More than 30K technologists from 169 countries have shared their thoughts with us, and now it’s time to share everything we’ve learned with you. So let’s dive into this year’s Annual Developer Survey.
In the whirlwind that has been the last year of technological innovation and market uncertainty, we don’t blame you if you’re feeling burnt out. If keeping up with the latest and greatest in the tech world has been difficult for you, have no fear, because the Stack Overflow Annual Developer Survey is here!
For the sixteenth year, we’ve asked developers and technologists about everything from how they’re using AI to how happy they are at work to where they’re learning new skills. This year’s survey boils down to one question: How are you doing?
103
questions asked across 5 insightful categories
- 30,903
- Responses
- 169
- Countries reached
- 467
- Technologies examined
Work
Well, it ain’t what it used to be. This year, we’re finding survey respondents are less happy in their work—the numbers are showing less happy folks and more unhappy ones. All that innovation and uncertainty can make it tough to feel comfortable in your job.
Work Job satisfaction + AI
So…how’s work going for you? 33% say they are not happy at work this year.
| Respondents | Percent | |
|---|---|---|
| Complacent at Work | 8,516 | 45.1% |
| Not Happy at Work | 6,161 | 32.6% |
| Happy at Work | 4,199 | 22.2% |
“AI has the potential to reshape the entire software and product development life cycle, but realizing that potential requires a foundational change to workflows, roles, and ownership.”
Work Employer + technology details
Many are not taking this lying down: more and more technologists are finding freedom in freelance and self-employment.
The percentage of freelance or self-employed responses jumped from 3.9% to 10.5% just this year.
| Respondents | Percent | |
|---|---|---|
| 10,000 or more employees | 2,941 | 13.9% |
| 5,000 to 9,999 employees | 1,017 | 4.8% |
| 1,000 to 4,999 employees | 2,409 | 11.4% |
| 500 to 999 employees | 1,307 | 6.2% |
| 100 to 499 employees | 3,474 | 16.5% |
| 20 to 99 employees | 3,677 | 17.4% |
| Less than 20 employees | 3,555 | 16.8% |
| Just me - I am a freelancer, sole proprietor, etc. | 2,213 | 10.5% |
| I don’t know | 522 | 2.5% |
Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar recently spoke to Computing’s Ctrl Alt Lead podcast about why this might be the case: “With AI, every individual becomes almost a manager of agents. That's a sea change from just an individual that's writing code.” It seems that agents are superpowering some developers' work, making it easier for them to set a solo course backed up by their own team of agents—instead of taking their decreasing satisfaction at work on the chin.
AI
How are technologists using AI?
AI AI usage
62% like using AI
To the surprise of no one, AI use has skyrocketed over the last year. Devs are using AI more than ever before in their daily work—80% of respondents from this year’s survey used AI at least an hour per day. And with increased usage has come increased favor: now more than 60% of respondents have a favorable attitude towards AI tool use in their work.
| Respondents | Percent | |
|---|---|---|
| Very favorable | 4,564 | 31.6% |
| Somewhat favorable | 4,385 | 30.4% |
| Neutral | 2,205 | 15.3% |
| Somewhat unfavorable | 2,110 | 14.6% |
| Very unfavorable | 994 | 6.9% |
| Not sure | 170 | 1.2% |
AI Trust in AI and other trends
How much do you trust the output from AI tools or AI agents as part of your workflow?
And technologists have figured out better ways to use their AI tools—and place more trust in them. This year, more than 87% of respondents had some level of trust in AI’s outputs, a huge increase from 31% last year. But that trust is conditional—48% trust AI only when it comes to low risk, easily verifiable tasks.
| Respondents | Percent | |
|---|---|---|
| I trust it when I can easily verify the output | 6,872 | 48.0% |
| I trust it for many tasks, but not important work decisions | 2,329 | 16.3% |
| I trust it for low-risk work tasks only | 2,326 | 16.3% |
| I do not trust it for most work tasks | 1,754 | 12.3% |
| I trust it for many tasks, including important work decisions | 949 | 6.6% |
| Not sure / I do not use AI tools | 74 | 0.5% |
AI Knowledge sources and trust
And how exactly are AI users verifying the outcomes of an AI-generated answers?
Well, 93% of our respondents think that it all comes down to citing your sources. AI technology may have improved by leaps and bounds over last year, but it’s responses aren’t trustworthy enough yet to take at face value.
| Respondents | Percent | |
|---|---|---|
| Very important | 7,269 | 52.1% |
| Important | 3,701 | 26.5% |
| Somewhat important | 1,956 | 14.0% |
Technology
What's your favorite tech? It wouldn’t be a Stack Overflow Developer Survey if we didn’t include our technology leaderboard!
Technology Most popular technologies
Top programming languages used for AI shows Python leading at 39% usage
While the top-used technologies of the year—JavaScript, SQL, HTML/CSS, Python, and Bash/Shell—may not surprise you, how they are being used just might. For instance, when it comes to coding agents, AI seems to love Python above nearly all else, coming in at 39% usage.
| Respondents | Percent | |
|---|---|---|
| JavaScript | 5,419 | 38.4% |
| SQL | 4,207 | 29.8% |
| HTML/CSS | 4,692 | 33.3% |
| Python | 5,495 | 39.0% |
| Bash/Shell (all shells) | 4,038 | 28.6% |
| TypeScript | 4,293 | 30.4% |
| Java | 2,052 | 14.6% |
| C# | 2,277 | 16.2% |
| PowerShell | 2,057 | 14.6% |
| C++ | 1,595 | 11.3% |
Technology Most popular technologies
Top programming languages used by those with 16+ years of professional work experience
For both the seasoned developer and the green AI-assisted developer alike, JavaScript comes out near the top, trailing SQL (the first-place winner) by just one point.
| Respondents | Percent | |
|---|---|---|
| JavaScript | 3,282 | 62.0% |
| SQL | 3,337 | 63.0% |
| HTML/CSS | 2,987 | 56.4% |
| Python | 2,818 | 53.2% |
| Bash/Shell (all shells) | 2,740 | 51.7% |
Technology Build vs. AI
When it comes to building vs. buying—the age-old trolley problem of software development—only 19% of our respondents are building their own tools to replace vendors.
However, of those that are building instead of buying, over half are using AI tools to help them do it, showing AI’s utility for developers looking to bring their SaaS in-house.
| Respondents | Percent | |
|---|---|---|
| Small scripts/automations | 10,304 | 77.3% |
| Team-level internal tools | 8,398 | 63.0% |
| Customer-facing products | 7,254 | 54.4% |
| Cross-team/platform tools | 6,130 | 46.0% |
| Replacing paid vendors | 2,482 | 18.6% |
Community
What’s the developer community up to? Whether you’ve become best buds with an AI-powered chatbot or have taken up the anti-AI pitchforks alongside the other luddites, we can all recognize how much AI has changed. We saw that very clearly reflected in this year’s survey—especially in how developers are engaging with knowledge and community.
Community Finding and trusting answers
How do you search for answers?
While the lion’s share of respondents still seek guidance from traditional search tools when they face a new challenge, nearly 70% of technologists also use AI agents to help them solve problems—beating out maintained repositories and trusted humans as direct sources of learning.
- Search online
- Ask an AI agent
- Search a known repository
- Message someone I trust
- Post in a private group
| Respondents | Percent | |
|---|---|---|
| Use online search tools to find general guidance and/or discourse | 13,774 | 82.7% |
| Ask an AI agent | 11,643 | 69.9% |
| Go directly to a maintained repository or more than one and search within its contents (this could be a repository like Wikipedia or IMDB or GitHub projects) | 7,288 | 43.7% |
| Send a message to a human I trust directly | 4,803 | 28.8% |
| Post a message in a group text or private discussion among humans I know | 2,462 | 14.8% |
Community Knowledge sources and trust
When you need to answer a work-related question, which sources do you use most often?
When it comes to work-related questions, however, developers are still turning to the humans in their loops—also known as coworkers and teammates—first in order to get the answers they need (72%), with code repositories (63%) and internal documentation (60%) following as close runner-ups.
| Respondents | Percent | |
|---|---|---|
| Coworkers or teammates | 10,405 | 71.9% |
| Code repositories or code comments | 9,065 | 62.7% |
| Internal documentation (i.e. Design, product, or planning docs), wiki, or knowledge base | 8,687 | 60.1% |
| Internal chat tools, such as Slack or Teams | 6,572 | 45.4% |
| Official docs | 4,415 | 30.5% |
Community Finding and trusting answers
Nearly two-thirds of developers rely less on Stack Overflow for straightforward questions due to AI, with 29% asking fewer questions overall.
64% visiting less for simple questions
| Respondents | Percent | |
|---|---|---|
| Visit less for simple questions | 10,892 | 64.1% |
| Ask fewer questions | 4,910 | 28.9% |
| Contribute less | 4,496 | 26.5% |
| No change | 3,704 | 21.8% |
| Visit more for verification (for example, source attribution) | 2,707 | 15.9% |
| Other | 1,084 | 6.4% |
| Ask more advanced questions | 967 | 5.7% |
| Visit SO more because AI-generated answers lead you there | 965 | 5.7% |
| Contribute more | 203 | 1.2% |
Knowledge
What does everyone need to know? In software development, context seems to be the reigning king this year, whether or not AI agents are involved. But the right context is not always reaching developers at the right time.
Knowledge Context Challenges
What gets in the way of you getting the context you need for work?
Over 63% of developers find incomplete information to be a barrier to getting the right context at work, while 79% regularly discover the important context they need only after the fact. A lot of time goes into that context search, 75% spent five plus hours searching for answers.
| Respondents | Percent | |
|---|---|---|
| Information is incomplete | 7,825 | 63.2% |
| Important context lives in people’s heads | 7,541 | 60.9% |
| Information is outdated | 6,989 | 56.5% |
| Information is spread across too many tools | 6,603 | 53.4% |
| I do not know where to look | 3,816 | 30.8% |
Knowledge Context Challenges
How often do you discover important work context only after you have already started or completed a task?
This has left teams with a bit of a problem of their own creation. Developers have relied on the expert knowledge from resources like technical documentation, Stack Overflow, or online search to drive their work, but, as reported in a pulse survey earlier this year, we know low-effort documentation is leading to more and more dissatisfaction in AI-driven work.
| Respondents | Percent | |
|---|---|---|
| Very often | 1,539 | 12.1% |
| Often | 2,964 | 23.4% |
| Sometimes | 5,465 | 43.1% |
| Rarely | 2,136 | 16.8% |
“AI is forcing software organizations to document the judgment they previously relied on people to supply.”
Knowledge AI adoption and cost
31% of respondents say that the accuracy of AI answers is important to the adoption or expansion of AI tool use.
| Respondents | Percent | |
|---|---|---|
| The tool produces useful and accurate results | 3,520 | 30.7% |
| The tool meets security, privacy requirements | 3,290 | 28.7% |
| The price is acceptable for the value it provides | 3,090 | 27.0% |
| The tool meets legal or compliance requirements | 2,557 | 22.3% |
| Not sure | 2,522 | 22.0% |
Knowledge Context Challenges
Project goals or requirements (85%) and code, repositories, or technical documentation (73%) are the top important sources for context at work
And the most important context for AI agents and assistants to have? Why, your internal projects, of course! Project requirements (85%) and the code and docs themselves (73%) are the two most important contexts that developers need their AI agents to have.
| Respondents | Percent | |
|---|---|---|
| Project goals or requirements | 10,806 | 85.2% |
| Code, repositories, or technical documentation | 9,297 | 73.3% |
| Prior decisions and rationale | 5,580 | 44.0% |
| Related tickets, tasks, or issues | 4,679 | 36.9% |
| Business goals or product strategy | 4,189 | 33.0% |
| Pull requests, commit history, or release notes | 3,332 | 26.3% |
| Customer or user feedback | 3,296 | 26.0% |
| Team norms, preferences, or ways of working | 3,183 | 25.1% |
| Compliance, security, or policy requirements | 2,498 | 19.7% |
| Current status or ownership | 2,490 | 19.6% |
| Past discussions in chat, email, or meetings | 2,000 | 15.8% |
| Data, dashboards, or reports | 932 | 7.4% |
| I do not usually need additional context | 266 | 2.1% |
| Other | 79 | 0.6% |