Stack Overflow has returned this year with its developer survey of the programming languages they use and prefer. For the tenth consecutive year, JavaScript remains the most popular worldwide. No less than 65% of those who have responded to the survey, conducted among more than 73,000 developers worldwide, use JavaScript. This language is followed, in second place, by HTML/CSS, which employs 55.08% of respondents. In third place is the SQL database language, which employs 49.43%.
However, developers’ use of programming languages varies significantly depending on the age group and their experience. Thus, among developers with less experience, there is more disparity between the languages they use. Among them, in addition to Python entering the list of the most used, it is almost tied with JavaScript and HTML/CSS. These three are the most popular languages for them.
Of course, the most popular and used languages are not the best paid in the industry. The programming language that allows developers to get a higher salary is Clojure. It is a new programming language that makes life easier for developers and is growing in popularity. The average salary for those who use this language exceeds 100,000 dollars. On the opposite side is Dart, with average salaries below 50,000 dollars per year.
Regarding technology-related jobs with higher salaries, those responsible for development are paid best, followed by cloud infrastructure, blockchain, and data engineers. Also, developers with experience hosting private servers and network equipment in a third-party center yield higher salaries than their colleagues with only cloud experience. Skills related to Big Data and data streaming also redeem good wages.
As for the knowledge of frameworks and libraries, the ones that allow them to earn more if mastered are Apache Spark, Apache Kafka, and Hadoop.
Online courses are increasingly popular among those currently learning to program in general or to use a new language. Among the online platforms that offer this type of training, the most popular is, by far, Udemy. It is used by 66% of the developers who have answered the survey. It is followed by Coursera, with 35%, and Codeacademy third with 26%.
The main reason Udemy is so popular is that it allows those who want to use it can buy courses individually without being forced to follow a predetermined learning path to learn what they want.
Although online learning is a hot commodity right now, here at Mahisoft, we prioritize the full college learning experience since some problem-solving abilities that can be acquired via college degrees or years of experience. It is not only about learning the language, but it is also about learning the logical principles behind it, and for that, math, algebra, and logic classes taken in college are essentials to get the job well done.
A fun fact of the survey: those who have participated most in it are full-stack developers (46%), followed by back-end with 43%, and front-end with 26%. The least involved are desktop software developers, accounting for only 15% of total survey participants.
