.9%
Rarely: 1-2 days per year or less 15.0%
Occasionally: 1-2 days per quarter but less than monthly 21.9%
Sometimes: 1-2 days per month but less than weekly 26.7%
Often: 1-2 days per week or more 25.5%

Work

Company Information

44,334 responses
Just me - I am a freelancer, sole proprietor, etc. 4.9%
2 to 9 employees 9.9%
10 to 19 employees 9.3%
20 to 99 employees 21.6%
100 to 499 employees 18.7%
500 to 999 employees 6.5%
1,000 to 4,999 employees 11.0%
5,000 to 9,999 employees 4.1%
10,000 or more employees 13.9%

Almost half of the respondents reported that their company has a good onboarding process. About one fifth had no onboarding process at all.

42,623 responses
Yes 48.6%
No 29.7%
Onboarding? What onboarding? 21.7%

We asked survey takers if their organizations have dedicated DevOps personnel. An equal amount of respondents reported that their company had at least one dedicated employee to handle DevOps as those who reported they had none.

42,686 responses
Yes 43.8%
No 43.6%
Not sure 12.5%

We also asked survey takers about the importance of DevOps to scaling software development. Almost 80% of respondents believed that DevOps is at least somewhat important, with almost half of the respondents noting that it is extremely important.

41,732 responses
Extremely important 48.1%
Somewhat important 31.0%
Neutral 17.4%
Not very important 2.0%
Not at all important 1.4%

Work

Career Values

Overall, developers tend to be satisfied with their jobs, with almost 65% reporting that they are either slightly or very satisfied with their job. On the other end of the spectrum, around 25% are slightly to very dissatisfied.

45,194 responses
Very dissatisfied 8.3%
Slightly dissatisfied 15.8%
Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied 12.8%
Slightly satisfied 30.8%
Very satisfied 32.3%

Work

Looking for a Job

Almost 83% of respondents reported that they are either not actively looking or interested in new job opportunities. This is consistent with our findings about developer job satisfaction—most developers are happy with their jobs.

51,727 responses
I’m not actively looking, but I am open to new opportunities 57.6%
I am not interested in new job opportunities 25.1%
I am actively looking for a job 17.3%

When looking across several countries with large developer populations, job satisfaction is mostly consistent. In the US, UK, Germany, and Canada, over 80% of developers are not actively looking for a job, but at least half are open to new opportunities.

10,660 responses
I’m not actively looking, but I am open to new opportunities 54.7%
I am not interested in new job opportunities 31.4%
I am actively looking for a job 13.9%
6,031 responses
I’m not actively looking, but I am open to new opportunities 56.6%
I am actively looking for a job 32.2%
I am not interested in new job opportunities 11.2%
3,659 responses
I’m not actively looking, but I am open to new opportunities 52.9%
I am not interested in new job opportunities 34.4%
I am actively looking for a job 12.7%
3,323 responses
I’m not actively looking, but I am open to new opportunities 55.0%
I am not interested in new job opportunities 34.6%
I am actively looking for a job 10.4%
1,862 responses
I’m not actively looking, but I am open to new opportunities 57.2%
I am not interested in new job opportunities 29.5%
I am actively looking for a job 13.3%

If we break out the data by job function, over 20% of academic researchers, data scientists, and data/business analysts are actively looking for a new job, followed closely by designers, game developers, and mobile developers at 19%. This is consistent with findings from past surveys, where we saw that academic researchers and designers were among the roles that had the lowest job satisfaction.

Mean of 44,927 responses
Academic researcher 21.7%
Data scientist or machine learning specialist 20.5%
Data or business analyst 20.2%
Designer 19.6%
Developer, game or graphics 19.3%
Developer, mobile 19.1%
Educator 18.9%
Scientist 17.9%
Engineer, data 17.6%
Database administrator 17.2%
Developer, front-end 16.9%
Developer, embedded applications or devices 16.5%
Developer, QA or test 16.3%
Developer, back-end 16.2%
Developer, full-stack 15.7%
Engineer, site reliability 15.5%
Developer, desktop or enterprise applications 15.5%
System administrator 15.4%
Product manager 15.0%
Engineering manager 13.6%
DevOps specialist 12.7%
Senior executive/VP 11.8%

For the first time, we asked developers what drove them to look for a new job. Better compensation was by far the most common factor for respondents with 70% of them noting that more pay was important. Wanting to work with new technologies was the second most popular factor, which is consistent with what respondents reported as one of the most important priorities when choosing between two jobs.

42,286 responses; select all that apply
Better compensation 70.0%
Wanting to work with new technologies 58.5%
Curious about other opportunities 57.1%
Growth or leadership opportunities 52.9%
Better work/life balance 48.3%
Trouble with leadership at my company 26.8%
Looking to relocate 26.3%
Having a bad day (or week or month) at work 20.3%
Trouble with my direct manager 17.0%
Just because 12.3%
Trouble with my teammates 11.7%
Wanting to share accomplishments with a wider network 10.3%

We asked respondents how they learn about a company during a job hunt and received mixed responses. Most respondents turn to reviews on third party sites, such as Glassdoor and Blind. However, a large amount also learn from viewing company sponsored media, such as blogs and company culture videos. Interestingly, relatively fewer respondents seek publicly available financial information, such as data from Crunchbase, which is consistent with respondents noting that company financial performance and fundraising is not a very important factor when deciding to take a job.

41,022 responses; select all that apply
Company reviews from third party sites (e.g. Glassdoor, Blind) 69.6%
Read company media, such as employee blogs or company culture videos 65.3%
Personal network - friends or family 63.4%
Read other media like news articles, founder profiles, etc. about the company 49.2%
Directly asking current or past employees at the company 36.2%
Publicly available financial information (e.g. Crunchbase) 26.4%

Work

Job Priorities

We asked the survey respondents if we control for compensation, benefits, and location, what three characteristics would most influence their decision to choose one job offer over another. Overall, the languages and technologies that the developer would be working with was most important, followed by the office environment or company culture and flexibility of schedule. Interestingly enough, the least important factors were the financial performance of the organization (11.4%), the specific team they would be working on (11.2%), and the diversity of the organization (6.6%).

However, if we control for gender, we see some differences in the rankings. For example, among the women respondents, 48% selected company culture to be one of the most important factors and 18% indicated that diversity was also of top importance. Among the non-binary respondents, 49.9% chose office environment and company culture in the top three most important factors and 33.4% strongly valued the diversity of the company.

49,349 responses; select three most important
Languages, frameworks, and other technologies I’d be working with 51.3%
Office environment or company culture 44.5%
Flex time or a flexible schedule 43.9%
Opportunities for professional development 41.4%
Remote work options 33.3%
How widely used or impactful my work output would be 20.8%
Industry that I’d be working in 15.3%
Family friendliness 12.1%
Financial performance or funding status of the company or organization 11.9%
Specific department or team I’d be working on 11.8%
Diversity of the company or organization 6.9%
42,060 responses; select three most important
Languages, frameworks, and other technologies I’d be working with 52.8%
Office environment or company culture 44.5%
Flex time or a flexible schedule 44.0%
Opportunities for professional development 41.5%
Remote work options 33.6%
How widely used or impactful my work output would be 21.0%
Industry that I’d be working in 15.3%
Family friendliness 12.2%
Financial performance or funding status of the company or organization 12.1%
Specific department or team I’d be working on 11.7%
Diversity of the company or organization 5.5%
3,694 responses; select three most important
Office environment or company culture 48.3%
Flex time or a flexible schedule 45.6%
Languages, frameworks, and other technologies I’d be working with 41.8%
Opportunities for professional development