The State of Developer Ecosystem 2022
These are the results of the sixth annual survey conducted by JetBrains to capture the landscape of the developer community.
This report has been created based on the responses of 29,269 developers from around the world who participated in our study in May–July 2022.
It covers a wide range of topics, including programming languages, tools, technologies, demographics, and even fun facts, as well as the lifestyle of developers.
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Key Takeaways
75%
of the coding community is involved in web development, while 66% involved in backend web development.
Half of all developers surveyed are planning to adopt a new programming language. The two most popular choices for next languages are Go and Rust, followed by Kotlin, TypeScript, and Python.
In 2021, the survey attracted a disproportionately high share of PHP and Laravel developers. You can find more information about the reasons for this aberration in the Methodology section.
The programming languages that are showing a downward trend include PHP, Ruby, Objective-C, and Scala.
The most popular programming language, JavaScript, is used by 65% of developers in one way or another. It is also the most popular primary language, with a share of 34%.
TypeScript’s share has almost tripled over the course of 6 years, increasing from 12% in 2017 to 34% in 2022.
Will it eventually replace JavaScript? Though it is rapidly catching up to JavaScript, the usage of JavaScript remains stable high. 92% of TypeScript developers use JavaScript, with 40% choosing it as one of their primary languages.
Python has been growing in popularity, and with a share of 55%, it is now the second most used language, after JavaScript. More than half of all developers in the world are using it.
Python is also growing as a primary programming language and is catching up to JavaScript. Only one percentage point separates them, with Python at 33% and JavaScript at 34%!
The five most favorite programming languages are Python, Java, JavaScript, C#, and Kotlin!
When we consider these preferences relative to number of people using the languages, however, the leaders are Kotlin, C#, Python, Rust, Java.
The five most disliked programming languages are JavaScript, Java, PHP, C and C++.
JavaScript and Java are very controversial, as they are on top of the lists for both favorite and least favorite languages.
But if we calculate the least favorite language relative to the number of people using it, there is an absolute champion as the most dreaded language. Perl’s share is a whopping 96%, followed by Visual Basic with 77%, Delphi with 60%, and C with 51%.
The languages with the highest share among the youngest respondents (18–20) are Assembly, C, C++, Haskell, Lua, MatLab, and Rust. This is perhaps unsurprising, as these languages are often taught in universities.
The languages with relatively high shares among older developers are COBOL, Assembly, CoffeeScript, Perl, Delphi, and Visual Basic. With the exception of Assembly, these languages have low shares among developers younger than 30.
There is also a low amount of interest in Ruby among young developers.
Types of development
The youngest survey respondents primarily work on game development and entertainment software.
This year, we asked respondents to match their primary programming language with the software types and platforms they use it for. This provided a more accurate picture of the most popular use cases for various languages than last year’s report, where we just made a cross table with the three primary programming languages.
Technologies
* No specific technology was mentioned.
The largest share of developers identified AI / ML as the most promising technology. In addition to programming languages, respondents also mentioned Blockchain, WebAssembly, Flutter, AR / VR, and Cloud technologies.
This question was shown to all respondents who use Windows as their operating system.
The responses indicate that developers appreciate mobility. 85% of developers use laptops for coding, and 39% use laptops and desktops simultaneously.
9% of the respondents claimed to code with a smartphone, with 65% of them developing for mobile!
More than a half of developers (55%) install UI themes and add-ons for their IDEs or editors.
Gender and development
In charts below the “Other” option includes “non-binary, “genderqueer, or gender non-conforming”, as well as the “Other, please specify” and “Prefer not to say” options. The sample size of this group is too small, however, for reliable conclusions to be drawn from it.
The types of software development with the largest shares of women are augmented reality / virtual reality, websites, and business intelligence / data science / machine learning.
Though diversity remains low in the tech industry, it is trending upwards.
Migration
About 10% of developers have moved to live in another country.
We see that migration among developers has generally been increasing, especially since 2015. It dropped in 2020 presumably due to the pandemic, and in 2022 it recovered to the levels seen in 2019.
Emigration rate = The number of people who were born in one country or region but work in a different one / the total number of people born in the country or region of origin.
Languages
This question was only shown to respondents who use different languages at home and at work.
Team Leads and Senior Developers are more likely to use English at work while speaking other languages at home or with friends.
This question was only shown to respondents who use different languages at home and at work.
Out of that 13% who do not speak the same language at home as they do with their colleagues, the three languages most commonly spoken with family and friends were English, Chinese, and Hindi.
Check out the other large-scale survey reports by JetBrains.
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Raw data
The raw data from our DevEco 2022 survey is now available. Download, explore, and glean your own insights!
DownloadIf you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us at surveys@jetbrains.com.