Developer demographics and hot topics
A bit heavy on “non-professional” developers in the sample.
The Rightstack Research DB
SlashData’s Developer Nation Survey
SlashData's Developer Nation survey isn't just your run-of-the-mill developer research program. It's a comprehensive initiative that spans an extensive tech landscape, covering everything from mobile and desktop to IoT, consumer electronics, cloud computing, web development, and much more.
We don't stop at developers either; data scientists are on our radar too. We meticulously trace developers' journeys across various platforms, technologies, programming languages, and more, all within different global regions.
Our Pulse report, powered by data from Developer Nation's 25th global survey wave (conducted from June to August 2023), delves into the latest and most crucial developer trends for Q3 2023. With insights from over 17,000 developers across 154 countries, it's a treasure trove of knowledge.
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2A. Which region are you based in?
Around 17,000 developers around the globe participated in the 25th Edition of Developer Nation Survey
There is a reasonably even geographical distribution of software developers, with North America leading the way (19.5%) and Greater China at the lower end of the spectrum with 12.1%.
2B. What is your gender?
Though improving with each survey wave, the gender split in the developer community continues to highlight a significant under-representation of female coders.
Among survey respondents who chose to reveal their gender, 75.7% identify as Male and 23% as Female. We’ve witnessed steady growth in women's participation in developer communities over the years. However, the big gap still remains, and more initiatives are needed in this space to increase women's and LGTBQ+ participation.
2C. What is your age?
A majority of software developers belong to the age group of 25-34.
This view has remained relatively unchanged since the last few survey waves. A majority (~34%) of developers are in the age group 25-34, followed by ~29% in the age group 18-24. There is a small portion of developers below the age of 18, which is always great to see. On the other end of the spectrum, we have ~9% developers aged 45-54.
3. Involvement in software development & learning patterns
3A. How are developers involved in software development?
Professional developers make up ~31% of the survey population.
Developers appear to be involved in software development in various ways depending on the projects they are working on. Most participants, around 38%, consider themselves professionals and hobbyists or students. These developers code at their workplace as well as for personal projects. While ~31% of respondents are strictly coding as a profession. We also have student developers in the sample, comprising ~11.5 of the survey population.
3B. Developer’s experience in software development
36.7 % of developers have more than 6+ years of experience.
On one end, we have ~18% of developers with less than 1 year of experience; it’s an indicator of "new blood" introduced to the global pool of software developers, which has remained fairly the same across the recent survey waves. On the other end, a majority (~37%) of survey participants have 6+ years of experience developing software. Furthermore, ~25% of developers have 3-5 years of experience, often considered a transitional period for most developers to more senior or managerial positions.
3C. Top 5 ways in which developers learn to code
Online courses and self-taught still remain the most preferred ways of developers to learn how to code
Almost 50% of developers prefer to opt for an online course from a platform like Udemy, Coursera, YouTube, etc, to learn to code. These can be new developers learning to code for the first time or even developers learning a new programming language. It is followed by 47% of developers who consider themselves self-taught programmers, which might include referring to documentation and creating sample projects for practice.
It’s worth noting that survey participants could pick more than one option as there could be more than one way to learn programming. 56% of respondents learned to code during their undergraduate or postgraduate studies. , while ~21% learned to code while pursuing a master's degree.
3D. Top 5 developer roles
~42% of respondents self-identify themselves as Programmers or Software Developers
Computer or Data Science students account for 13.7% of the survey population. A small segment of ~7.8% of survey respondents work as Software Architects providing system solutions for software and applications.
3E. What motivates developers to contribute to corporate or vendor-owned open-source software projects
“Learning to code better” still remains the biggest motivator for developers, leading them to contribute to a vendor-owned open-source project.
While ~18% of software developers contribute to vendor-owned open source projects to get their code reviewed by knowledgeable people and build a mentor-mentee relationship, learning to code better remains the biggest motivator with ~35% of developers. 22.5% of developers do not contribute to any vendor-owned open-source software project.
4. Developer Careers: Salaries, Income and Company size
4A. What is your current total yearly compensation, in US dollars?
On a global average, more than 37% of developers earn between $50K to $200K annually.
A handsome paycheck is why many people choose to make a career in software development. There is a 10.5% of the total population, which makes up to 1,000$ per year, which seems to be in accordance with the segments of students and hobbyists involved in the survey.
4B. What is the size of the organisation you work for?
Enterprise Developers make up 18% of the survey population
While ~12% of respondents work independently, 18% of developers work in organisations with 501 to 5000 employees, which often falls in the category of Enterprise Developers. If you’re interested in learning more about the work priorities of Enterprise Developers, check out our new blog series, where we interview enterprise developers here.
4C. What is the size of the development team you work in?
Less than 10% of survey respondents work alone
10% of developers follow a solitary working style, working on their own. Nevertheless, the big majority (56%) seems to be part of a team ranging from 2 to 50 people.
4D. Salaries for EU countries
A significant portion of developers in the EU regions receive relatively high compensation
More than 32% of developers receive an annual salary between $50k to %100k. 22% between $30k to $50k, and less than 10% have salaries in range $1k to $10k.
5. Programming languages
5A. Top 5 programming languages used by developers
JavaScript continues to be the most popular programming language used by developers
25% of developers use C#, which is still very popular among game developers. Python, being the Swiss army knife of programmers, enjoys popularity, which comes from tons of libraries, frameworks and support from the community, with more than 44% of developers using it. Java, because of its maturity and favourability among banking and financial applications, is at ~45%.
5B. Top 5 programming languages used in Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence
AI Developers heavily rely on Python and Javascript
Python, with its various popular AI frameworks like TensorFlow, SciKitLearn enjoys the most popularity in AI developer communities, with more than 69% of developers using it, closely followed by Javascript at 61.6% and C# being the least favourite among AI developers.
5C. Favourability of programming languages for companies associated with education, training and academic/scientific research
JavaScript also leads usage in EdTech, training and Academic/Scientific research communities
With 65% of developers favouring JavaScript, including TypeScript and CoffeeScript, it becomes most popular in the above-mentioned communities, closely followed by Python at 57%.
6. The Year of Generative AI
6A. Have you incorporated generative AI functionality into your applications in the past 6 months
Developers have started embracing Generative AI
36% developers have already implemented generative AI functionalities in their applications, while 15% are planning to do in next 6 months. This shows developers have already started embracing the new age of GenAI. 34% of developers are interested in incorporating but have no clear plans yet, while 15% say they’re not interested.
6B. How generative AI functionality is incorporated into applications
Access to ready-to-use AI models and services are driving Generative AI adoption
A majority(54%) of developers who have incorporated Generative AI into their applications have done so using ready-to-use AI models via 3rd party APIs or manager services like OpenAI API, 41% have done using same + services which allows customisation of own data. We also have a segment of developers (32%) who have trained their own AI models in-house, while 28% are using open-source AI models that are freely available.
6C. In which ways have ML developers integrated generative AI into their applications
39% of Machine Learning developers train their own models
While the majority of ML developers(54%) use 3rd party AI models, 39% of ML developers rely on training their own models themselves or by team-member while 31.5% depend on open-source machine learning models.
6D. Do you agree that generative AI will affect your work as a developer? Percentage of developers that (agree or strongly agree)
Overall, developers have a positive sentiment towards Generative AI
79% of respondents think GenAI will increase their potential and productivity, 69% of respondents think it will allow them to use more programming tools to solve the problems they couldn’t do previously, 62% think it will have a positive impact on the world. Since respondents can choose multiple options, 60% think AI raises many ethical concerns, while 32% of the survey population also think it will surpass their skills and render their jobs obsolete.
7. How the recent layoffs in the tech industry affected developers in the past 18 months
7A. The impact of the recent layoffs in the tech industry in the past 18 months
13% of developers witnessed a pay cut or didn’t get a raise because of recent industry lay-offs.
Because of recent lay-offs in the Industry, 11% of developers are considering changing career paths, 22% have friends or colleagues who have lost their jobs, and 11% lost some sort of benefits as part of their overall compensation. We are optimistic and hoping for an improved situation in 2024.
7B. The impact of the recent layoffs in the tech industry in the past 18 months in companies with 250-1000 employees
14% of people working in organisations having 250-1000 employees lost their jobs as a result of the company's downsizing.
For companies having employees ranging from 250 to 1000, 43% of survey respondents aren’t affected by lay-offs, while 16% observed a salary cut, 15% are considering changing career paths as a result of this.
8. Professional developers - Dive into niches
8A. Enterprise developers' geographical distribution
North America and Western Europe continue to see the highest number of enterprise developers
South Asia has the smallest population of enterprise developers at around 9.5%. North America, Western Europe and Israel are still at the highest with ~31% and ~28.6% representation, respectively.
8B. Development areas of enterprise developers
Backend Development and SaaS(web) witness most enterprise developers.
Regarding technologies, most enterprise developers are working on WebDev and Backend, followed by 41% on Desktop apps, ~35% on Mobile apps and ~33% on Artificial intelligence.
8C. Top 5 Industry verticals of Enterprise developers
The majority of enterprise developers are working in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) industry.
While almost the same number of enterprise developers (~14%) work in Telecommunications and health, most (~39%) work on software products and services, including SaaS, followed by 21.6% in the Financial Services and Banking sectors.
8D. Popularity of CI/CD tools
Jenkins continues to enjoy popularity among the choice of CI tools.
In today’s software development lifecycle, inducting CI/CD practice is a no-brainer. Jenkins continues to enjoy its popularity in this category with a staggering 66.5% usage. Followed by GiLab’s self-hosted version. IBMCode and TeamCity still remain the small players.
8E. Usage of CI/CD tools in companies of more than 1K employees
Jenkins remains a popular choice of CI tool with companies having more than 1000 employees.
Followed by self-hosted Gitlab at 37.2%, Jenkins continues to enjoy it’s popularity at organisations having more than 1k employees. Azure Pipelines is next in the race, followed by IBM UrbanCode and TeamCity, capturing smaller segments.
8F. Top-5 technologies used by backend developers
Container usage is most popular among backend developers.
You might have encountered the term, “It works on my machine but not yours”. Containers like LXC and Docker have made this a thing of the past, with the most favourite among backend developers enjoying usage popularity at 61.8%, followed by DBaaS at 34.6%. Cloud monitoring services also make for an essential tool in the backend developer arsenal, with 23.7% usage.
8G. Top-5 end-to-end platforms used by DevOps practitioners
GitHub continues to stand out as the most popular choice for DevOps teams when it comes to end-to-end usage.
Github leads the usage in the DevOps category with a staggering 28% usage, followed by Google Cloud Developer Tools at 13.8%. CodeCommit from AWS Developer tools is currently the least favourite at just ~8% usage.
9. The Developer Nation Community
9A. Who we are
Developer Nation is the heartbeat of the independent developer research program powered by SlashData.
We're more than just a community; we're a global hub for developers looking to solidify their foundations, stay ahead in emerging software development trends, and unlock opportunities for professional growth.
Every year, we engage with 30,000+ developers from 165+ countries, forming an 80,000+ strong community committed to nurturing your coding journey.
Our mission is simple: we bring engaging content, exceptional resources, and unrivalled support to our community members. Whether it's blog posts, webinars, workshops, video streams, or our insightful Pulse reports, we're here to propel your career.
But we're not doing this alone. We partner with tech companies, organizations, and communities to provide collaborative resources, helping you learn new skills and elevate your career. When you participate in the Developer Nation survey, you're not just helping us; you're shaping the future of the developer ecosystem. Your insights impact the tools, technologies, and platforms you use daily, creating an optimized developer experience. Join our ongoing 25th Edition of Developer Nation by following this link.
And as if that's not rewarding enough, we offer a chance to win incredible prizes, from Chromebooks to MacBook Pro and more. Plus, your participation supports causes like the Mozilla Foundation, Ada Developers Academy, FreeCodeCamp, and more through our Donation Program. Read all about it in our blog post.
Your journey, your impact – it's all part of Developer Nation.