In May 2023 over 90,000 developers responded to our annual survey about how they learn and level up, which tools they're using, and which ones they want.

Read the overview → Methodology →

Overview

Welcome to the 2023 Developer Survey! For 13 years, we've delivered industry-leading insights regarding the developer community.

This is the voice of the developer. Analysts, IT leaders, reporters, and other developers turn to this report to stay up to date with the evolving developer experience, technologies that are rising or falling in favor, and to understand where tech might be going next.

This year, we went deep into AI/ML to capture how developers are thinking about it and using it in their workflows. Stack Overflow is investing heavily in enhancing the developer experience across our products, using AI and other technology, to get people to solutions faster. Stack Overflow Labs is where we're sharing all we're doing - check it out for a deep dive on AI/ML insights as well as see what we're experimenting with so far.

Happy reading!

Developer Profile
Learning to code

Learning to code from online resources increased from 70% to 80% since the 2022 survey.

Respondents 18 and under are those most frequently selecting online resources (e.g., videos, blogs, forums) to learn from. Respondents 25 - 34 were the top age cohort to have learned from online courses or certifications (52%) but still learn more from traditional school (55%).

Learning how to code →
Technology
Most popular technologies

This year, Docker is the top-used other tool amongst all respondents (53%) rising from its second place spot last year.

People learning to code are more likely to be using npm or Pip than Docker (50% and 37% respectively vs. 26%). Both are used alongside languages that are popular with students (JavaScript and Python respectively).

Other tools →
Technology
Most popular technologies

Why complicate it? Jira and Confluence are the top two async tools amongst all developers similar to last year, but this year a new addition to the list broke top three: 27% of respondents use markdown files as an async tool.

People who are learning to code are using GitHub Discussions more than markdown files (31% vs. 29%) and turn to Notion (26%) and Trello (23%) more than professional developers.

Asynchronous tools →
Technology
Admired and Desired

Rust is the most admired language, more than 80% of developers that use it want to use it again next year. Compare this to the least admired language: MATLAB. Less than 20% of developers who used this language want to use it again next year.

Programming, scripting, and markup languages →
Technology
Admired and Desired

Phoenix is the most admired web framework and technology; more developers would choose to work with Phoenix again than those who have used the three most common: React, Node.js, and Next.js.

Web frameworks and technologies →
Technology
Admired and Desired

More respondents want to continue using Cargo next year than the top competitors (top 6 tools that respondents want to use next year), however, Docker has almost double the proportion of respondents that want to use it next year compared to all other options.

Other tools →
Technology
Worked with vs. want to work with

42% of ChatGPT users want to use Google Bard or Bing AI next year. These users are enjoying their experience: 79% want to use ChatGPT again next year.

AI Search Tools →
Technology
Top paying technologies

Zig is the highest-paid language to know this year (a new addition), while Clojure gets knocked from the top spot with a 10% decrease from 2022.

Dart and SAS saw the highest increase in median pay during 2023, growing more than 20% year-over-year.

Top paying technologies →
AI
Sentiment and usage

70% of all respondents are using or are planning to use AI tools in their development process this year. Those learning to code are more likely than professional developers to be using or use AI tools (82% vs. 70%).

AI tools in the development process →
Work
Employment

For all respondents this year we see a slight increase in “Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed” and equal-sized decrease in full-time students (1 percentage point) compared to last year and other employment status' changing less than that.

The costs of investing in oneself has risen with inflation in 2023 but not enough to sway many from the opportunity to level up their developer skills.

Employment status →
Work
Employment

Hybrid is here to stay for larger organizations; over half of employees in 5,000+ organizations are hybrid. The smaller organizations are most likely to be in-person, with one out of five organizations with fewer than 20 people report being in-person.

More developers this year are working in-person this year than last year (+2%). Return to office initiatives aside, coding easily lends itself to fully remote work and one third or more of all organization sizes are still fully remote.

Work environment →
Professional Developers
Productivity impacts

63% of all respondents spend more than 30 minutes a day searching for answers or solutions to problems. People managers are more likely to spend less time searching than individual contributors (42% vs. 36% spend 30 minutes or less).

Daily time spent searching for answers/solutions →

Developer Profile

What we know about the global community of developers

Developer Profile

Education

Most developers (84%) have a post-secondary education, having some college or more.

Educational attainment

Most professional developers have attained a Bachelor's degree (47%) with a quarter attaining a Master's degree (26%).

For the developers who are learning to code, more than half are between 18-24 years old, so it makes sense that they are more likely to not have a Bachelor's degree. They are likely still in school.

89,184 responses
Primary/elementary school 2.14% 1,905
Secondary school (e.g. American high school, German Realschule or Gymnasium, etc.) 9.98% 8,897
Some college/university study without earning a degree 13.18% 11,753
Associate degree (A.A., A.S., etc.) 3.15% 2,807
Bachelor’s degree (B.A., B.S., B.Eng., etc.) 41.16% 36,706
Master’s degree (M.A., M.S., M.Eng., MBA, etc.) 23.03% 20,543
Professional degree (JD, MD, Ph.D, Ed.D, etc.) 4.36% 3,887
Something else 1.65% 1,475
Which of the following best describes the highest level of formal education that you’ve completed? *
67,237 responses
Primary/elementary school 0.71% 478
Secondary school (e.g. American high school, German Realschule or Gymnasium, etc.) 5.87% 3,949
Some college/university study without earning a degree 12.55% 8,437
Associate degree (A.A., A.S., etc.) 3.27% 2,201
Bachelor’s degree (B.A., B.S., B.Eng., etc.) 46.85% 31,498
Master’s degree (M.A., M.S., M.Eng., MBA, etc.) 25.62% 17,223
Professional degree (JD, MD, Ph.D, Ed.D, etc.) 3.85% 2,590
Something else 1.28% 861
Which of the following best describes the highest level of formal education that you’ve completed? *
4,961 responses
Primary/elementary school 7.54% 374
Secondary school (e.g. American high school, German Realschule or Gymnasium, etc.) 31.79% 1,577
Some college/university study without earning a degree 21.81% 1,082
Associate degree (A.A., A.S., etc.) 3.53% 175
Bachelor’s degree (B.A., B.S., B.Eng., etc.) 24.29% 1,205
Master’s degree (M.A., M.S., M.Eng., MBA, etc.) 6.11% 303
Professional degree (JD, MD, Ph.D, Ed.D, etc.) 1.17% 58
Something else 3.77% 187
Which of the following best describes the highest level of formal education that you’ve completed? *
4,961 responses
Primary/elementary school 6.8% 351
Secondary school (e.g. American high school, German Realschule or Gymnasium, etc.) 21.55% 1,112
Some college/university study without earning a degree 13.06% 674
Associate degree (A.A., A.S., etc.) 2.81% 145
Bachelor’s degree (B.A., B.S., B.Eng., etc.) 24.77% 1,278
Master’s degree (M.A., M.S., M.Eng., MBA, etc.) 20.45% 1,055
Professional degree (JD, MD, Ph.D, Ed.D, etc.) 7.75% 400
Something else 2.79% 144
Which of the following best describes the highest level of formal education that you’ve completed? *

Developer Profile

Learning to code

There are as many ways to learn to code as there are coders. Developers use a variety of tools and resources to build their skills.

Learning how to code

Learning to code from online resources increased from 70% to 80% since the 2022 survey.

Respondents 18 and under are those most frequently selecting online resources (e.g., videos, blogs, forums) to learn from. Respondents 25 - 34 were the top age cohort to have learned from online courses or certifications (52%) but still learn more from traditional school (55%).

87,663 responses
Other online resources (e.g., videos, blogs, forum) 80.13% 70,244
Books / Physical media 51.8% 45,406
School (i.e., University, College, etc) 50.14% 43,957
Online Courses or Certification 49.28% 43,201
On the job training 46.06% 40,380
Colleague 23.41% 20,523
Friend or family member 11.33% 9,936
Coding Bootcamp 9.81% 8,602
Hackathons (virtual or in-person) 8.02% 7,033
How do you learn to code? Select all that apply.
4,947 responses
Other online resources (e.g., videos, blogs, forum) 79.14% 3,915
Online Courses or Certification 58.9% 2,914
School (i.e., University, College, etc) 52.05% 2,575
Books / Physical media 38.31% 1,895
Coding Bootcamp 19.83% 981
Friend or family member 16.01% 792
On the job training 11.32% 560
Colleague 11.2% 554
Hackathons (virtual or in-person) 8.67% 429
How do you learn to code? Select all that apply.
86,688 responses
Under 18 years old
Other online resources (e.g., videos, blogs, forum) 88.34% 3,469
Online Courses or Certification 39.5% 1,551
School (i.e., University, College, etc) 34.22% 1,344
Books / Physical media 36.13% 1,419
Coding Bootcamp 10.36% 407
Friend or family member 19.33% 759
On the job training 6.44% 253
Colleague 4.02% 158
Hackathons (virtual or in-person) 8.51% 334
18-24 years old
Other online resources (e.g., videos, blogs, forum) 84.15% 14,727
Online Courses or Certification 47.89% 8,381
School (i.e., University, College, etc) 62.05% 10,860
Books / Physical media 37.64% 6,588
Coding Bootcamp 11.25% 1,969
Friend or family member 14.34% 2,510
On the job training 32.17% 5,630
Colleague 17.31% 3,030
Hackathons (virtual or in-person) 10.86% 1,901
25-34 years old
Other online resources (e.g., videos, blogs, forum) 79.9% 26,102
Online Courses or Certification 51.98% 16,980
School (i.e., University, College, etc) 55.01% 17,970
Books / Physical media 48.27% 15,770
Coding Bootcamp 10.65% 3,478
Friend or family member 11.25% 3,674
On the job training 51.37% 16,781
Colleague 26.73% 8,734
Hackathons (virtual or in-person) 8.74% 2,855
35-44 years old
Other online resources (e.g., videos, blogs, forum) 80.39% 16,139
Online Courses or Certification 51.42% 10,323
School (i.e., University, College, etc) 44.34% 8,901
Books / Physical media 61.12% 12,269
Coding Bootcamp 9.08% 1,822
Friend or family member 10.34% 2,075
On the job training 53.85% 10,810
Colleague 27.87% 5,595
Hackathons (virtual or in-person) 6.94% 1,394
45-54 years old
Other online resources (e.g., videos, blogs, forum) 79.46% 6,445
Online Courses or Certification 48.53% 3,936
School (i.e., University, College, etc) 37.36% 3,030
Books / Physical media 71.35% 5,787
Coding Bootcamp 7.24% 587
Friend or family member 7.72% 626
On the job training 54.86% 4,450
Colleague 25.41% 2,061
Hackathons (virtual or in-person) 4.88% 396
55-64 years old
Other online resources (e.g., videos, blogs, forum) 73.91% 2,430
Online Courses or Certification 45.95% 1,511
School (i.e., University, College, etc) 38.93% 1,280
Books / Physical media 77.07% 2,534
Coding Bootcamp 7.51% 247
Friend or family member 5.47% 180
On the job training 55.2% 1,815
Colleague 21.93% 721
Hackathons (virtual or in-person) 3.22% 106
65 years or older
Other online resources (e.g., videos, blogs, forum) 63.83% 713
Online Courses or Certification 36.26% 405
School (i.e., University, College, etc) 40.29% 450
Books / Physical media 80.04% 894
Coding Bootcamp 5.73% 64
Friend or family member 4.74% 53
On the job training 50.4% 563
Colleague 16.03% 179
Hackathons (virtual or in-person) 1.79% 20
How do you learn to code? Select all that apply.

Online resources to learn how to code

Like previous years, technical documentation and Stack Overflow are the top online resources people use when learning to code, with blogs rounding out the top three. Well-written documentation, an active community providing solutions, and regular posts are the trifecta of enabling people to teach themselves about a technology.

Developers see value in a variety of other resources like how-to videos, written tutorials, books, forums—they piece together the resources and formats that work best for their learning style.

70,084 responses
Technical documentation 90.36% 63,329
Stack Overflow 82.56% 57,861
Blogs 76.69% 53,745
How-to videos 60.14% 42,149
Written Tutorials 59.95% 42,012
Video-based Online Courses 49.41% 34,629
Online books 43.42% 30,432
Online forum 42.49% 29,780
Written-based Online Courses 36.11% 25,309
Coding sessions (live or recorded) 28.09% 19,690
Interactive tutorial 26.03% 18,242
Online challenges (e.g., daily or weekly coding challenges) 22.18% 15,544
Certification videos 13.31% 9,326
Auditory material (e.g., podcasts) 7.95% 5,571
Games that teach programming 5.89% 4,131
What online resources do you use to learn to code? Select all that apply.

Online course platforms to learn how to code

Udemy maintains its place as the most popular online course or certification program for learning how to code.

37,076 responses
Udemy 65.53% 24,296
Coursera 34.62% 12,836
Codecademy 24.31% 9,015
Pluralsight 22.83% 8,463
edX 14.93% 5,536
Udacity 10.77% 3,992
Skillsoft 2.03% 754
What online courses or certifications do you use to learn to code? Select all that apply.

Developer Profile

Experience

The majority of developers are in their early to mid-career stage.

Years coding

48% of respondents have been coding for less than ten years.

Australia and the United Kingdom respondents are the most experienced, with an average of 17.5 and 17 years of experience coding respectively.

87,435 responses
Less than 1 year 1.11% 968
1 to 4 years 14.7% 12,855
5 to 9 years 26.44% 23,117
10 to 14 years 19.89% 17,390
15 to 19 years 11.71% 10,238
20 to 24 years 9.47% 8,278
25 to 29 years 5.88% 5,140
30 to 34 years 4.14% 3,623
35 to 39 years 2.71% 2,369
40 to 44 years 2.63% 2,301
45 to 49 years 0.78% 678
More than 50 years 0.55% 478
Including any education, how many years have you been coding in total?
52,244 responses
Australia 17.54 2,037
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 16.98 5,447
United States of America 16.49 18,264
Canada 15.42 3,445
Netherlands 15.42 2,362
Germany 14.71 7,265
France 13.82 2,906
Brazil 12.79 2,014
Poland 12.03 2,405
India 7.79 5,361
Including any education, how many years have you been coding in total?

Years coding professionally

A majority of respondents (71%) have been working for 14 or fewer years as professional developers, and 24% have worked 15 to 29 years. This shows developers in the survey have started to skew more experienced compared to last year where 75% worked 14 or less years and 20% 15-29 years.

66,136 responses
Less than 1 year 2.78% 1,836
1 to 4 years 23.3% 15,408
5 to 9 years 26.53% 17,545
10 to 14 years 18.07% 11,951
15 to 19 years 10.7% 7,074
20 to 24 years 8.22% 5,435
25 to 29 years 4.63% 3,059
30 to 34 years 2.79% 1,845
35 to 39 years 1.63% 1,075
40 to 44 years 0.9% 598
45 to 49 years 0.31% 203
More than 50 years 0.16% 107
NOT including education, how many years have you coded professionally (as a part of your work)?

Years of professional coding experience by developer type

Senior executives have the highest average years of professional coding experience (17.4), followed by desktop or enterprise applications developers (16.4) and educators (15.8).

66,136 responses
Senior Executive (C-Suite, VP, etc.) 17.43 1,247
Developer, desktop or enterprise applications 16.4 3,471
Educator 15.78 277
Database administrator 15.6 214
Developer Advocate 15.35 189
Engineering manager 15.14 1,948
Product manager 14.94 389
Project manager 14.6 463
Research & Development role 14.3 1,174
Designer 14.23 190
Scientist 12.77 282
Developer Experience 12.7 287
Developer, embedded applications or devices 12.69 1,603
System administrator 12.27 495
Marketing or sales professional 12.04 78
DevOps specialist 11.04 1,210
Security professional 11.03 367
Cloud infrastructure engineer 10.97 939
Engineer, site reliability 10.97 384
Hardware Engineer 10.92 226
Developer, full-stack 10.84 22,216
Developer, back-end 10.77 12,208
Developer, game or graphics 10.38 670
Academic researcher 10.36 874
Data or business analyst 10.02 602
Engineer, data 9.67 1,094
Developer, mobile 9.6 2,225
Blockchain 9.01 255
Developer, QA or test 8.78 483
Developer, front-end 8.03 4,104
Data scientist or machine learning specialist 7.89 1,282
Student 2.82 28
NOT including education, how many years have you coded professionally (as a part of your work)?

Developer Profile

Developer roles

Few developers consider themselves to be a single developer type and instead showcase a diversity of skills.

Developer type

Full-stack, back-end, front-end, and desktop/enterprise app developers continue to account for the majority of all respondents. We asked about developer advocates for the first time this year—almost .3% classify themselves as this type of developer.

76,872 responses
Developer, full-stack 33.48% 25,735
Developer, back-end 17.88% 13,745
Developer, front-end 6.6% 5,071
Developer, desktop or enterprise applications 5.08% 3,904
Developer, mobile 3.38% 2,597
Engineering manager 2.64% 2,033
Student 2.6% 1,996
Developer, embedded applications or devices 2.4% 1,845
Data scientist or machine learning specialist 2.07% 1,588
DevOps specialist 1.8% 1,387
Academic researcher 1.76% 1,354
Research & Development role 1.76% 1,353
Senior Executive (C-Suite, VP, etc.) 1.73% 1,332
Engineer, data 1.62% 1,248
Cloud infrastructure engineer 1.35% 1,036
Developer, game or graphics 1.13% 866
Data or business analyst 1.09% 837
System administrator 0.97% 743
Project manager 0.77% 589
Developer, QA or test 0.76% 586
Security professional 0.62% 474
Product manager 0.58% 446
Engineer, site reliability 0.56% 427
Educator 0.54% 415
Scientist 0.46% 351
Developer Experience 0.42% 326
Blockchain 0.42% 323
Hardware Engineer 0.37% 286
Designer 0.37% 281
Database administrator 0.33% 257
Developer Advocate 0.28% 212
Marketing or sales professional 0.19% 149
Which of the following describes your current job, the one you do most of the time? Please select only one.

Developer Profile

Key territories

Across the world, developers and technologists turn to Stack Overflow to gain and share knowledge. Our survey received responses from almost every country on Earth.

Geography

The United States and Germany provided the highest volume of survey responses (30% combined), followed by India and UKI (UK and Northern Ireland).

The top ten countries account for 60% of all respondents. Germany overtook India to move into second place this year, a reverse of 2022's placement. Australia broke into the top ten, coming in at ninth and displacing Spain this year.

52,530 responses
United States of America 21.21% 18,647
Germany 8.34% 7,328
India 6.4% 5,625
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 6.32% 5,552
Canada 3.99% 3,507
France 3.34% 2,933
Poland 2.77% 2,435
Netherlands 2.71% 2,383
Australia 2.36% 2,078
Brazil 2.32% 2,042
Where do you live? *
87,973 responses
Response Percentage Responses
United States of America 21.21% 18,647
Germany 8.34% 7,328
India 6.4% 5,625
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 6.32% 5,552
Canada 3.99% 3,507
France 3.34% 2,933
Poland 2.77% 2,435
Netherlands 2.71% 2,383
Australia 2.36% 2,078
Brazil 2.32% 2,042
Italy 2.09% 1,835
Spain 2.09% 1,834
Sweden 1.87% 1,641
Switzerland 1.31% 1,149
Russian Federation 1.24% 1,094
Czech Republic 1.22% 1,072
Austria 1.18% 1,033
Israel 1.05% 921
Belgium 1.01% 888
Turkey 1% 881
Ukraine 0.99% 873
Denmark 0.97% 850
Romania 0.94% 829
Portugal 0.85% 749
Norway 0.83% 732
Finland 0.83% 726
New Zealand 0.76% 672
China 0.75% 657
Greece 0.72% 631
Hungary 0.69% 607
Mexico 0.69% 605
Pakistan 0.68% 596
Argentina 0.66% 579
Iran, Islamic Republic of... 0.66% 577
South Africa 0.65% 573
Indonesia 0.56% 493
Bangladesh 0.56% 490
Bulgaria 0.55% 482
Colombia 0.53% 465
Ireland 0.53% 464
Nigeria 0.51% 447
Serbia 0.47% 417
Viet Nam 0.44% 390
Japan 0.41% 362
Philippines 0.4% 354
Slovakia 0.4% 352
Lithuania 0.36% 317
Singapore 0.34% 298
Egypt 0.34% 296
Croatia 0.33% 290
Slovenia 0.31% 271
Malaysia 0.3% 264
Chile 0.28% 248
Kenya 0.28% 244
Taiwan 0.27% 239
Estonia 0.27% 234
Sri Lanka 0.25% 217
Thailand 0.25% 216
Nepal 0.24% 212
Hong Kong (S.A.R.) 0.23% 205
South Korea 0.23% 204
United Arab Emirates 0.2% 178
Latvia 0.2% 174
Georgia 0.19% 166
Morocco 0.16% 145
Peru 0.16% 141
Uruguay 0.15% 133
Belarus 0.15% 128
Armenia 0.13% 114
Tunisia 0.12% 107
Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of... 0.12% 106
Saudi Arabia 0.12% 104
Kazakhstan 0.1% 91
Ecuador 0.1% 90
Ghana 0.1% 90
Bosnia and Herzegovina 0.1% 87
Costa Rica 0.1% 86
Ethiopia 0.1% 86
Republic of Korea 0.1% 86
Algeria 0.1% 85
Cyprus 0.1% 84
Jordan 0.08% 72
Luxembourg 0.08% 72
Dominican Republic 0.08% 71
Lebanon 0.08% 66
Afghanistan 0.07% 64
Uzbekistan 0.07% 64
Albania 0.07% 60
Guatemala 0.07% 60
Uganda 0.07% 60
Iceland 0.06% 57
Azerbaijan 0.06% 53
Iraq 0.06% 51
The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia 0.06% 51
Republic of Moldova 0.06% 50
Malta 0.05% 46
Bolivia 0.05% 42
Myanmar 0.05% 42
Paraguay 0.05% 42
Montenegro 0.04% 38
Syrian Arab Republic 0.04% 37
United Republic of Tanzania 0.04% 36
El Salvador 0.04% 34
Zimbabwe 0.04% 34
Cuba 0.04% 33
Cambodia 0.03% 30
Cameroon 0.03% 30
Nicaragua 0.03% 30
Mauritius 0.03% 28
Kosovo 0.03% 27
Rwanda 0.03% 27
Honduras 0.03% 26
Zambia 0.03% 26
Kyrgyzstan 0.03% 25
Palestine 0.03% 24
Panama 0.03% 24
Jamaica 0.02% 21
Malawi 0.02% 21
Mongolia 0.02% 21
Madagascar 0.02% 20
Yemen 0.02% 20
Bahrain 0.02% 19
Trinidad and Tobago 0.02% 19
Kuwait 0.02% 18
Benin 0.02% 17
Andorra 0.02% 16
Qatar 0.02% 16
Somalia 0.02% 15
Côte d'Ivoire 0.02% 14
Angola 0.01% 13
Isle of Man 0.01% 13
Senegal 0.01% 13
Maldives 0.01% 12
Oman 0.01% 11
Swaziland 0.01% 11
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya 0.01% 10
Turkmenistan 0.01% 10
Mozambique 0.01% 9
Fiji 0.01% 8
Sierra Leone 0.01% 8
Sudan 0.01% 8
Antigua and Barbuda 0.01% 7
Barbados 0.01% 6
Botswana 0.01% 6
Mali 0.01% 6
Togo 0.01% 6
Belize 0.01% 5
Democratic Republic of the Congo 0.01% 5
Mauritania 0.01% 5
Tajikistan 0.01% 5
Burkina Faso 0% 4
Haiti 0% 4
Lesotho 0% 4
Namibia 0% 4
Niger 0% 4
North Korea 0% 4
Suriname 0% 4
Bhutan 0% 3
Brunei Darussalam 0% 3
Guyana 0% 3
Lao People's Democratic Republic 0% 3
Liberia 0% 3
Palau 0% 3
Bahamas 0% 2
Burundi 0% 2
Cape Verde 0% 2
Congo, Republic of the... 0% 2
Djibouti 0% 2
Dominica 0% 2
Gabon 0% 2
Guinea 0% 2
Monaco 0% 2
Saint Lucia 0% 2
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 0% 2
Timor-Leste 0% 2
Central African Republic 0% 1
Grenada 0% 1
Guinea-Bissau 0% 1
Liechtenstein 0% 1
Marshall Islands 0% 1
Saint Kitts and Nevis 0% 1
Samoa 0% 1
San Marino 0% 1
Where do you live? *

Developer Profile

Demographics

We reduced the number of demographic questions this year, only asking about age.

Age

43% of Professional Developers are 25-34 years old. But we see that more than half of the respondents learning to code are 18-24 years old.

89,184 responses
Under 18 years old 4.63% 4,128
18-24 years old 20.11% 17,931
25-34 years old 37.28% 33,247
35-44 years old 23.02% 20,532
45-54 years old 9.34% 8,334
55-64 years old 3.8% 3,392
65 years or older 1.31% 1,171
Prefer not to say 0.5% 449
What is your age? *
67,237 responses
Under 18 years old 0.63% 422
18-24 years old 16.36% 11,002
25-34 years old 42.9% 28,848
35-44 years old 25.74% 17,304
45-54 years old 9.65% 6,487
55-64 years old 3.64% 2,449
65 years or older 0.88% 594
Prefer not to say 0.19% 131
What is your age? *
4,961 responses
Under 18 years old 17.96% 891
18-24 years old 55.09% 2,733
25-34 years old 16.33% 810
35-44 years old 6.33% 314
45-54 years old 2.28% 113
55-64 years old 0.97% 48
65 years or older 0.24% 12
Prefer not to say 0.81% 40
What is your age? *
5,159 responses
Under 18 years old 18.1% 934
18-24 years old 23.96% 1,236
25-34 years old 22.04% 1,137
35-44 years old 16.4% 846
45-54 years old 10.18% 525
55-64 years old 5.1% 263
65 years or older 3.14% 162
Prefer not to say 1.09% 56
What is your age? *

Technology

Each year we explore the tools and technologies developers are currently using and the ones they want to use.

This year, we included new questions about AI tools.

We also introduce a new way to look at the relationship between Worked With vs. Want to Work With, calling this Admired and Desired.

Technology

Admired and Desired

In addition to reporting what popular technologies developers used in the past year, we have some technologies/tools that developers are currently using and know they want to use again in the future.

This year we added a new section to the survey results for technology trends for those who have used or want to use programming languages, tools, environments, libraries, etc. that we have dubbed “Admired and Desired”. To better gauge hype versus reality, we created a visualization that shows the distance between the proportion of respondents who want to use a technology (“desired”) and the proportion of users that have used the same technology in the past year and want to continue using it (“admired”). Wide distances means that momentum generated by the hype grows with hands-on use, and shorter distances means that the hype is doing much of the heavy lifting as far as general popularity is concerned. For example, we can see JavaScript, our most used programming language since 2011, has a relatively short distance between admired and desired (<10 percentage points), while Rust, a top choice for developers who want to use a new technology for the past 8 years, shows a wide distance (>60 percentage points); Rust is a language that generates for desire to use it once you get to know it than JavaScript. Seeing this growth in admiration for certain technologies gives us insight into what has staying power and what needs help in order to generate coveted evangelists to convert new users that will stick around.

This new visualization of the data replaces the old Loved, Dreaded, Wanted analysis.

Programming, scripting, and markup languages

Rust is the most admired language, more than 80% of developers that use it want to use it again next year. Compare this to the least admired language: MATLAB. Less than 20% of developers who used this language want to use it again next year.

87,510 responses
Desired
Admired
Which programming, scripting, and markup languages have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the language and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Databases

PostgreSQL, Redis, and Datomic are the most admired databases with Datomic having the least users. That kind of admiration should push others to consider Datomic as a viable option.

75,996 responses
Desired
Admired
Which database environments have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the database and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Cloud platforms

Hetzner and Vercel have a large proportion that have used and want to continue using them (69%+); more developers would choose to work with these two cloud platforms over those that would choose to and have worked with the top three (AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud).

68,885 responses
Desired
Admired
Which cloud platforms have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the platform and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Web frameworks and technologies

Phoenix is the most admired web framework and technology; more developers would choose to work with Phoenix again than those who have used the three most common: React, Node.js, and Next.js.

70,637 responses
Desired
Admired
Which web frameworks and web technologies have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Other frameworks and libraries

The most admired of the other frameworks and libraries category are Tauri, Hugging Face Transformers and .NET(5+). .NET(5+) is the most popular of it's category this year, while Tauri and Hugging Face Transformers are much less well known but have more admiration among its users.

66,235 responses
Desired
Admired
Which other frameworks and libraries have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Other tools

More respondents want to continue using Cargo next year than the top competitors (top 6 tools that respondents want to use next year), however, Docker has almost double the proportion of respondents that want to use it next year compared to all other options.

79,679 responses
Desired
Admired
Which developer tools for compiling, building and testing have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the technology and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Integrated development environment

Visual Studio Code is the preferred IDE as far as what users want but Neovim has a higher proportion of users that want to continue using it next year (81% vs 77%).

86,310 responses
Desired
Admired
Which development environments did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Please check all that apply.

Asynchronous tools

Markdown files are the second most desired asynchronous tool and the most admired asynchronous tool. Markdown files can be deployed in various hosted instances and show an opportunity for paid solutions to reduce friction for sharing information.

70,750 responses
Desired
Admired
Which collaborative work management and/or code documentation tools did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Select all that apply

Synchronous tools

Microsoft Teams and Zoom have the lowest proportion of users that want to continue using given first-hand experience out the top five solutions users want to use next year.

83,830 responses
Desired
Admired
Which communication tools did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Select all that apply

AI Search Tools

Developers want to keep using ChatGPT for their AI Search. Other tools they want to use are Phind and WolframAlpha.

62,691 responses
Desired
Admired
Which AI-powered search tools did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Select all that apply.

AI Developer Tools

Developers want to continue using GitHub Copilot and, in a flip, we see more developers overall who want to try it over the next year than those currently using Copilot.

39,615 responses
Desired
Admired
Which AI-powered developer tools did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Select all that apply

Technology

Worked with vs. want to work with

Developers are naturally curious and interested in new technologies. We look at what technologies they are interested in trying based on what they are using now.

Programming, scripting, and markup languages

A lot of our top used programming languages are popular because those that use them want to use them again. JavaScript, TypeScript, and HTML/CSS users all selected these three languages as their top three they want to use next year.

85,221 responses

Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which programming, scripting, and markup languages have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the language and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)
65,456 responses

Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which programming, scripting, and markup languages have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the language and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)
4,590 responses

Minimum 500 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which programming, scripting, and markup languages have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the language and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)
4,951 responses

Minimum 500 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which programming, scripting, and markup languages have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the language and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Databases

~11K PostgreSQL users want to use Redis next year and ~9K Redis users want to use PostgreSQL next year, an indication of complementary database environments among our top ten.

69,380 responses

Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which database environments have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the database and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)
55,396 responses

Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which database environments have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the database and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)
2,869 responses

Minimum 500 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which database environments have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the database and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)
2,945 responses

Minimum 500 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which database environments have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the database and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Cloud platforms

~14K AWS developers—a little less than half—want to develop in Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure next year.

62,373 responses

Minimum 1,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which cloud platforms have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the platform and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)
50,641 responses

Minimum 1,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which cloud platforms have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the platform and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)
2,352 responses

Minimum 100 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which cloud platforms have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the platform and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)
2,903 responses

Minimum 100 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which cloud platforms have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the platform and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Web frameworks and technologies

More jQuery users want to use Node.js or React next year rather than jQuery.

60,821 responses

Minimum 4,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which web frameworks and web technologies have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)
48,412 responses

Minimum 4,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which web frameworks and web technologies have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)
2,203 responses

Minimum 400 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which web frameworks and web technologies have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)
1,891 responses

Minimum 400 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which web frameworks and web technologies have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Other frameworks and libraries

The top three selections .NET(5+) users want to use next year are .NET(5+), .NET MAUI, and .NET Framework (1.0 - 4.8). .NET favoritism is strong within their community.

55,345 responses

Minimum 1,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which other frameworks and libraries have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)
43,363 responses

Minimum 1,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which other frameworks and libraries have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)
2,081 responses

Minimum 100 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which other frameworks and libraries have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)
2,945 responses

Minimum 100 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which other frameworks and libraries have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Other tools

We see a lot of people working with npm, Kubernetes, and Docker who also want to work with those same technologies.

76,132 responses

Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which developer tools for compiling, building and testing have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the technology and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)
59,532 responses

Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which developer tools for compiling, building and testing have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the technology and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)
2,863 responses

Minimum 500 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which developer tools for compiling, building and testing have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the technology and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)
3,489 responses

Minimum 500 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which developer tools for compiling, building and testing have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the technology and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Integrated development environment

More than half of Visual Studio users want to use VS Code next year, while just 20% of VS Code users want to use Visual Studio next year. VS Code has a wide array of extensions and plugins unlike Visual Studio, making it more compatible for more developer needs.

83,473 responses

Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which development environments did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Please check all that apply.
63,324 responses

Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which development environments did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Please check all that apply.
4,432 responses

Minimum 500 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which development environments did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Please check all that apply.
4,668 responses

Minimum 500 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which development environments did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Please check all that apply.

Asynchronous tools

Jira and Confluence are most closely interconnected, which makes sense given they are under the same company.

We see interest in working with other asynchronous tools, likely because each of these tools serves a different purpose in a developer’s workflow.

67,381 responses

Minimum 1,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which collaborative work management and/or code documentation tools did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Select all that apply
55,857 responses

Minimum 1,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which collaborative work management and/or code documentation tools did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Select all that apply
1,964 responses

Minimum 100 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which collaborative work management and/or code documentation tools did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Select all that apply
2,919 responses

Minimum 100 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which collaborative work management and/or code documentation tools did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Select all that apply

Synchronous tools

Discord is the third pick for synch tools users want to use next year for all three of the top synch tools users have used this past year: Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Zoom.

83,345 responses

Minimum 1,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which communication tools did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Select all that apply
64,885 responses

Minimum 1,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which communication tools did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Select all that apply
4,225 responses

Minimum 100 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which communication tools did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Select all that apply
4,648 responses

Minimum 100 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which communication tools did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Select all that apply

AI Search Tools

42% of ChatGPT users want to use Google Bard or Bing AI next year. These users are enjoying their experience: 79% want to use ChatGPT again next year.

56,181 responses

Minimum 1,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which AI-powered search tools did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Select all that apply.
41,687 responses

Minimum 1,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which AI-powered search tools did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Select all that apply.
3,839 responses

Minimum 100 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which AI-powered search tools did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Select all that apply.
3,482 responses

Minimum 100 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which AI-powered search tools did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Select all that apply.

AI Developer Tools

70%+ of GitHub Copilot users want to use it again next year.

25,208 responses

Minimum 1,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which AI-powered developer tools did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Select all that apply
19,084 responses

Minimum 1,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which AI-powered developer tools did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Select all that apply
1,480 responses

Minimum 100 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which AI-powered developer tools did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Select all that apply
1,320 responses

Minimum 100 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.
Which AI-powered developer tools did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Select all that apply

Technology

Top paying technologies

Top paying technologies

Zig is the highest-paid language to know this year (a new addition), while Clojure gets knocked from the top spot with a 10% decrease from 2022.

Dart and SAS saw the highest increase in median pay during 2023, growing more than 20% year-over-year.

47,883 responses
Zig $103,611 273
Erlang $99,492 522
F# $99,311 507
Ruby $98,522 3,547
Clojure $96,381 693
Elixir $96,381 1,288
Lisp $96,381 557
Scala $96,381 1,570
Perl $94,540 1,193
Go $92,760 6,916
OCaml $91,026 246
Objective-C $90,000 1,203
Flow $88,934 113
Rust $87,012 5,413
Swift $86,897 2,290
Groovy $86,271 2,007
Bash/Shell (all shells) $85,672 16,425
Haskell $85,672 649
Apex $81,552 313
PowerShell $81,311 6,979
SAS $81,000 205
Lua $80,690 2,314
Nim $80,000 129
Raku $79,448 63
Python $78,331 21,636
Kotlin $78,207 4,372
APL $77,500 62
Crystal $77,104 192
TypeScript $77,104 20,541
Assembly $77,010 1,562
Fortran $76,104 382
Cobol $76,000 247
C# $74,963 13,649
C++ $74,963 8,211
Julia $74,963 401
R $74,963 1,659
SQL $74,963 24,852
C $74,351 6,462
JavaScript $74,034 30,777
Java $72,701 13,111
Solidity $72,656 556
Ada $71,500 257
HTML/CSS $70,148 24,660
Prolog $70,000 248
Delphi $69,608 1,354
GDScript $69,608 536
VBA $65,698 1,626
Visual Basic (.Net) $65,000 1,856
MATLAB $61,735 1,241
PHP $58,899 8,513
Dart $55,862 2,455
What is your current total annual compensation (salary, bonuses, and perks, before taxes and deductions)? Please enter a whole number in the box below, without any punctuation. If you are paid hourly, please estimate an equivalent yearly salary. If you prefer not to answer, please leave the box empty.

Change in salaries between 2022 and 2023

Median salary for all respondents increased 10% and increased 11% for professional developers.

SAS
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $64,243 184
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $81,000 205
Dart
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $43,724 1,989
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $55,862 2,455
Kotlin
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $69,318 3,413
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $78,207 4,372
JavaScript
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $65,580 25,147
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $74,034 30,777
Swift
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $78,468 1,902
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $86,897 2,290
PHP
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $50,496 7,475
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $58,899 8,513
Java
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $64,572 11,333
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $72,701 13,111
R
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $67,734 1,414
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $74,963 1,659
Python
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $71,105 16,288
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $78,331 21,636
C
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $67,186 4,988
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $74,351 6,462
C++
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $68,000 6,332
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $74,963 8,211
Objective-C
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $83,165 990
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $90,000 1,203
TypeScript
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $70,276 15,077
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $77,104 20,541
HTML/CSS
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $63,984 20,231
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $70,148 24,660
SQL
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $69,108 20,150
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $74,963 24,852
Delphi
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $63,984 1,161
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $69,608 1,354
Ruby
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $93,000 2,850
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $98,522 3,547
C#
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $69,516 11,121
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $74,963 13,649
Haskell
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $80,250 530
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $85,672 649
Perl
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $90,073 894
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $94,540 1,193
MATLAB
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $57,588 1,039
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $61,735 1,241
OCaml
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $86,948 132
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $91,026 246
F#
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $95,526 426
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $99,311 507
Scala
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $92,780 1,135
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $96,381 1,570
Go
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $89,204 4,567
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $92,760 6,916
Elixir
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $92,959 995
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $96,381 1,288
VBA
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $62,328 1,652
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $65,698 1,626
PowerShell
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $78,084 4,934
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $81,311 6,979
Solidity
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $70,368 439
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $72,656 556
Assembly
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $75,000 1,202
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $77,010 1,562
APL
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $75,932 128
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $77,500 62
Lua
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $79,568 1,130
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $80,690 2,314
Groovy
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $85,320 1,605
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $86,271 2,007
Rust
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $87,047 3,076
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $87,012 5,413
Julia
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $77,966 426
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $74,963 401
Erlang
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $103,000 371
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $99,492 522
Fortran
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $80,000 292
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $76,104 382
Crystal
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $84,690 162
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $77,104 192
Clojure
2022 Median yearly salary (USD) $106,644 681
2023 Median yearly salary (USD) $96,381 693
What is your current total annual compensation (salary, bonuses, and perks, before taxes and deductions)? Please enter a whole number in the box below, without any punctuation. If you are paid hourly, please estimate an equivalent yearly salary. If you prefer not to answer, please leave the box empty.

AI

This was a new section for 2023 – we have a deeper dive into all of this data on our Stack Overflow Labs write-up.

We wanted to gain insight into the real sentiments behind this year’s surge in AI popularity. Is it making a real impact in the way developers work or is it all hype?

AI

Sentiment and usage

We asked a number of questions this year about perceptions of AI, how AI tools may or may not impact developer workflows, and more. We have a deeper dive into all of this data on our Stack Overflow Labs write-up

AI tools in the development process

70% of all respondents are using or are planning to use AI tools in their development process this year. Those learning to code are more likely than professional developers to be using or use AI tools (82% vs. 70%).

89,184 responses
Yes 43.78% 39,042
No, but I plan to soon 25.46% 22,710
No, and I don't plan to 29.4% 26,221
Do you currently use AI tools in your development process? *
67,237 responses
Yes 44.17% 29,697
No, but I plan to soon 25.88% 17,401
No, and I don't plan to 29.95% 20,139
Do you currently use AI tools in your development process? *
4,961 responses
Yes 54.87% 2,722
No, but I plan to soon 27.39% 1,359
No, and I don't plan to 17.74% 880
Do you currently use AI tools in your development process? *
5,159 responses
Yes 42.12% 2,173
No, but I plan to soon 25.2% 1,300
No, and I don't plan to 32.68% 1,686
Do you currently use AI tools in your development process? *

AI tool sentiment

77% of all respondents are favorable or very favorable of AI tools for development. Professional developers are more likely to be indifferent than those learning to code (17% vs. 15%).

61,501 responses
Very favorable 27.72% 17,050
Favorable 48.56% 29,863
Indifferent 16.5% 10,147
Unsure 4.02% 2,471
Unfavorable 2.76% 1,698
Very unfavorable 0.44% 272
How favorable is your stance on using AI tools as part of your development workflow?
46,928 responses
Very favorable 27.71% 13,002
Favorable 48.41% 22,717
Indifferent 16.8% 7,884
Unsure 3.88% 1,821
Unfavorable 2.78% 1,305
Very unfavorable 0.42% 199
How favorable is your stance on using AI tools as part of your development workflow?
4,047 responses
Very favorable 27.21% 1,101
Favorable 50.06% 2,026
Indifferent 14.58% 590
Unsure 5.14% 208
Unfavorable 2.32% 94
Very unfavorable 0.69% 28
How favorable is your stance on using AI tools as part of your development workflow?
3,463 responses
Very favorable 28.04% 971
Favorable 48.8% 1,690
Indifferent 15.54% 538
Unsure 4.33% 150
Unfavorable 2.95% 102
Very unfavorable 0.35% 12
How favorable is your stance on using AI tools as part of your development workflow?

AI

Developer tools

Benefits of AI tools

Increasing productivity is the biggest benefit that developers see from AI tools. Speeding up learning and greater efficiency are tied for secondary benefits.

38,594 responses
Increase productivity 32.81% 32,509
Speed up learning 25.17% 24,938
Greater efficiency 24.96% 24,739
Improve accuracy in coding 13.31% 13,189
Improve collaboration 3.75% 3,721
For the AI tools you use as part of your development workflow, what are the MOST important benefits you are hoping to achieve? Please check all that apply.

Accuracy of AI tools

We see developers split on their trust in the accuracy of the AI output from tools. About 42% trust the accuracy of the output, while 31% are on the fence.

39,042 responses
Highly trust 2.85% 1,751
Somewhat trust 39.3% 24,128
Neither trust nor distrust 30.68% 18,837
Somewhat distrust 21.71% 13,330
Highly distrust 5.46% 3,350
How much do you trust the accuracy of the output from AI tools as part of your development workflow?

AI in the development workflow

Those currently using AI tools mostly report benefits for writing code, while those not interested in using AI tools find this the least beneficial. This disconnect most likely is with the fundamental difference of type of developers not interested in using these tools with those that are interested and have more applicable use cases for the current functionality available.

37,726 responses
Writing code 82.55% 31,131
Debugging and getting help 48.89% 18,437
Documenting code 34.37% 12,963
Learning about a codebase 30.1% 11,350
Testing code 23.87% 9,000
Project planning 13.52% 5,097
Committing and reviewing code 10.09% 3,806
Deployment and monitoring 4.74% 1,788
Collaborating with teammates 3.65% 1,377
Which parts of your development workflow are you currently using AI tools for and which are you interested in using AI tools for over the next year? Please select all that apply.
37,726 responses
Writing code 23.72% 8,945
Debugging and getting help 40.66% 15,335
Documenting code 50.24% 18,945
Learning about a codebase 48.97% 18,467
Testing code 55.17% 20,807
Project planning 38.54% 14,534
Committing and reviewing code 49.51% 18,670
Deployment and monitoring 45.44% 17,137
Collaborating with teammates 29.98% 11,305
Which parts of your development workflow are you currently using AI tools for and which are you interested in using AI tools for over the next year? Please select all that apply.
37,726 responses
Writing code 4.48% 1,690
Debugging and getting help 6.37% 2,401
Documenting code 8.07% 3,042
Learning about a codebase 13.09% 4,936
Testing code 11.44% 4,316
Project planning 29.77% 11,227
Committing and reviewing code 22.95% 8,654
Deployment and monitoring 28.33% 10,682
Collaborating with teammates 41.38% 15,606
Which parts of your development workflow are you currently using AI tools for and which are you interested in using AI tools for over the next year? Please select all that apply.

AI tools next year

Regardless of being a professional developer or someone learning to code, people believe that their development workflow will be different in a year because of AI tools.

35,450 responses
Thinking about how your workflow and process changes over time, how similar or different do you anticipate your workflow to be 1 year from now as a result of AI tools you are currently using?
27,119 responses
Thinking about how your workflow and process changes over time, how similar or different do you anticipate your workflow to be 1 year from now as a result of AI tools you are currently using?
2,395 responses
Thinking about how your workflow and process changes over time, how similar or different do you anticipate your workflow to be 1 year from now as a result of AI tools you are currently using?
1,944 responses
Thinking about how your workflow and process changes over time, how similar or different do you anticipate your workflow to be 1 year from now as a result of AI tools you are currently using?

Work

Work

Employment

Employment status

For all respondents this year we see a slight increase in “Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed” and equal-sized decrease in full-time students (1 percentage point) compared to last year and other employment status' changing less than that.

The costs of investing in oneself has risen with inflation in 2023 but not enough to sway many from the opportunity to level up their developer skills.

87,898 responses
Employed, full-time 69.28% 60,899
Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 15.91% 13,988
Student, full-time 13.39% 11,768
Employed, part-time 5.72% 5,029
Not employed, but looking for work 4.75% 4,178
Student, part-time 3.86% 3,390
Not employed, and not looking for work 1.57% 1,380
Retired 0.84% 737
I prefer not to say 0.62% 549
Which of the following best describes your current employment status? Select all that apply.
67,206 responses
Employed, full-time 79.85% 53,663
Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 17.42% 11,704
Student, full-time 5.55% 3,733
Employed, part-time 5.46% 3,670
Student, part-time 3.06% 2,055
Not employed, but looking for work 2.97% 1,994
Not employed, and not looking for work 0.49% 331
Retired 0.27% 179
I prefer not to say 0.23% 157
Which of the following best describes your current employment status? Select all that apply.

Employment status by geography

Full-time employment has gone down in the top five countries while Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed has gone up (all less than 1%).

20,984 responses
Employed, full-time 68.91% 14,461
Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 9.79% 2,055
Student, full-time 9.29% 1,950
Not employed, but looking for work 3.82% 801
Employed, part-time 3.06% 642
Student, part-time 2.04% 428
Retired 1.37% 288
Not employed, and not looking for work 1.16% 244
I prefer not to say 0.55% 115
Which of the following best describes your current employment status? Select all that apply.
8,538 responses
Employed, full-time 56.41% 4,816
Student, full-time 14.63% 1,249
Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 10.92% 932
Employed, part-time 10.18% 869
Student, part-time 4.2% 359
Not employed, but looking for work 1.66% 142
Not employed, and not looking for work 1.08% 92
Retired 0.54% 46
I prefer not to say 0.39% 33
Which of the following best describes your current employment status? Select all that apply.
6,439 responses
Employed, full-time 56.02% 3,607
Student, full-time 17.18% 1,106
Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 10.47% 674
Not employed, but looking for work 6.93% 446
Student, part-time 3.84% 247
Employed, part-time 3.01% 194
Not employed, and not looking for work 1.63% 105
I prefer not to say 0.81% 52
Retired 0.12% 8
Which of the following best describes your current employment status? Select all that apply.
6,049 responses
Employed, full-time 67.8% 4,101
Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 12.38% 749
Student, full-time 10.76% 651
Employed, part-time 2.96% 179
Not employed, but looking for work 2.03% 123
Retired 1.45% 88
Not employed, and not looking for work 1.11% 67
Student, part-time 0.99% 60
I prefer not to say 0.51% 31
Which of the following best describes your current employment status? Select all that apply.
3,983 responses
Employed, full-time 64.93% 2,586
Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 12.63% 503
Student, full-time 11.02% 439
Not employed, but looking for work 3.72% 148
Employed, part-time 2.76% 110
Student, part-time 2.21% 88
Not employed, and not looking for work 1.31% 52
Retired 0.83% 33
I prefer not to say 0.6% 24
Which of the following best describes your current employment status? Select all that apply.

Work environment

Hybrid is here to stay for larger organizations; over half of employees in 5,000+ organizations are hybrid. The smaller organizations are most likely to be in-person, with one out of five organizations with fewer than 20 people report being in-person.

More developers this year are working in-person this year than last year (+2%). Return to office initiatives aside, coding easily lends itself to fully remote work and one third or more of all organization sizes are still fully remote.

73,810 responses
Hybrid (some remote, some in-person) 42.18% 31,131
Remote 41.41% 30,566
In-person 16.41% 12,113
Which best describes your current work situation?
64,672 responses
Which best describes your current work situation?

Work

Company info

Company size

40% of respondents work for an organization that has less than 100 employees.

59,336 responses
Just me - I am a freelancer, sole proprietor, etc. 5.35% 3,597
2 to 9 employees 8.92% 6,000
10 to 19 employees 7.41% 4,981
20 to 99 employees 18.64% 12,534
100 to 499 employees 16.75% 11,262
500 to 999 employees 6.06% 4,074
1,000 to 4,999 employees 9.61% 6,463
5,000 to 9,999 employees 3.51% 2,361
10,000 or more employees 10.44% 7,021
I don’t know 1.55% 1,043
Approximately how many people are employed by the company or organization you currently work for? This should only include your primary company, and not the entire holding or parent company if that applies.

Work

Salary

Salary by developer type

Senior roles like c-suite executives and engineering managers tend to have the highest salaries.

In Germany, engineering managers make comparable salaries to c-suite executives, and in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada we see that Developer Experience professionals have as high or higher salaries than c-suite.

46,411 responses

Median yearly salary in USD

Senior Executive (C-Suite, VP, etc.) $124,753.5 776
Engineering manager $124,138 1,311
Marketing or sales professional $116,000 40
Engineer, site reliability $115,657 319
Developer Experience $107,090 219
Cloud infrastructure engineer $105,000 766
Blockchain $103,743 185
Developer Advocate $100,312.5 116
Security professional $99,311 237
Scientist $92,321 196
Product manager $88,934 221
Hardware Engineer $85,672 163
Research & Development role $85,672 827
Engineer, data $83,515 904
Data scientist or machine learning specialist $80,317 992
DevOps specialist $80,158.5 982
Database administrator $78,686.5 134
Developer, embedded applications or devices $77,104 1,267
Developer, back-end $76,034 9,557
Developer, full-stack $71,140 17,060
Developer, game or graphics $71,007 491
Developer, desktop or enterprise applications $70,759 2,435
Developer, mobile $68,192.5 1,646
Educator $65,269.5 156
Developer, QA or test $63,927 360
Project manager $63,183 255
Data or business analyst $61,555 450
Developer, front-end $59,970 3,271
Designer $59,815 109
System administrator $55,764 328
Academic researcher $53,545 615
Student $15,421 23
What is your current total annual compensation (salary, bonuses, and perks, before taxes and deductions)? Please enter a whole number in the box below, without any punctuation. If you are paid hourly, please estimate an equivalent yearly salary. If you prefer not to answer, please leave the box empty.
11,396 responses

Median yearly salary in USD

Senior Executive (C-Suite, VP, etc.) $220,000 224
Developer Experience $210,000 77
Product manager $198,500 64
Engineering manager $195,000 434
Cloud infrastructure engineer $185,000 258
Engineer, site reliability $180,000 113
Security professional $173,000 86
Developer, back-end $165,000 1,985
Developer, mobile $163,000 287
Data scientist or machine learning specialist $160,000 250
DevOps specialist $160,000 224
Engineer, data $160,000 248
Research & Development role $160,000 212
Developer, game or graphics $158,000 107
Designer $151,000 32
Developer, embedded applications or devices $140,000 368
Developer, front-end $140,000 655
Developer, full-stack $140,000 4,383
Hardware Engineer $140,000 61
Scientist $132,500 82
Developer, desktop or enterprise applications $130,000 597
Project manager $125,000 41
Developer, QA or test $124,000 89
Database administrator $120,000 46
Data or business analyst $105,000 143
Educator $100,000 51
Academic researcher $90,000 100
System administrator $87,500 97
What is your current total annual compensation (salary, bonuses, and perks, before taxes and deductions)? Please enter a whole number in the box below, without any punctuation. If you are paid hourly, please estimate an equivalent yearly salary. If you prefer not to answer, please leave the box empty.
1,834 responses

Median yearly salary in USD

Engineering manager $42,409 44
DevOps specialist $26,051 32
Data scientist or machine learning specialist $24,234 43
Developer, desktop or enterprise applications $24,234 51
Engineer, data $23,628 38
Developer, back-end $21,228.5 414
Developer, full-stack $16,964 675
Developer, front-end $15,146 218
Developer, mobile $13,934 123
What is your current total annual compensation (salary, bonuses, and perks, before taxes and deductions)? Please enter a whole number in the box below, without any punctuation. If you are paid hourly, please estimate an equivalent yearly salary. If you prefer not to answer, please leave the box empty.
3,853 responses

Median yearly salary in USD

Engineering manager $107,090 90
Senior Executive (C-Suite, VP, etc.) $104,412.5 62
Data scientist or machine learning specialist $87,813 69
Engineer, data $85,672 82
Research & Development role $85,672 71
Cloud infrastructure engineer $85,227 74
Developer, mobile $83,530 119
Developer, back-end $80,317 690
Project manager $80,317 32
Developer, embedded applications or devices $74,963 151
DevOps specialist $70,679 95
Developer, desktop or enterprise applications $69,608 280
Developer, full-stack $69,608 1,400
Developer, front-end $68,537 225
Developer, game or graphics $64,254 37
Academic researcher $62,112 140
System administrator $56,354 34
What is your current total annual compensation (salary, bonuses, and perks, before taxes and deductions)? Please enter a whole number in the box below, without any punctuation. If you are paid hourly, please estimate an equivalent yearly salary. If you prefer not to answer, please leave the box empty.
3,399 responses

Median yearly salary in USD

Senior Executive (C-Suite, VP, etc.) $155,173 55
Engineering manager $117,931 125
Cloud infrastructure engineer $105,517 49
Developer, mobile $99,311 96
DevOps specialist $93,104 69
Developer, back-end $89,379 745
Data scientist or machine learning specialist $86,897 77
Research & Development role $86,897 61
Developer, game or graphics $82,552 48
Engineer, data $80,690 81
Developer, desktop or enterprise applications $77,715 171
Developer, embedded applications or devices $76,966 98
Developer, full-stack $74,483 1,271
Developer, front-end $71,689.5 198
Academic researcher $52,348 33
Data or business analyst $46,552 40
What is your current total annual compensation (salary, bonuses, and perks, before taxes and deductions)? Please enter a whole number in the box below, without any punctuation. If you are paid hourly, please estimate an equivalent yearly salary. If you prefer not to answer, please leave the box empty.
2,016 responses

Median yearly salary in USD

Engineering manager $126,397 67
Senior Executive (C-Suite, VP, etc.) $120,000 38
Cloud infrastructure engineer $109,668.5 40
Developer, game or graphics $107,810 55
Developer, back-end $104,092 383
Data scientist or machine learning specialist $97,400 38
Developer, mobile $92,939 53
Developer, front-end $85,504 119
DevOps specialist $84,575 54
Developer, desktop or enterprise applications $82,530.5 134
Developer, embedded applications or devices $81,787 41
Developer, full-stack $81,787 784
Research & Development role $75,838 38
What is your current total annual compensation (salary, bonuses, and perks, before taxes and deductions)? Please enter a whole number in the box below, without any punctuation. If you are paid hourly, please estimate an equivalent yearly salary. If you prefer not to answer, please leave the box empty.

Salary and experience by developer type

Years of experience continues to be the determining factor in higher salaries. The three highest-paid roles have, on average, more than 11 years of experience.

46,242 responses
Hover over each point for full details. Color scale is logarithmic.
What is your current total annual compensation (salary, bonuses, and perks, before taxes and deductions)? Please enter a whole number in the box below, without any punctuation. If you are paid hourly, please estimate an equivalent yearly salary. If you prefer not to answer, please leave the box empty.

Salary and experience by language

Zig developers are paid the most per years of experience compared to other languages (11 years average) with the same or more experience. Raku and Cobol developers have much more experience (19 years average) but make at least 25% less.

46,151 responses
Hover over each point for full details. Color scale is logarithmic.
What is your current total annual compensation (salary, bonuses, and perks, before taxes and deductions)? Please enter a whole number in the box below, without any punctuation. If you are paid hourly, please estimate an equivalent yearly salary. If you prefer not to answer, please leave the box empty.

Work

Purchasing technology

Influence on technology purchases

Similarly to last year, 66% of Professional Developers have at least some influence over their organization’s purchases of new technologies.

Developer positions with the most influence are senior executives and engineering managers; 99% of senior-level positions have some or a great deal of influence when purchasing new technologies, followed by 86% of engineering managers.

64,964 responses
I have little or no influence 34.99% 22,734
I have some influence 41.26% 26,805
I have a great deal of influence 23.74% 15,425
What level of influence do you, personally, have over new technology purchases at your organization?
62,455 responses
What level of influence do you, personally, have over new technology purchases at your organization?

Short list or investigate new tech purchases

Most respondents investigate new technology purchases on their own (80%) instead of relying on a list provided to them.

60,851 responses
Investigate 80.87% 49,212
Given a list 13.04% 7,935
Other 6.09% 3,704
When thinking about new technology purchases at your organization, are you more likely to be given a short list of products/services to evaluate or be told to investigate on your own?
50,089 responses
When thinking about new technology purchases at your organization, are you more likely to be given a short list of products/services to evaluate or be told to investigate on your own?

Researching new tools and technologies

Starting a free trial is the most common way to evaluate new tools and is up 2% among all respondents from last year's survey.

Full-stack and mobile developers prefer to start a free trial, while SRE and embedded application developers are more likely to ask a colleague/friend, indicating a need for different perspectives in the research process for certain roles.

83,009 responses
Start a free trial 73.74% 61,210
Ask developers I know/work with 71.02% 58,955
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 64.11% 53,221
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 33.64% 27,928
Ask a generative AI tool 15.39% 12,775
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 14.86% 12,338
Research companies that have emailed me 5.46% 4,533
When buying a new tool or software, how do you discover and research available solutions? Select all that apply.
69,556 responses
Academic researcher
Start a free trial 66.58% 805
Ask developers I know/work with 71.13% 860
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 63.36% 766
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 30.93% 374
Ask a generative AI tool 11.17% 135
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 11.33% 137
Research companies that have emailed me 5.21% 63
Blockchain
Start a free trial 68.79% 205
Ask developers I know/work with 71.14% 212
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 50.67% 151
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 34.9% 104
Ask a generative AI tool 26.51% 79
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 15.1% 45
Research companies that have emailed me 5.7% 17
Cloud infrastructure engineer
Start a free trial 73.18% 715
Ask developers I know/work with 74.51% 728
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 64.79% 633
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 31.63% 309
Ask a generative AI tool 13.61% 133
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 15.97% 156
Research companies that have emailed me 6.86% 67
Data or business analyst
Start a free trial 72.24% 557
Ask developers I know/work with 66.15% 510
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 64.98% 501
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 31.91% 246
Ask a generative AI tool 16.34% 126
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 19.58% 151
Research companies that have emailed me 8.69% 67
Data scientist or machine learning specialist
Start a free trial 69.78% 1,037
Ask developers I know/work with 73.35% 1,090
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 66.15% 983
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 31.02% 461
Ask a generative AI tool 20.19% 300
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 16.69% 248
Research companies that have emailed me 7.34% 109
Database administrator
Start a free trial 76.86% 186
Ask developers I know/work with 64.05% 155
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 59.5% 144
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 30.17% 73
Ask a generative AI tool 9.09% 22
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 16.12% 39
Research companies that have emailed me 8.26% 20
Designer
Start a free trial 80.23% 211
Ask developers I know/work with 54.75% 144
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 55.89% 147
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 36.88% 97
Ask a generative AI tool 17.11% 45
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 15.97% 42
Research companies that have emailed me 7.6% 20
DevOps specialist
Start a free trial 75.85% 1,005
Ask developers I know/work with 76.08% 1,008
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 68.45% 907
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 36.68% 486
Ask a generative AI tool 14.11% 187
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 15.92% 211
Research companies that have emailed me 6.87% 91
Developer Advocate
Start a free trial 81.34% 170
Ask developers I know/work with 79.43% 166
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 51.2% 107
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 33.97% 71
Ask a generative AI tool 13.88% 29
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 16.75% 35
Research companies that have emailed me 6.7% 14
Developer Experience
Start a free trial 75.25% 225
Ask developers I know/work with 78.93% 236
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 59.53% 178
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 31.77% 95
Ask a generative AI tool 15.05% 45
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 19.73% 59
Research companies that have emailed me 8.36% 25
Developer, QA or test
Start a free trial 75.5% 416
Ask developers I know/work with 74.59% 411
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 64.79% 357
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 33.03% 182
Ask a generative AI tool 15.06% 83
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 13.43% 74
Research companies that have emailed me 4.9% 27
Developer, back-end
Start a free trial 76.38% 9,797
Ask developers I know/work with 77.88% 9,989
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 63.23% 8,110
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 30.2% 3,874
Ask a generative AI tool 12.85% 1,648
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 12.55% 1,610
Research companies that have emailed me 4.01% 514
Developer, desktop or enterprise applications
Start a free trial 78.13% 2,869
Ask developers I know/work with 68.63% 2,520
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 69.85% 2,565
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 32.57% 1,196
Ask a generative AI tool 9.89% 363
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 15.47% 568
Research companies that have emailed me 4.98% 183
Developer, embedded applications or devices
Start a free trial 70.47% 1,193
Ask developers I know/work with 78.56% 1,330
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 70.05% 1,186
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 29.83% 505
Ask a generative AI tool 8.74% 148
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 13.76% 233
Research companies that have emailed me 5.38% 91
Developer, front-end
Start a free trial 76.48% 3,635
Ask developers I know/work with 72.42% 3,442
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 59.27% 2,817
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 32.55% 1,547
Ask a generative AI tool 16.66% 792
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 14.31% 680
Research companies that have emailed me 4.12% 196
Developer, full-stack
Start a free trial 78.28% 19,215
Ask developers I know/work with 73.85% 18,129
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 66.07% 16,217
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 34.44% 8,453
Ask a generative AI tool 15.57% 3,823
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 14.71% 3,611
Research companies that have emailed me 4.84% 1,187
Developer, game or graphics
Start a free trial 74.18% 612
Ask developers I know/work with 74.67% 616
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 60.24% 497
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 32.48% 268
Ask a generative AI tool 13.7% 113
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 11.39% 94
Research companies that have emailed me 5.09% 42
Developer, mobile
Start a free trial 79.19% 1,948
Ask developers I know/work with 72.76% 1,790
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 60.89% 1,498
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 29.23% 719
Ask a generative AI tool 13.82% 340
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 15.77% 388
Research companies that have emailed me 4.76% 117
Educator
Start a free trial 73.44% 282
Ask developers I know/work with 56.25% 216
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 65.36% 251
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 37.24% 143
Ask a generative AI tool 14.84% 57
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 14.58% 56
Research companies that have emailed me 7.29% 28
Engineer, data
Start a free trial 75.49% 890
Ask developers I know/work with 74.98% 884
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 66.41% 783
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 34.44% 406
Ask a generative AI tool 16.2% 191
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 17.56% 207
Research companies that have emailed me 7.46% 88
Engineer, site reliability
Start a free trial 69.87% 276
Ask developers I know/work with 79.75% 315
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 58.23% 230
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 31.39% 124
Ask a generative AI tool 12.41% 49
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 19.49% 77
Research companies that have emailed me 9.87% 39
Engineering manager
Start a free trial 83.38% 1,640
Ask developers I know/work with 83.27% 1,638
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 63.75% 1,254
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 37.57% 739
Ask a generative AI tool 13.42% 264
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 20.03% 394
Research companies that have emailed me 7.93% 156
Hardware Engineer
Start a free trial 68.48% 189
Ask developers I know/work with 71.74% 198
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 59.78% 165
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 34.78% 96
Ask a generative AI tool 10.51% 29
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 23.55% 65
Research companies that have emailed me 11.23% 31
Marketing or sales professional
Start a free trial 76.26% 106
Ask developers I know/work with 53.96% 75
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 64.03% 89
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 42.45% 59
Ask a generative AI tool 17.27% 24
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 23.74% 33
Research companies that have emailed me 11.51% 16
Product manager
Start a free trial 81.86% 352
Ask developers I know/work with 73.26% 315
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 60.47% 260
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 40.7% 175
Ask a generative AI tool 16.74% 72
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 17.91% 77
Research companies that have emailed me 9.77% 42
Project manager
Start a free trial 79.27% 455
Ask developers I know/work with 68.82% 395
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 63.94% 367
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 39.2% 225
Ask a generative AI tool 13.94% 80
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 21.08% 121
Research companies that have emailed me 9.41% 54
Research & Development role
Start a free trial 73.47% 936
Ask developers I know/work with 74.96% 955
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 70.96% 904
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 34.46% 439
Ask a generative AI tool 13.74% 175
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 17.43% 222
Research companies that have emailed me 7.3% 93
Scientist
Start a free trial 66.88% 206
Ask developers I know/work with 68.83% 212
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 65.91% 203
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 30.84% 95
Ask a generative AI tool 9.74% 30
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 13.64% 42
Research companies that have emailed me 9.09% 28
Security professional
Start a free trial 75.62% 335
Ask developers I know/work with 74.04% 328
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 60.05% 266
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 36.12% 160
Ask a generative AI tool 13.32% 59
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 19.86% 88
Research companies that have emailed me 8.35% 37
Senior Executive (C-Suite, VP, etc.)
Start a free trial 86.68% 1,132
Ask developers I know/work with 78.71% 1,028
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 61.87% 808
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 42.34% 553
Ask a generative AI tool 17.92% 234
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 22.89% 299
Research companies that have emailed me 14.01% 183
Student
Start a free trial 64.49% 1,146
Ask developers I know/work with 65% 1,155
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 71.41% 1,269
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 39.5% 702
Ask a generative AI tool 24.99% 444
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 15.76% 280
Research companies that have emailed me 5.85% 104
System administrator
Start a free trial 69.34% 484
Ask developers I know/work with 60.89% 425
Visit developer communities like Stack Overflow 65.76% 459
Read ratings or reviews on third party sites like G2 Crowd 40.11% 280
Ask a generative AI tool 12.03% 84
Research companies that have advertised on sites I visit 20.34% 142
Research companies that have emailed me 9.6% 67
When buying a new tool or software, how do you discover and research available solutions? Select all that apply.

Work

Coding outside of work

Coding outside of work

Most Professional Developers code outside of work as a hobby (70%), but 37% code outside of work for professional development or self-paced learning from online courses.

73,764 responses
Hobby 70.42% 51,942
Professional development or self-paced learning from online courses 36.54% 26,957
Contribute to open-source projects 24.72% 18,231
Freelance/contract work 19.33% 14,258
Bootstrapping a business 13.95% 10,293
I don’t code outside of work 11.94% 8,809
School or academic work 11.71% 8,636
Which of the following best describes the code you write outside of work? Select all that apply.

Community

Community is at the center of all that we do. Here we take a look at how people use Stack Overflow and how connected they feel to the community.

Community

Stack Overflow site use

Visiting sites across Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange

Less than 1% of respondents have never visited Stack Overflow or the Stack Exchange Network. For those learning, it's 4%.

Developers learning to code are mostly using online resources, but are also more likely to use online courses to learn and get up-to-speed on questions they may ask or search for on Stack Overflow.

87,973 responses
Stack Overflow 98.03% 86,239
Stack Exchange 67.1% 59,029
Collectives on Stack Overflow 8.06% 7,091
Stack Overflow for Teams (private knowledge sharing & collaboration platform for companies) 5% 4,397
I have never visited Stack Overflow or the Stack Exchange network 0.69% 611
Which of the following Stack Overflow sites have you visited? Select all that apply. *
67,237 responses
Stack Overflow 98.64% 66,324
Stack Exchange 68.01% 45,725
Collectives on Stack Overflow 7.77% 5,221
Stack Overflow for Teams (private knowledge sharing & collaboration platform for companies) 5.46% 3,668
I have never visited Stack Overflow or the Stack Exchange network 0.33% 222
Which of the following Stack Overflow sites have you visited? Select all that apply. *
4,961 responses
Stack Overflow 92.68% 4,598
Stack Exchange 49.89% 2,475
Collectives on Stack Overflow 11.07% 549
I have never visited Stack Overflow or the Stack Exchange network 4.07% 202
Stack Overflow for Teams (private knowledge sharing & collaboration platform for companies) 3.65% 181
Which of the following Stack Overflow sites have you visited? Select all that apply. *

Frequency of visiting Stack Overflow

92.5% visit Stack Overflow at least weekly or a few times a month.

89,184 responses
Multiple times per day 13.4% 11,952
Daily or almost daily 24.81% 22,124
A few times per week 31.49% 28,085
A few times per month or weekly 22.78% 20,312
Less than once per month or monthly 5.23% 4,667
How frequently would you say you visit Stack Overflow?

Have an account on Stack Overflow

Seven out of ten respondents have a Stack Overflow account.

89,184 responses
Yes 74.32% 66,282
No 16.39% 14,618
Not sure/can't remember 7.8% 6,952
1.49% 1,332
Do you have a Stack Overflow account?

Frequency of participation on Stack Overflow

Of those with a Stack Overflow account, a majority (39%) are participating on the site less than once per month or monthly.

89,184 responses
Multiple times per day 0.77% 685
Daily or almost daily 1.47% 1,309
A few times per week 3.68% 3,285
A few times per month or weekly 10.27% 9,160
Less than once per month or monthly 38.86% 34,661
I have never participated in Q&A on Stack Overflow 19.02% 16,961
How frequently would you say you participate in Q&A on Stack Overflow? By participate we mean ask, answer, vote for, or comment on questions.

Feel like a part of the Stack Overflow community

30% of respondents consider themselves “somewhat” or “definitely” a member of the Stack Overflow community. Of these respondents, 63% are between the ages of 25-44 and most likely have enough but not too much work experience to ask and answer questions compared to their more junior or senior counterparts.

89,184 responses
Yes, definitely 8.97% 7,996
Yes, somewhat 21.33% 19,026
Neutral 21.34% 19,033
No, not really 32.63% 29,100
No, not at all 13% 11,598
Not sure 1.05% 939
Do you consider yourself a member of the Stack Overflow community?
89,184 responses

Percent who consider themselves definitely or somewhat part of the Stack Overflow community.

Under 18 years old 22.31% 921
18-24 years old 26.31% 4,717
25-34 years old 30.44% 10,119
35-44 years old 32.78% 6,731
45-54 years old 35.03% 2,919
55-64 years old 34.58% 1,173
65 years or older 29.8% 349
Prefer not to say 20.71% 93
Do you consider yourself a member of the Stack Overflow community?

Professional Developers

We asked Professional Developers to tell us about what impacts their productivity at work, how often it happens, and how much time that takes out of their day. We also asked them about the developer experience at work—do they have the processes, tools, and programs to make it easier to do their jobs?

Professional Developers

Productivity impacts

Participation in Professional Developer series

49% of all respondents agreed to participate in this year's professional developer series, resulting in over 43,000 responses—6K more than last year.

89,184 responses
Yes 49.19% 43,872
Not Eligible 26.26% 23,416
No 24.55% 21,896
Would you like to participate in the Professional Developer Series? *

Individual contributor or people manager

The vast majority of respondents (86%) are individual contributors.

43,668 responses
Individual contributor 86.3% 37,685
People manager 13.7% 5,983
Are you an individual contributor or people manager?

Years of professional work experience

27% of respondents are 5-9 years into their professional careers.

This is inline with the majority response individual contributors (28% for 5-9 years), rather than people managers (21% for 5-9 years).

43,318 responses
1 to 4 years 23.81% 10,377
5 to 9 years 26.86% 11,707
10 to 14 years 18.55% 8,086
15 to 19 years 11.21% 4,885
20 to 24 years 8.39% 3,658
25 to 29 years 5.11% 2,225
30 to 34 years 2.73% 1,191
35 to 39 years 1.47% 642
40 to 44 years 0.82% 358
45 to 49 years 0.26% 112
50 years or more 0.18% 77
How many years of working experience do you have?
37,197 responses
1 to 4 years 26.01% 9,741
5 to 9 years 27.74% 10,389
10 to 14 years 17.86% 6,688
15 to 19 years 10.26% 3,842
20 to 24 years 7.76% 2,907
25 to 29 years 4.57% 1,712
30 to 34 years 2.5% 937
35 to 39 years 1.4% 524
40 to 44 years 0.82% 307
45 to 49 years 0.25% 92
50 years or more 0.15% 58
How many years of working experience do you have?
5,958 responses
1 to 4 years 9.79% 584
5 to 9 years 21.43% 1,278
10 to 14 years 23.18% 1,382
15 to 19 years 17.21% 1,026
20 to 24 years 12.28% 732
25 to 29 years 8.5% 507
30 to 34 years 4.14% 247
35 to 39 years 1.93% 115
40 to 44 years 0.84% 50
45 to 49 years 0.32% 19
50 years or more 0.3% 18
How many years of working experience do you have?

Industry

Most respondents are individual contributors and are in the IT industry (49%), followed by financial services and supply chain.

36,774 responses
Information Services, IT, Software Development, or other Technology 49.38% 18,159
Financial Services 12.02% 4,421
Other 10.91% 4,011
Manufacturing, Transportation, or Supply Chain 7.09% 2,607
Healthcare 6.03% 2,216
Retail and Consumer Services 5.32% 1,955
Higher Education 3.38% 1,242
Advertising Services 2.14% 786
Insurance 1.92% 707
Oil & Gas 0.75% 276
Legal Services 0.57% 210
Wholesale 0.5% 184
What industry is the company you work for in?
31,581 responses
Information Services, IT, Software Development, or other Technology 48.87% 15,435
Financial Services 11.89% 3,754
Other 11.09% 3,501
Manufacturing, Transportation, or Supply Chain 7.29% 2,302
Healthcare 6.09% 1,924
Retail and Consumer Services 5.41% 1,710
Higher Education 3.43% 1,084
Advertising Services 2.19% 693
Insurance 1.94% 614
Oil & Gas 0.76% 239
Legal Services 0.55% 173
Wholesale 0.48% 152
What industry is the company you work for in?
4,584 responses
Information Services, IT, Software Development, or other Technology 58.27% 2,671
Financial Services 14.18% 650
Manufacturing, Transportation, or Supply Chain 6.54% 300
Healthcare 6.28% 288
Retail and Consumer Services 5.21% 239
Higher Education 3.4% 156
Advertising Services 1.96% 90
Insurance 1.92% 88
Oil & Gas 0.79% 36
Legal Services 0.76% 35
Wholesale 0.68% 31
What industry is the company you work for in?

Ability to find knowledge and information within their organization

83% of respondents agree or strongly agree that they have interactions outside of their immediate team. The collaboration among developers and coworkers to find solutions at work is strong.

People managers more so than individual contributors (75% vs 66%) agree or strongly agree that they know which system or resource to use to find the answers they need. Managers help remove blockers for their team so this makes sense.

Interactions with team members and managers aren't enough to help developers as more than half (53%) of developers agree or strongly agree that they are slowed down at work waiting on answers.

In a new question this year, we asked if people feel like they have what they need to quickly understand and work on any area of their company's code. About half of developers say they have what they need, which means that the other half don't feel confident they have what they need to quickly understand and work on a new area.

42,621 responses
Please rate your level of agreement with the following statement:
36,659 responses
Please rate your level of agreement with the following statement:
5,842 responses
Please rate your level of agreement with the following statement:

Frequency of productivity frictions

90% of developers interact with members outside their team at least once per week.

People Managers more frequently than individual contributors need help from members outside their team: 22% (vs. 12%) find themselves doing this three or more times per week.

42,066 responses
How frequently do you experience each of the following?
36,185 responses
How frequently do you experience each of the following?
5,776 responses
How frequently do you experience each of the following?

Daily time spent searching for answers/solutions

63% of all respondents spend more than 30 minutes a day searching for answers or solutions to problems. People managers are more likely to spend less time searching than individual contributors (42% vs. 36% spend 30 minutes or less).

42,778 responses
Less than 15 minutes a day 9.25% 3,959
15-30 minutes a day 27.52% 11,773
30-60 minutes a day 38.19% 16,338
60-120 minutes a day 17.83% 7,626
Over 120 minutes a day 7.2% 3,082
On an average day, how much time do you typically spend searching for answers or solutions to problems you encounter at work? (This includes time spent searching on your own, asking a colleague, and waiting for a response).
36,786 responses
Less than 15 minutes a day 9.04% 3,325
15-30 minutes a day 26.96% 9,917
30-60 minutes a day 38.24% 14,066
60-120 minutes a day 18.37% 6,758
Over 120 minutes a day 7.39% 2,720
On an average day, how much time do you typically spend searching for answers or solutions to problems you encounter at work? (This includes time spent searching on your own, asking a colleague, and waiting for a response).
5,857 responses
Less than 15 minutes a day 10.6% 621
15-30 minutes a day 30.99% 1,815
30-60 minutes a day 38.01% 2,226
60-120 minutes a day 14.5% 849
Over 120 minutes a day 5.91% 346
On an average day, how much time do you typically spend searching for answers or solutions to problems you encounter at work? (This includes time spent searching on your own, asking a colleague, and waiting for a response).

Daily time spent answering questions

49% of all respondents spend more than 30 minutes a day answering questions.

We would expect people managers are more likely to spend more time each day answering questions; 36% versus only 16% of individual contributors spend an hour or more answering questions.

42,629 responses
Less than 15 minutes a day 19.52% 8,321
15-30 minutes a day 32.09% 13,678
30-60 minutes a day 30.53% 13,013
60-120 minutes a day 13.31% 5,674
Over 120 minutes a day 4.56% 1,943
On an average day, how much time do you typically spend answering questions you get asked at work?
36,671 responses
Less than 15 minutes a day 21.37% 7,838
15-30 minutes a day 33.81% 12,398
30-60 minutes a day 29.72% 10,900
60-120 minutes a day 11.52% 4,224
Over 120 minutes a day 3.58% 1,311
On an average day, how much time do you typically spend answering questions you get asked at work?
5,830 responses
Less than 15 minutes a day 7.75% 452
15-30 minutes a day 21.3% 1,242
30-60 minutes a day 35.54% 2,072
60-120 minutes a day 24.61% 1,435
Over 120 minutes a day 10.79% 629
On an average day, how much time do you typically spend answering questions you get asked at work?

Professional Developers

Developer Experience

Developer Experience: Processes, tools, and programs within an organization

Most Professional Developers report having CI/CD, automated testing, and DevOps available at their organization.

Slightly more developers report having observability tools than a developer portal to make it easy to find tools and services (39% vs. 37%).

16% of organizations have AI-assisted technology.

41,783 responses
Continuous integration (CI) and (more often) continuous delivery 71.93% 30,056
Automated testing 60.79% 25,398
DevOps function 60.45% 25,258
Microservices 49.13% 20,526
Observability tools 39.35% 16,442
Developer portal or other central places to find tools/services 36.7% 15,335
AI-assisted technology tool(s) 15.66% 6,543
Innersource initiative 14.13% 5,906
None of these 11.93% 4,984
My company has:

Methodology

How we planned and analyzed our survey

Methodology

General

This report is based on a survey of 89,184 software developers from 185 countries around the world. This is the number of responses we consider “qualified” for analytical purposes based on consenting to share their information in this survey and finishing all the required questions; approximately 2,000 responses were not included in this analysis.

The survey was fielded from May 8, 2023 to May 19, 2023.

The median time spent on the survey for qualified responses was almost 18 minutes, an increase we expected this year because of additional questions asked.

Respondents were recruited primarily through channels owned by Stack Overflow. The top sources of respondents were onsite messaging, blog posts, email/newsletter subscribers, banner ads, and social media posts. Since respondents were recruited in this way, highly-engaged users on Stack Overflow were more likely to notice the prompts to take the survey over the duration of the collection promotion.

Due to United States transport/export sanctions, our survey was, unfortunately, inaccessible to prospective respondents in Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria, due to the traffic being blocked by our third-party survey software. While some respondents used VPNs to get around the block, the limitation should be kept in mind when interpreting survey results.

Many questions were only shown to respondents based on their previous answers. For example, questions about jobs and work were only shown to those who said they were working in a job.

We asked respondents about their salaries. First, we asked what currency each respondent typically used. Then we asked the respondents what their salary was in that currency annually.

The salary question, like most on the survey, was optional. There were 48,026 respondents who gave us salary data. Salary comparisons in the Technology section bring in all salaries provided by respondents that were associated with having worked with a particular programming language. Salary comparisons in the Work section only compare salaries for those that indicated their developer role, excluding write-in responses, regardless of whether they provided a salary.

We converted salaries from user currencies to USD using the exchange rate on June 2, 2023.

Less than 1% of salaries inside and outside of the US were excluded because they exceeded threshold values.

To identify which technologies to include in the survey this year, included those used in the previous year and added popular ones written in as "Other". We submitted this list to our Meta community to solicit feedback and finalize a collection of technologies.

The questions were organized into several blocks of questions, which were randomized in order.

Free form text responses are primarily used to influence future survey choices but are not included in the published results.

Corrections to the results site since June 13, 2023: Updated the salary filter for sample size so that subsets of 30 or less are filtered from results, updated the AI section for 'AI Tools next year' as it was erroneously displaying professional coder responses in the all responsents tab, and updated Professional Developers section to display a new question this year for industry.

Methodology

Feedback

How do you feel about the length of the survey this year?

The majority of respondents felt like this year’s survey was an appropriate length.

86,485 responses
Appropriate in length 76.27% 65,962
Too long 21.51% 18,605
Too short 2.22% 1,918
How do you feel about the length of the survey this year?

How easy or difficult was this survey to complete?

2% of respondents felt like this year’s survey was difficult.

86,554 responses
Easy 62.5% 54,092
Neither easy nor difficult 35.92% 31,088
Difficult 1.59% 1,374
How easy or difficult was this survey to complete?

Methodology

Participants

Who participated in this survey

Similar to previous years the overwhelming majority of respondents are a developer by profession.

89,184 responses
I am a developer by profession 75.39% 67,237
I am not primarily a developer, but I write code sometimes as part of my work/studies 10.04% 8,954
I am learning to code 5.56% 4,961
I code primarily as a hobby 5.56% 4,960
I used to be a developer by profession, but no longer am 2.09% 1,861
None of these 1.36% 1,211
Which of the following options best describes you today? For the purpose of this survey, a developer is "someone who writes code". *