Overview

The questions we ask in our annual survey help us improve the Stack Overflow community and the platform that serves them.

The challenge and opportunity for us is to continue expanding and improving our ability to help all developers and to make them feel welcome in our community.

Read on for more great insights about the attitudes, tools, and environments that are shaping the art and practice of software today.

Learning to code online increased from 60% to 70% year over year.

Respondents older than 45 years are most likely to have learned from books, while younger ones are learning online. Younger (under 18) respondents rely most on online resources and are most likely to have learned from online courses or certifications.

Last year we saw Git as a fundamental tool to being a developer. This year it appears that Docker is becoming a similar fundamental tool for Professional Developers, increasing from 55% to 69%.

People learning to code are more likely to be using 3D tools than Professional Developers - Unity 3D (23% vs 8%) and Unreal Engine (9% vs 3%) - teaching themselves skills for 3D VR and AR.

Rust is on its seventh year as the most loved language with 87% of developers saying they want to continue using it.

Rust also ties with Python as the most wanted technology with TypeScript running a close second.

Angular.js is in its third year as the most dreaded. React.js completes its fifth year as most wanted.

Docker and Kubernetes are in first and second place as the most loved and wanted tools.

The desire to start using Docker does not appear to be slowing down as Docker increased from 30% last to 37% this year for wanted.

Clojure remains the highest-paid language to know. Chef developers are the highest paid but Chef is also the most dreaded other tool.

Big-data and data streaming skills are well compensated with Apache Spark, Apache Kafka, and Hadoop all in the top three other frameworks and libraries.

Additionally, developers that have colocation experience are paid more than their cloud-only counterparts.

Full-time employment went up by 4 percentage points for all respondents. Professional Developers that are “Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed” have grown significantly in the last year (up by 5 percentage points).

In 2022 this question was changed to multi-select.

85% of developers say their organizations are at least partially remote.

Smaller organizations are most likely to be in-person, with 20% of 2-19 employee organizations in-person.

The largest organizations, with 10k+ employees, are most likely to be hybrid.

Professional Developers Productivity impacts

62% of all respondents spend more than 30 minutes a day searching for answers or solutions to problems.

25% spending more than an hour each day. Regardless of being an independent contributor or people manager, this is time that could be spent learning or building.

For a team of 50 developers, the amount of time spent searching for answers/solutions adds up to between 333-651 hours of time lost per week across the entire team.

What we know about the global community of developers

Developer Profile

Education

Most developers (87%) have a post-secondary education, having some college or more.

38% of those learning to code already have a degree, learning doesn’t have to stop after you graduate.

70% of all respondents and 80% of Professional Developers have completed some form of higher education, a bachelor’s degree being the most common.

Developer Profile

Learning to code

We see that learning how to code is a very unique experience, with people using a variety of tools and resources to build their skills.

Learning to code online increased from 60% to 70% year over year.

Respondents older than 45 years are most likely to have learned from books, while younger ones are learning online. Younger (under 18) respondents rely most on online resources and are most likely to have learned from online courses or certifications.

The most relied upon online resources for people to learn how to code are technical documentation and Stack Overflow. This shows how important it is for companies to have well-written documentation available and an active community providing answers on Stack Overflow.

It’s also interesting that we see such variety in the way that people teach themselves how to code. Written material, a variety of video formats, books, courses - there’s no one size fits all approach to learning how to code. Everyone can piece together the resources and formats that work best for their learning style.

Udemy leads as the most popular online course or certification program for learning how to code. This may be popular for the same reasons we saw above - people can purchase the individual courses they want, creating their own learning path.

Developer Profile

Experience

The majority of developers in their early to mid-career stage.

Similar to last year 50% of respondents have been coding for ten years or less.

The United States and United Kingdom respondents are the most experienced respondents, with an average of 15 and a half years of experience coding.

A majority of respondents (75%) have been working for 14 or fewer years as a professional developer, meaning they’ve never worked in a world without Stack Overflow.

Years of professional coding experience by developer type

Developer Profile

Developer roles

Few developers consider themselves to be a single developer type, showing us their skill diversity.

Full-stack, back-end, front-end, and desktop developers continue to account for the majority of all respondents. We asked about Cloud infrastructure engineer for the first time this year - almost 9% classify themselves as this type of developer.

Developers are wearing multiple hats. The majority of respondents said they considered themselves to be more than one type of developer - with DBAs, SREs, and Security professionals reporting the most variety. On average each of these roles reported being seven other developer types.

Developer Profile

Key territories

Across the world, developers and technologists turn to Stack Overflow to gain and share knowledge. Our survey received responses from almost every country on Earth.

The United States and India continue to provide the highest volume of survey responses, followed by Germany and UKI (UK and Ireland).

The top ten countries account for almost 60% of all respondents. This year we saw Spain just barely overtake Italy for the number ten spot. To see the top ten countries, refer to the methodology section.

Developer Profile

Demographics

Developers and technologists are a diverse group of individuals across many spectrums. We are committed to continuing to ensure our platform is inclusive and welcoming to all.

46% of Professional Developers are 25-34 years old. But we see that more than half of the respondents learning to code are 18-24 years old.

Those learning to code are slightly less likely to identify as a man and slightly more likely to prefer to not identify. Both of these are indications that the industry (and our survey) could continue to become more diverse as more people join the workforce.

92% of all respondents and 93% of Professional Developers identify as a man. The United States has the highest percentage of gender minorities (Woman, Non-binary, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming). We have considerable work to do to ensure our platform is inclusive and that our survey is representative of developers everywhere.

1.5% of all respondents identify as transgender. Like we see with gender identification, those learning to code are slightly more likely to prefer to not say if they identify as transgender.

Those learning to code are less likely to identify as straight/heterosexual than Professional Developers, with 10% preferring not to say.

Those learning to code are less likely to identify as European and/or White than Professional Developers. Like we saw with other demographic questions, the new group of developers who may enter the workforce soon, could be more diverse.

2,547 respondents have a physical difference, with the majority of these respondents being blind or having difficulty seeing.

Response to this question increased from 20% last year to 22% this year.

This year we see more developers identifying as having a concentration and/or memory disorder (10.6%), anxiety disorder (10.3%), mood or emotional disorder (9.7%).

Technology

Each year we explore the tools and technologies developers are currently using and what they want to use.

We have the favorite Loved, Dreaded, and Wanted data as well as Worked With vs. Want to Work With, which shows us precisely what developers used in the past year and what they want to work on in the following year. If you need a refresher on how we structure Loved, Dread and Wanted, or if you want to read about the intuition behind Worked With vs. Want to Work With, check out this post our meta post.

Technology

Most popular technologies

This year, we're comparing the popular technologies across three different groups: All respondents, Professional Developers, and those that are learning to code.

2022 marks JavaScript’s tenth year in a row as the most commonly used programming language.

But, it’s a different picture for those learning to code. HTML/CSS, Javascript and Python are almost tied as the most popular languages for people learning to code. People learning to code are more likely than Professional Developers to report using Python (58% vs 44%), C++ (35% vs 20%), and C (32% vs 17%).

Compared to Professional Developers, those learning to code are less likely to report using SQL (38% vs 53%), TypeScript (15% vs 40%), and Bash/Shell (19% vs 29%).

Which programming, scripting, and markup languages have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the language and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

For Professional Developers PostgreSQL just barely took over the first place spot from MySQL. Professional Developers are more likely than those learning to code to use Redis, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and Elasticsearch.

MongoDB is used by a similar percentage of both Professional Developers and those learning to code and it’s the second most popular database for those learning to code (behind MySQL). This makes sense since it supports a large number of languages and application development platforms.

Which database environments have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the database and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

AWS remains the most used cloud platform for all respondents and for Professional Developers. Azure took the second-place spot from Google Cloud.

People learning to code have much different usage of cloud platforms. Heroku is the most used platform for those learning to code (35%), significantly higher than Professional Developers (18%). We see similar differences with Google Cloud (31% learning to code; 26% Professional Developers), Firebase (30% learning to code; 21% Professional Developers), VMware (12% learning to code; 8% Professional Developers).

You can see the inroads that AWS and Azure have with organizations - significantly more Professional Developers are using those platforms compared to people who are learning to code.

Which cloud platforms have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the platform and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Node.js and React.js are the two most common web technologies used by Professional Developers and those learning to code. Angular is used more by Professional Developers than those learning to code (23% vs 10%), same with ASP.NET (16% vs 10%) and ASP.NET Core (21% vs 10%).

Which web frameworks and web technologies have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

This year we added additional responses to see the most popular libraries in different domains. For example, TensorFlow remains more popular than PyTorch for machine learning but Scikit-learn is close behind TensorFlow. Flutter and React Native are the two most popular cross-platform tools.

People learning to code are more likely than Professional Developer to be using NumPy (43% vs 24%), Pandas (35% vs 22%) - this makes sense given that they are both Python based and people learning to code are using Python. They are also more likely to be using TensorFlow (18% vs 11%) and Scikit-learn (17% vs 11%).

Which other frameworks and libraries have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Last year we saw Git as a fundamental tool to being a developer. This year it appears that Docker is becoming a similar fundamental tool for Professional Developers, increasing from 55% to 69%.

People learning to code are more likely to be using 3D tools than Professional Developers - Unity 3D (23% vs 8%) and Unreal Engine (9% vs 3%) - teaching themselves skills for 3D VR and AR.

Which developer tools have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the technology and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Visual Studio Code remains the preferred IDE across all developers. PyCharm is used more by people learning to code (26% vs 16%) while Vim is used more by Professional Developers (24% vs 16%).

Which development environments did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Please check all that apply.

We see definite differences between Professional Developers and people learning to code when it comes to asynchronous work tools. Jira is most used by Professional Developers (49%) but only used by 15% of those learning to code. It’s a similar story with Confluence, the second most used tool by Professional Developers (43%) but only used by 8% of those learning to code. For people starting their career, few of them will have experience with these tools, potentially increasing their time to ramp up on how to use them.

On the flip side, people who are learning to code are using Notion (36% vs 19%) and Trello (43% vs 32%) as their asynchronous work tools.

The three most popular synchronous tools are universal across all respondents, Professional Developers, and people learning to code - Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Slack.

For Professional Developers, the percentage of people using each of these tools is close - between 54%-58% of respondents. However, for people learning to code, Zoom is used significantly more (67%) than Microsoft Teams (48%) and Slack (30%).

Windows is the most popular operating system for developers, across both personal and professional use. A Linux-based OS is more popular than macOS - speaking to the appeal of using open source software.

Technology

Most loved, dreaded, and wanted

Always one of the most popular series, we have some technologies/tools that are maintaining their position as most loved (Rust), and some that have unseated leaders (PostgreSQL).

Rust is on its seventh year as the most loved language with 87% of developers saying they want to continue using it.

Rust also ties with Python as the most wanted technology with TypeScript running a close second.

Which programming, scripting, and markup languages have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the language and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

PostgreSQL becomes the most loved and wanted database after five years of Redis being the most loved.

Which database environments have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the database and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

AWS remains not only the most used cloud platform but also the most loved and wanted.

Which cloud platforms have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the platform and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Phoenix overtakes Svelte’s spot as the most loved web framework.

Angular.js is in its third year as the most dreaded. React.js completes its fifth year as most wanted.

Which web frameworks and web technologies have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Hugging Face Transformers surfaces as the most loved library while Tensorflow remains the most wanted.

This suggests that developers want to build machine learning models but enjoy using pre-trained models more. The popular cross-platform libraries, Flutter and React Native also remain in the top three most wanted.

Which other frameworks and libraries have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Docker and Kubernetes are in first and second place as the most loved and wanted tools.

The desire to start using Docker does not appear to be slowing down as Docker increased from 30% last to 37% this year for wanted.

Which developer tools have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the technology and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Neovim is the most loved editor for the second year in a row, with Visual Studio Code the next most loved.

However, Visual Studio Code is the most wanted tool, followed by Android Studio.

Which development environments did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Please check all that apply.

Notion is the most loved asynchronous collaboration tool and the third most wanted tool.

Jira and Confluence - the two most used tools by Professional Developers, are almost evenly split between being loved and dreaded. But Jira is the most wanted tool, followed by Trello, Notion, and Stack Overflow for Teams.

Slack is the most loved synchronous collaboration tool and the most wanted tool. Zoom, one of the most used tools by Professional Developers, is almost evenly split between being loved and being dreaded.

Technology

Worked with vs. want to work with

Developers are naturally curious and interested in new technologies. We look at what technologies they are interested in trying based on what they are using now.

Similar to last year we see over 10k Javascript developers that want to start or continue developing in Go or Rust.

Which programming, scripting, and markup languages have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the language and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Those learning to code that currently use MySQL are more likely to want to start or continue to use MongoDB over any other database.

Which database environments have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the database and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Similar to 2021, we see a large number of AWS developers wanting to develop in Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure next year.

Professional developers are curious about the other cloud platforms that they haven’t worked with before. Each platform offers something slightly different for developers, whether it’s features (e.g., advanced data analytics tools), scalability, pricing options, etc. that can make it appealing to build on.

Which cloud platforms have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the platform and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

React.js developers are very interconnected with other frameworks and technologies, most notably Node.js.

Which web frameworks and web technologies have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

NumPy and Pandas are the most interconnected other frameworks/libraries for all respondents, Professional Developers, and those learning to code.

Which other frameworks and libraries have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Similar to 2021, we see a lot of people working with npm and Docker who also want to work with those same technologies.

Which developer tools have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the technology and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

VS Code is the most interconnected IDE among all respondents, Professional Developers, and those learning to code.

People who are learning to code have more IDEs they want to work with - IPython/Jupyter, Eclipse, Atom - than Professional Developers.

Which development environments did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Please check all that apply.

Jira and Confluence are most closely interconnected, which makes sense given they are under the same company.

We see interest in working with other asynchronous tools, likely because each of these tools serves a different purpose in a developer’s workflow.

With Professional Developers, we see some interest in wanting to use other chat and video platforms than they are using now.

Clojure remains the highest-paid language to know. Chef developers are the highest paid but Chef is also the most dreaded other tool.

Big-data and data streaming skills are well compensated with Apache Spark, Apache Kafka, and Hadoop all in the top three other frameworks and libraries.

Additionally, developers that have colocation experience are paid more than their cloud-only counterparts.

On average, median salaries increased about 23% between 2021 and 2022. With Flow, COBOL, Couchbase, and IBM Cloud/Watson seeing the largest salary increases year over year.

Technology

Version Control

A new section for 2022, we ask about use of version control systems - both professionally and personally - as well as how people prefer to interact with it.

No other technology is as widely used as Git. Especially among Professional Developers. But for those learning to code, 17% still do not use a version control system.

The command line is the primary way developers interact with their version control system

GitHub is the most popular Version Control for both personal and professional use. GitLab, Bitbucket, and Azure Repos are more likely used for professional purposes instead of personal.

Developers are torn on blockchain, crypto, and decentralization. 32% are at least favorable, 31% are unfavorable and 26% are indifferent.

While those learning to code are more favorable than Professional Developers, more of them are also unsure.

Work

Full-time employment went up by 4 percentage points for all respondents. Professional Developers that are “Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed” have grown significantly in the last year (up by 5 percentage points).

In 2022 this question was changed to multi-select.

Full-time employment has gone down in the top 5 countries while Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed has gone up.

85% of developers say their organizations are at least partially remote.

Smaller organizations are most likely to be in-person, with 20% of 2-19 employee organizations in-person.

The largest organizations, with 10k+ employees, are most likely to be hybrid.

53% of respondents work for an organization that has more than 100 employees.

Senior roles like executives and engineering managers tend to have the highest salaries.

But in the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, and Canada we see that Blockchain developers have comparable salaries even though they have the lowest average years of experience.

Years of experience and a higher salary go hand in hand. The three highest-paid roles have, on average, more than 11 years of experience.

PHP developers continue to be disproportionately underpaid compared to other languages with the same experience.

66% of Professional Developers have at least some influence over their organization’s purchases of new technologies. This is up from 56% in 2020 when we last asked this question.

Unsurprisingly, senior-level positions have the greatest amount of influence when purchasing new technologies. But with the exception of students, at least 60% of all developer types have at least some influence on purchasing.

Starting a free trial is the most common way to evaluate new tools. But this is down from 77% in 2020. The other two most common ways of researching new tools are asking a colleague/friend and visiting developer communities like Stack Overflow.

For Desktop or Enterprise application developers, they are equally likely to ask a colleague/friend and visit developer communities when they are researching tools.

88% of Professional Developers code outside of work, with 73% of them coding as a hobby.

Community

Community is at the center of all that we do. Here we take a look at how people use Stack Overflow and how connected they feel to the community.

Less than 1% of respondents have never visited Stack Overflow or the Stack Exchange Network.

More people learning to code have visited Collectives on Stack Overflow, suggesting it’s a good resource for people who are getting up to speed on a new-to-them technology.

81% of respondents visit Stack Overflow weekly and 53% of them visit daily.

8 out of 10 respondents have a Stack Overflow account.

Of those with a Stack Overflow account, 46% are participating on the site less than once per month or monthly.

42% of respondents consider themselves “somewhat” or “definitely” a member of the Stack Overflow community. Of these respondents, we see that gender minorities are less likely to consider themselves a member of the Stack Overflow community.

Professional Developers

We asked Professional Developers to tell us about what impacts their productivity at work, how often it happens, and how much time that takes out of their day. We also asked them about the developer experience at work - do they have the processes, tools, and programs to make it easier to do their jobs.

72% of all respondents were eligible to participate in our Professional Developer section. Of those eligible, 70% agreed to participate, resulting in over 36,000 responses.

The vast majority of respondents are independent (or individual) contributors.

56% of respondents are in their first 10 years of professional work experience.

While it is possible for developers to become people managers in the first 4 years, we see that it is much more likely after the 5 year mark.

Nearly half of all respondents report that knowledge silos prevent them from getting ideas from across the organization and that waiting for answers to questions often causes interruptions and disrupts their workflow - with little difference between ICs and People Managers.

57% of People Managers report that they find themselves answering questions that they’ve answered before.

About a quarter of all respondents say they can’t find up-to-date information within their organization to help them do their job and they aren’t able to quickly find answers to their questions with existing tools and resources.

68% of respondents say they encounter a knowledge silo at least once a week.

For People Managers, 73% report encountering a knowledge silo at least once a week.

62% of all respondents spend more than 30 minutes a day searching for answers or solutions to problems.

25% spending more than an hour each day. Regardless of being an independent contributor or people manager, this is time that could be spent learning or building.

For a team of 50 developers, the amount of time spent searching for answers/solutions adds up to between 333-651 hours of time lost per week across the entire team.

46% of all respondents spend more than 30 minutes a day answering questions.

32% of people managers spend over an hour each day just answering questions, while only 14% of independent contributors spend over an hour answering questions.

For a team of 50 developers, the amount of time spent answering questions adds up to between 278-568 hours of time lost per week across the entire team.

Over 48% of respondents regardless of function, think onboarding takes a very long time or a somewhat long time at their organization.

While independent contributors are not directly managing others, 62% of them are involved in supporting new hires.

78% of respondents say their employer gives them time to learn and 64% use learning resources provided by their employer.

Most Professional Developers report having CI/CD, DevOps, and Automated Testing available at their organization.

Only 38% report having a developer portal to make it easy to find tools and services.

Only 16% of organizations have Innersource initiatives.

Methodology

How we planned and analyzed our survey

This report is based on a survey of 73,268 software developers from 180 countries around the world. This is the number of responses we consider “qualified” for analytical purposes based on time spent on the full, completed survey; another approximately 53 responses were submitted but not included in the analysis because respondents spent less than three minutes on the survey.

The survey was fielded from May 11, 2022 to June 1, 2022.

The median time spent on the survey for qualified responses was 15.08 minutes. An increase we expected this year because of additional questions asked.

Respondents were recruited primarily through channels owned by Stack Overflow. The top sources of respondents were onsite messaging, blog posts, email lists, banner ads, and social media posts. Since respondents were recruited in this way, highly engaged users on Stack Overflow were more likely to notice the prompts to take the survey over the duration of the collection promotion.

As an incentive, respondents who finished the survey could opt in to a “Census” badge if they completed the survey.

Due to United States transport/export sanctions, our survey was, unfortunately, inaccessible to prospective respondents in Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria, due to the traffic being blocked by our third-party survey software. While some respondents used VPNs to get around the block, the limitation should be kept in mind when interpreting survey results.

Many questions were only shown to respondents based on their previous answers. For example, questions about jobs and work were only shown to those who said they were working in a job.

We asked respondents about their salaries. First, we asked what currency each respondent typically used. Then we asked the respondents what their salary was in that currency and whether that salary was weekly, monthly, or yearly.

The salary question, like most on the survey, was optional. There were 38,071 respondents who gave us salary data.

We converted salaries from user currencies to USD using the exchange rate on May 24, 2022 and also converted to annual salaries assuming 12 working months and 50 working weeks.

The top approximately 2% of salaries inside and outside of the US were trimmed and replaced with threshold values. The threshold values for inside and outside the US were different.

To identify which technologies to include in the survey this year, we looked at both the most popular and fastest-growing tags on Stack Overflow (in terms of questions posted). We compared these to the technologies we included last year and looked at how many people chose each option. We synthesized all this together to curate a collection of technologies to include.

The questions were organized into several blocks of questions, which were randomized in order. Also, the answers to most questions were randomized in order.

Free form text responses are primarily used to influence future survey choices but are not included in the published results.

The majority of respondents felt like this year’s survey was an appropriate length.

Less than one percent of respondents felt like this year’s survey was difficult.

Similar to previous years the overwhelming majority of respondents are a developer by profession.