For the 11th consecutive year, web development staple JavaScript was the most commonly used programming language among developers participating in Stack Overflow’s annual developer survey.
JavaScript was also the language that most developers surveyed desire, or want to use, followed closely by Python. But Rust was the language that respondents most admire, with nearly 85% of the developers who had used Rust saying they want to continue using it in the future—compared to 58% for JavaScript and 66% for Python. The next most highly admired languages were TypeScript and Zig, a C alternative.
JavaScript was followed in usage by HTML/CSS in second place and Python in third place, with Python this year overtaking SQL, which finished fourth. TypeScript took fifth place in the survey, which asked nearly 90,000 software developers worldwide about their work, salaries, and tools. The survey was conducted in early May.
In findings, PostgreSQL surpassed MySQL as the most commonly used database, Amazon Web Services (AWS) remained the most-used cloud platform, far ahead of second-place and third-place finishers Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
Results of the survey were published in a report on June 13. Elsewhere in the report:
- Node.js and React were the two most commonly used web technologies. Phoenix was the most admired web framework and technology, based on the number of developers who would choose to work with it again.
- The top-paying technology was Zig, which carried a median yearly salary of $103,611.
- Docker was the most commonly used tool in the “other tools” category, which included tools outside of the web frameworks and technologies and the other frameworks and libraries categories. NPM was second.
- In two new sections this year, the most-used AI developer tools were GitHub Copilot and, in a distant second place, Tabnine, while the top selections for AI search tools was ChatGPT, followed by Bing AI. Nearly 70% of all respondents were already using or were planning to use AI tools in their development processes this year.
- Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code remains the preferred IDE, used regularly by 74% of all respondents, followed by the company’s Visual Studio and JetBrains’ IntelliJ IDEA.
- Windows was the most popular operating system for developers, across both personal and professional use. Following Windows were MacOS and Ubuntu Linux.
- Atlassian’s Jira and Confluence were the top two asynchronous tools.