Stack Overflow has just released the results of their 2015 developer survey, in which 26000+ Stack Overflow users from 150+ countries responded to various questions regarding their programming habits.
Here are the items that I found most interesting/surprising:
- Gender Gap: Only 5.6% of the respondents were female. This is even lower than I thought. Interestingly, 15.1% of the Indians were female, while only 4.8% of US respondents were female. So, does India have 3x the percentage of female developers?
- 40+% of the respondents do not have a formal degree in computer science.
- Programming Languages: If you disregard Javascript and SQL, then the top 5 languages are Java (37.4%), C# (31.6%), PHP (29.7%), Python (23.6%), and C++ (20.6%). Of these, all except Python have been declining if you look at the trends from 2013 to 2014 to 2015. Python increased slightly. Ruby comes in at a lowly #10 is declining.
- Most Loved and Most Dreaded Languages: C++11 makes the list of “most loved” languages, coming in at an impressive #2 on the list. After listening to Stroustrup talk about the latest features in C++11 and C++14 a few months back, even I feel like checking it out. The “most dreaded” languages list is topped by “Salesforce” and contains other interesting entries like: WordPress, Perl, Matlab, and Coffeescript.
- Editors: I am a part of the just 3.8% who use emacs. Vim has 15.2 percent. Of course, Notepad++ (34.7%), and Sublime Text (25.2%) top this category.
- Version Control Systems: The “Which VCS to use?” question seems to be settled. 69.3% use git. The 36.9% use SVN are surely legacy, and will switch to git for their next project. And if you’re using any of the others, you are on the losing side. And if you are one of the 9.3% who don’t use VCS, please quit and change careers.
- Tabs vs Spaces: Sadly, 45% of the developers are idiots who use tabs instead of spaces. However, there is hope because as developers gain experience, they start switching to spaces – people with 10000+ reputation points on Stack Overflow are 3 times more likely to prefer spaces.
- Job Satisfaction: 76% of the respondents either love their job, or are at least satisfied by it. I wonder if this is indicative of the industry in general, or just the selection bias in the survey respondents.
Read the full report, it is interesting.