The State of Developer Ecosystem in 2018

In the beginning of 2018 we surveyed 6,000 developers to identify the State of Developer Ecosystem.

Here's what we learned.

Key takeaways

Java

Most popular primary
programming language

JavaScript

Most used overall
programming language

Go

Most promising
programming language

Programming languages

Question with checkboxes. Sum of shares may be more than 100%.
The list of languages only included the options which were not selected in the question “what programming languages do you regularly use?”

38% of all developers don't plan to adopt any new programming languages.

Primary Programming languages

Note: We asked respondents to rank their 3 primary programming languages by the frequency of use. Then we assigned weights to each position (1st - 3, 2nd - 2, 3rd - 1) and estimated the weighted popularity of the languages.

Which of the following tools do you regularly use?

Question with checkboxes. Sum of shares may be more than 100%.

Respondents are sticking with using IDEs rather than Lightweight Desktop Editors: 82 % regularly use IDEs while only 69% use editors.
Respondents prefer to custom-tailor their working environment to themselves: only 12 % do not customize their IDE / editors.
In-cloud IDEs and editors are still an unpopular choice: only 8% of respondents work with them on a regular basis
Most of the respondents have joined the dark side: 77% of respondents use dark theme for their editor or IDE.
What programming languages have you started learning / continued to learn in the last 12 months, if any?

Question with checkboxes. Sum of shares may be more than 100%.

Where do you host your databases and / or services and / or applications that you or your company develop?

Question with checkboxes. Sum of shares may be more than 100%.

People are planning to move from self-hosted and on-premises solutions to major cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure.
In the next 12 months, the share of private and local servers will drop by 6% and by 11%, respectively, while the share of Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure will grow by 8%, 7%, and 3%, respectively.

Do you do unit testing in your projects?

Do you contribute to open-source projects?

What operating systems are your development environments?

Question with checkboxes. Sum of shares may be more than 100%.

What types of applications do you develop?

For money
As a hobby

Question with checkboxes. Sum of shares may be more than 100%.

Which mobile operating systems do you develop for?

This question was only answered by respondents who develop mobile applications.

35% of respondents develop for both Android and iOS.
How do you develop for mobile operating systems?

Question with checkboxes. Sum of shares may be more than 100%.
This question was only answered by respondents who develop mobile applications.

15% of developers use both native tools and cross-platform technologies / frameworks.

Fun questions

Do you listen to music when coding?
Which music genres do you prefer? Choose up to 3 of your favorites.

Question with checkboxes. Sum of shares may be more than 100%.
This question was only answered by respondents who listen to music while coding.

Developers, System Analysts, Product Managers, Team leads, QA engineers, Data Analysts, Instructors / Teachers / Tutors, and DevOps engineers all tend to prefer Electronic music when coding.
DBAs, UX / UI designers, and Architects mostly prefer Rock.
CIOs / CTOs / CEOs, Technical Support, and Business Analysts prefer classical music.

How many hours a day do you sleep?

How many hours a week do you spend coding?
Where do you code the most?
Developers who work independently on their projects usually do it from home, while those who work in a team do it from the office.
Do you code on weekends?
Do you have and use a cell / smart phone?

Question with checkboxes. Sum of shares may be more than 100%.

Do you prefer tea or coffee?

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Thank you for you time!
We hope you found our report useful.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us at surveys@jetbrains.com.