In May 2021 over 80,000 developers told us how they learn and level up, which tools they’re using, and what they want.
Read the overview →Methodology →
In May 2021 over 80,000 developers told us how they learn and level up, which tools they’re using, and what they want.
Read the overview →Methodology →The questions we ask in our annual survey will help us improve the Stack Overflow community and the platform that serves them.
This year, for example, we observed a significant evolution in the way developers educate themselves. For the rising cohort of coders under the age of 18, online resources like videos and blogs are more popular than books and school combined, a statistic that doesn’t hold for any of our other age cohorts. Overall, the profession is full of new joiners, with more than 50% indicating they have been coding for less than a decade, and more than 35% having less than five years in the trade.
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.
It is no surprise that almost 60% of respondents learned how to code from online resources. Younger respondents tend to learn from online courses, forums, and other online resources. Older respondents, on the other hand, learned from more traditional mediums like school and books.
Learning how to code→AWS maintains its lead as the most widely used cloud platform, but Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure made substantial gains from last year. It is worth noting that this is the first year that we broke out cloud platforms from our general platforms question.
Cloud platforms→This year, React.js surpassed jQuery as the most commonly used web framework.
Web frameworks→Newcomer Svelte takes the top spot as the most loved framework. React is the most wanted, desired by one in four developers.
Web frameworks→Perl moves from being the highest-paid language last year to the fifth highest-paid this year. Clojure developers have the highest median salary, 14k more than second place which belongs to F#.
Top paying technologies→81% of professional developers are employed full-time, a decrease from 83% in 2020. The percentage of professional developers saying they were independent contractors, freelancers, or self-employed increased from 9.5% in 2020 to 11.2% in 2021 - indicating potential job insecurity or a shift to more flexible work arrangements.
Employment status→What we know about the global community of developers
Developer Profile
Stack Overflow serves the international community, and 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. To see the top ten countries, refer to the methodology section. When we zoom into the United States (our top-responding country), we see that the states with established tech hubs have the most respondents: California, New York, Washington, and Texas.
| United States of America | 18.33% 15,288 |
| India | 12.61% 10,511 |
| Germany | 6.75% 5,625 |
| United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland | 5.37% 4,475 |
| Canada | 3.61% 3,012 |
| France | 3.25% 2,708 |
| Brazil | 2.7% 2,254 |
| Poland | 2.16% 1,805 |
| Netherlands | 2.13% 1,772 |
| Italy | 2% 1,666 |
| Response | Percentage | Responses |
|---|---|---|
| United States of America | 18.33% | 15,288 |
| India | 12.61% | 10,511 |
| Germany | 6.75% | 5,625 |
| United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland | 5.37% | 4,475 |
| Canada | 3.61% | 3,012 |
| France | 3.25% | 2,708 |
| Brazil | 2.7% | 2,254 |
| Poland | 2.16% | 1,805 |
| Netherlands | 2.13% | 1,772 |
| Italy | 2% | 1,666 |
| Australia | 1.97% | 1,646 |
| Spain | 1.78% | 1,485 |
| Russian Federation | 1.77% | 1,474 |
| Sweden | 1.43% | 1,196 |
| China | 1.27% | 1,055 |
| Turkey | 1.26% | 1,054 |
| Switzerland | 1.11% | 922 |
| Israel | 1.09% | 913 |
| Iran, Islamic Republic of... | 1.08% | 900 |
| Pakistan | 1% | 838 |
| Austria | 0.97% | 808 |
| Czech Republic | 0.95% | 792 |
| Ukraine | 0.92% | 770 |
| Bangladesh | 0.84% | 704 |
| Belgium | 0.84% | 697 |
| Mexico | 0.83% | 695 |
| Romania | 0.78% | 650 |
| Indonesia | 0.76% | 632 |
| Greece | 0.72% | 603 |
| Norway | 0.72% | 602 |
| Denmark | 0.72% | 599 |
| Argentina | 0.7% | 587 |
| South Africa | 0.68% | 571 |
| Portugal | 0.64% | 530 |
| Finland | 0.63% | 528 |
| New Zealand | 0.63% | 522 |
| Egypt | 0.62% | 521 |
| Hungary | 0.57% | 478 |
| Japan | 0.51% | 429 |
| Nigeria | 0.49% | 409 |
| Bulgaria | 0.48% | 402 |
| Sri Lanka | 0.47% | 396 |
| Ireland | 0.46% | 386 |
| Viet Nam | 0.46% | 386 |
| Philippines | 0.46% | 382 |
| Colombia | 0.46% | 381 |
| Singapore | 0.41% | 339 |
| Nepal | 0.4% | 337 |
| Malaysia | 0.4% | 333 |
| Serbia | 0.37% | 310 |
| Taiwan | 0.36% | 302 |
| Kenya | 0.32% | 263 |
| Slovakia | 0.3% | 252 |
| Croatia | 0.3% | 250 |
| Slovenia | 0.28% | 235 |
| Chile | 0.28% | 230 |
| Lithuania | 0.25% | 208 |
| Morocco | 0.24% | 204 |
| Hong Kong (S.A.R.) | 0.24% | 198 |
| South Korea | 0.23% | 189 |
| Thailand | 0.22% | 184 |
| United Arab Emirates | 0.22% | 182 |
| Belarus | 0.2% | 165 |
| Georgia | 0.19% | 161 |
| Tunisia | 0.18% | 150 |
| Peru | 0.18% | 147 |
| Uruguay | 0.17% | 144 |
| Saudi Arabia | 0.16% | 137 |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 0.16% | 130 |
| Estonia | 0.16% | 130 |
| Lebanon | 0.14% | 113 |
| Latvia | 0.13% | 107 |
| Dominican Republic | 0.12% | 104 |
| Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of... | 0.12% | 104 |
| Ecuador | 0.12% | 103 |
| Armenia | 0.11% | 92 |
| Ghana | 0.11% | 91 |
| Costa Rica | 0.09% | 77 |
| Iraq | 0.09% | 76 |
| Albania | 0.09% | 73 |
| Jordan | 0.09% | 72 |
| Ethiopia | 0.08% | 69 |
| Uzbekistan | 0.08% | 68 |
| Afghanistan | 0.08% | 65 |
| Kazakhstan | 0.08% | 65 |
| Azerbaijan | 0.08% | 64 |
| Uganda | 0.08% | 63 |
| Guatemala | 0.07% | 58 |
| Cyprus | 0.07% | 56 |
| Myanmar | 0.07% | 55 |
| Republic of Moldova | 0.07% | 55 |
| Republic of Korea | 0.06% | 54 |
| The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia | 0.06% | 54 |
| Luxembourg | 0.06% | 51 |
| Syrian Arab Republic | 0.06% | 51 |
| Bolivia | 0.06% | 48 |
| Paraguay | 0.06% | 47 |
| Algeria | 0.06% | 46 |
| Kosovo | 0.05% | 45 |
| Iceland | 0.05% | 43 |
| United Republic of Tanzania | 0.05% | 43 |
| Malta | 0.05% | 42 |
| Cameroon | 0.05% | 38 |
| Zimbabwe | 0.04% | 36 |
| Cambodia | 0.04% | 35 |
| Cuba | 0.04% | 34 |
| Rwanda | 0.04% | 34 |
| El Salvador | 0.04% | 32 |
| Mauritius | 0.04% | 31 |
| Panama | 0.04% | 31 |
| Kuwait | 0.03% | 29 |
| Qatar | 0.03% | 29 |
| Bahrain | 0.03% | 28 |
| Senegal | 0.03% | 28 |
| Angola | 0.03% | 27 |
| Sudan | 0.03% | 27 |
| Palestine | 0.03% | 25 |
| Honduras | 0.03% | 24 |
| Zambia | 0.03% | 22 |
| Kyrgyzstan | 0.03% | 21 |
| Mongolia | 0.03% | 21 |
| Jamaica | 0.02% | 20 |
| Oman | 0.02% | 20 |
| Trinidad and Tobago | 0.02% | 20 |
| Yemen | 0.02% | 20 |
| Madagascar | 0.02% | 18 |
| Nicaragua | 0.02% | 18 |
| Côte d'Ivoire | 0.02% | 17 |
| Montenegro | 0.02% | 17 |
| Maldives | 0.02% | 16 |
| Benin | 0.02% | 15 |
| Turkmenistan | 0.02% | 13 |
| Andorra | 0.01% | 12 |
| Barbados | 0.01% | 12 |
| Congo, Republic of the... | 0.01% | 12 |
| Mozambique | 0.01% | 12 |
| Namibia | 0.01% | 12 |
| Libyan Arab Jamahiriya | 0.01% | 11 |
| Malawi | 0.01% | 11 |
| Democratic Republic of the Congo | 0.01% | 10 |
| Swaziland | 0.01% | 10 |
| Tajikistan | 0.01% | 9 |
| Bahamas | 0.01% | 7 |
| Guyana | 0.01% | 7 |
| Somalia | 0.01% | 7 |
| Togo | 0.01% | 7 |
| Botswana | 0.01% | 6 |
| Cape Verde | 0.01% | 6 |
| North Korea | 0.01% | 6 |
| Belize | 0.01% | 5 |
| Bhutan | 0.01% | 5 |
| Burundi | 0.01% | 5 |
| Haiti | 0.01% | 5 |
| Isle of Man | 0.01% | 5 |
| Mauritania | 0.01% | 5 |
| Suriname | 0.01% | 5 |
| Burkina Faso | 0% | 4 |
| Fiji | 0% | 4 |
| Lao People's Democratic Republic | 0% | 4 |
| Lesotho | 0% | 4 |
| Central African Republic | 0% | 3 |
| Djibouti | 0% | 3 |
| Liberia | 0% | 3 |
| Niger | 0% | 3 |
| Saint Lucia | 0% | 3 |
| Chad | 0% | 2 |
| Gambia | 0% | 2 |
| Guinea | 0% | 2 |
| Mali | 0% | 2 |
| Micronesia, Federated States of... | 0% | 2 |
| Monaco | 0% | 2 |
| San Marino | 0% | 2 |
| Sierra Leone | 0% | 2 |
| Brunei Darussalam | 0% | 1 |
| Dominica | 0% | 1 |
| Liechtenstein | 0% | 1 |
| Papua New Guinea | 0% | 1 |
| Saint Kitts and Nevis | 0% | 1 |
| Saint Vincent and the Grenadines | 0% | 1 |
| Tuvalu | 0% | 1 |
Developer Profile
Senior executives and managers tend to have the most years of coding experience, while those working in data science and machine learning tend to have the least, on average less than even an academic researcher.
Coders start young: over 50% of respondents wrote their first line of code between the ages of 11 to 17.
| Younger than 5 years | 1.09% 905 |
| 5 - 10 years | 14.08% 11,720 |
| 11 - 17 years | 53.06% 44,170 |
| 18 - 24 years | 24.1% 20,065 |
| 25 - 34 years | 5.04% 4,199 |
| 35 - 44 years | 1.58% 1,312 |
| 45 - 54 years | 0.65% 544 |
| 55 - 64 years | 0.29% 245 |
| Older than 64 years | 0.1% 83 |
It is no surprise that almost 60% of respondents learned how to code from online resources. Younger respondents tend to learn from online courses, forums, and other online resources. Older respondents, on the other hand, learned from more traditional mediums like school and books.
| Other online resources (videos, blogs, etc) | 59.53% 49,392 |
| School | 53.59% 44,462 |
| Books / Physical media | 51.53% 42,752 |
| Online Courses or Certification | 40.39% 33,511 |
| Online Forum | 31.62% 26,229 |
| Friend or family member | 18.28% 15,162 |
| Colleague | 17.15% 14,225 |
| Coding Bootcamp | 10.24% 8,496 |
50% of respondents have been coding for ten years or less. Respondents from the United Kingdom, on average, have the most years coding out of our top ten countries.
| Less than 1 year | 1.82% 1,489 |
| 1 to 4 years | 17.8% 14,535 |
| 5 to 9 years | 29.91% 24,418 |
| 10 to 14 years | 18.9% 15,428 |
| 15 to 19 years | 10.4% 8,492 |
| 20 to 24 years | 8.17% 6,673 |
| 25 to 29 years | 4.48% 3,661 |
| 30 to 34 years | 3.41% 2,787 |
| 35 to 39 years | 2.65% 2,166 |
| 40 to 44 years | 1.75% 1,426 |
| 45 to 49 years | 0.41% 338 |
| More than 50 years | 0.28% 228 |
| United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland | 16.34 4,377 |
| United States of America | 15.71 14,806 |
| Netherlands | 14.59 1,735 |
| Italy | 14.33 1,621 |
| Germany | 14.17 5,476 |
| Canada | 14.01 2,911 |
| France | 12.61 2,642 |
| Brazil | 11.5 2,191 |
| Poland | 10.74 1,766 |
| India | 7.43 9,753 |
A majority of respondents have been working for ten or less years as a professional developer, meaning they’ve never worked in a world without Stack Overflow.
| Less than 1 year | 4.41% 2,699 |
| 1 to 4 years | 31.26% 19,134 |
| 5 to 9 years | 27.31% 16,716 |
| 10 to 14 years | 15.36% 9,405 |
| 15 to 19 years | 8.29% 5,076 |
| 20 to 24 years | 6.88% 4,213 |
| 25 to 29 years | 2.99% 1,832 |
| 30 to 34 years | 1.83% 1,121 |
| 35 to 39 years | 0.95% 582 |
| 40 to 44 years | 0.49% 302 |
| 45 to 49 years | 0.12% 74 |
| More than 50 years | 0.1% 62 |
Developers in more senior roles have the most years of coding professionally. Data scientists and machine learning specialists, meanwhile, have the least experience, with fewer years than academic researchers.
| Senior Executive (C-Suite, VP, etc.) | 15.82 1,971 |
| Engineering manager | 13.82 3,652 |
| Product manager | 12.47 2,829 |
| Database administrator | 12.23 5,246 |
| Developer, desktop or enterprise applications | 12.19 10,182 |
| System administrator | 12.12 5,460 |
| Marketing or sales professional | 11.99 478 |
| Educator | 11.98 2,067 |
| Designer | 11.93 3,988 |
| Developer, embedded applications or devices | 11.62 4,211 |
| Data or business analyst | 11.4 3,342 |
| Engineer, site reliability | 11.33 2,276 |
| DevOps specialist | 11.26 6,752 |
| Scientist | 10.93 1,792 |
| Developer, QA or test | 10.55 3,310 |
| Developer, game or graphics | 10.53 1,724 |
| Engineer, data | 10 3,834 |
| Developer, back-end | 9.94 26,664 |
| Developer, full-stack | 9.62 29,981 |
| Developer, mobile | 9.46 8,762 |
| Developer, front-end | 9.32 16,341 |
| Academic researcher | 9.29 2,506 |
| Data scientist or machine learning specialist | 8.92 3,772 |
| Student | 4.37 1,890 |
Developer Profile
People holding full stack developer roles are the most prevalent. Interestingly, the role of designer has fallen since last year, swapping spots with system administrators.
Full stack, back-end, front-end, and desktop developers continue to account for the majority of all respondents.
| Developer, full-stack | 49.47% 32,891 |
| Developer, back-end | 43.73% 29,071 |
| Developer, front-end | 27.42% 18,231 |
| Developer, desktop or enterprise applications | 16.6% 11,036 |
| Developer, mobile | 14.74% 9,800 |
| DevOps specialist | 10.62% 7,058 |
| System administrator | 9.14% 6,079 |
| Database administrator | 8.51% 5,655 |
| Designer | 6.94% 4,611 |
| Developer, embedded applications or devices | 6.92% 4,598 |
| Data scientist or machine learning specialist | 6.43% 4,273 |
| Student | 6.3% 4,187 |
| Engineer, data | 6.28% 4,176 |
| Engineering manager | 5.73% 3,810 |
| Data or business analyst | 5.7% 3,792 |
| Developer, QA or test | 5.43% 3,611 |
| Product manager | 4.62% 3,074 |
| Academic researcher | 4.36% 2,899 |
| Engineer, site reliability | 3.68% 2,448 |
| Educator | 3.56% 2,369 |
| Developer, game or graphics | 3.18% 2,112 |
| Senior Executive (C-Suite, VP, etc.) | 3.16% 2,103 |
| Scientist | 3.03% 2,015 |
| Marketing or sales professional | 0.96% 638 |
| Developer, full-stack | 50.27% 6,408 |
| Developer, back-end | 41% 5,227 |
| Developer, front-end | 24.33% 3,102 |
| Developer, desktop or enterprise applications | 17.01% 2,168 |
| DevOps specialist | 11.84% 1,510 |
| System administrator | 10.17% 1,297 |
| Developer, mobile | 9.81% 1,250 |
| Database administrator | 9.43% 1,202 |
| Designer | 7.96% 1,015 |
| Engineer, data | 7.81% 996 |
| Engineering manager | 7.77% 991 |
| Data scientist or machine learning specialist | 7.08% 903 |
| Developer, embedded applications or devices | 7.03% 896 |
| Data or business analyst | 6.83% 871 |
| Developer, QA or test | 6.28% 801 |
| Engineer, site reliability | 5.37% 685 |
| Product manager | 4.2% 535 |
| Senior Executive (C-Suite, VP, etc.) | 4.16% 530 |
| Academic researcher | 3.91% 498 |
| Scientist | 3.9% 497 |
| Student | 3.83% 488 |
| Developer, game or graphics | 3% 383 |
| Educator | 2.91% 371 |
| Marketing or sales professional | 1.15% 147 |
Developer Profile
Developers are a highly educated bunch, with more than 65% holding a bachelor’s degree or higher. But a traditional university education isn’t everything, and around a quarter of respondents have less than a bachelor’s degree.
70% of all respondents and 80% of professional developers have completed some form of higher education, a bachelor’s degree being the most common.
| Primary/elementary school | 2.97% 2,479 |
| Secondary school (e.g. American high school, German Realschule or Gymnasium, etc.) | 11.43% 9,534 |
| Some college/university study without earning a degree | 12.69% 10,589 |
| Associate degree (A.A., A.S., etc.) | 2.67% 2,231 |
| Bachelor’s degree (B.A., B.S., B.Eng., etc.) | 42.37% 35,357 |
| Master’s degree (M.A., M.S., M.Eng., MBA, etc.) | 20.99% 17,512 |
| Professional degree (JD, MD, etc.) | 1.51% 1,256 |
| Other doctoral degree (Ph.D., Ed.D., etc.) | 3.08% 2,567 |
| Something else | 1.92% 1,601 |
| Primary/elementary school | 0.72% 420 |
| Secondary school (e.g. American high school, German Realschule or Gymnasium, etc.) | 5% 2,910 |
| Some college/university study without earning a degree | 11.94% 6,941 |
| Associate degree (A.A., A.S., etc.) | 2.77% 1,611 |
| Bachelor’s degree (B.A., B.S., B.Eng., etc.) | 49.34% 28,691 |
| Master’s degree (M.A., M.S., M.Eng., MBA, etc.) | 24.56% 14,285 |
| Professional degree (JD, MD, etc.) | 1.63% 947 |
| Other doctoral degree (Ph.D., Ed.D., etc.) | 2.58% 1,502 |
| Something else | 1.24% 724 |
Developer Profile
Roughly a third of respondents responded to our question on mental health. This is twice the percentage that offered feedback in 2020 and may reflect the growing awareness of mental health’s importance and the impact of the ongoing pandemic.
48% of professional developers are 25-34 years old. Almost half of the respondents 65 years or older do not consider themselves professional developers.
| Under 18 years old | 6.52% 5,376 |
| 18-24 years old | 25.47% 20,993 |
| 25-34 years old | 39.52% 32,568 |
| 35-44 years old | 18.42% 15,183 |
| 45-54 years old | 6.64% 5,472 |
| 55-64 years old | 2.21% 1,819 |
| 65 years or older | 0.51% 421 |
| Prefer not to say | 0.7% 575 |
| Under 18 years old | 0.56% 322 |
| 18-24 years old | 19.08% 10,987 |
| 25-34 years old | 48.42% 27,874 |
| 35-44 years old | 21.71% 12,497 |
| 45-54 years old | 7.31% 4,210 |
| 55-64 years old | 2.25% 1,294 |
| 65 years or older | 0.35% 201 |
| Prefer not to say | 0.33% 188 |
91% of all respondents and 92% 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.
| Man | 91.67% 75,428 |
| Woman | 5.31% 4,372 |
| Prefer not to say | 1.75% 1,442 |
| Non-binary, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming | 1.42% 1,168 |
| Or, in your own words: | 0.92% 756 |
| Man | 92.79% 53,319 |
| Woman | 4.8% 2,756 |
| Prefer not to say | 1.38% 794 |
| Non-binary, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming | 1.26% 722 |
| Or, in your own words: | 0.72% 413 |
Percent who identify as Woman, Non-binary, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming
| United States of America | 9.12% 1,390 |
| Canada | 7.27% 218 |
| United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland | 6.87% 306 |
| Netherlands | 6.55% 116 |
| France | 6.44% 174 |
| India | 5.95% 614 |
| Germany | 5.72% 322 |
| Brazil | 5.25% 119 |
| Poland | 4.34% 79 |
| Italy | 4.27% 71 |
Only 1% of respondents identify as transgender, half of them being professional developers.
| No | 95.78% 77,275 |
| Prefer not to say | 2.19% 1,764 |
| Yes | 1.28% 1,035 |
| Or, in your own words: | 0.75% 604 |
| No | 96.48% 54,417 |
| Prefer not to say | 1.83% 1,033 |
| Yes | 1.01% 567 |
| Or, in your own words: | 0.68% 384 |
11.5% of respondents identify as something other than straight / heterosexual, with 6.5% preferring not to identify with any orientation. There’s still so much work to be done to ensure the developer community is more inclusive.
| Straight / Heterosexual | 84.52% 62,006 |
| Prefer not to say | 6.52% 4,783 |
| Bisexual | 5.36% 3,929 |
| Gay or Lesbian | 2.39% 1,753 |
| Prefer to self-describe: | 2.29% 1,679 |
| Queer | 1.5% 1,101 |
| Straight / Heterosexual | 86.5% 44,811 |
| Prefer not to say | 5.5% 2,851 |
| Bisexual | 4.9% 2,539 |
| Gay or Lesbian | 2.21% 1,144 |
| Prefer to self-describe: | 1.85% 957 |
| Queer | 1.35% 701 |
We continue to see evidence that people of color are underrepresented among professional developers.
| White or of European descent | 58.43% 46,434 |
| South Asian | 11.6% 9,214 |
| Hispanic or Latino/a/x | 7.01% 5,570 |
| Middle Eastern | 5.31% 4,222 |
| Southeast Asian | 5.14% 4,083 |
| East Asian | 4.7% 3,735 |
| Prefer not to say | 3.85% 3,062 |
| Or, in your own words: | 3.67% 2,916 |
| Black or of African descent | 3.38% 2,686 |
| I don't know | 3.38% 2,684 |
| Multiracial | 1.66% 1,317 |
| Biracial | 1.18% 939 |
| Indigenous (such as Native American, Pacific Islander, or Indigenous Australian) | 0.72% 575 |
| White or of European descent | 61.37% 34,101 |
| South Asian | 10.46% 5,813 |
| Hispanic or Latino/a/x | 7.62% 4,234 |
| Middle Eastern | 5.15% 2,863 |
| Southeast Asian | 4.39% 2,440 |
| East Asian | 4.2% 2,332 |
| Prefer not to say | 3.37% 1,872 |
| Or, in your own words: | 3.28% 1,824 |
| Black or of African descent | 3.13% 1,741 |
| I don't know | 2.79% 1,552 |
| Multiracial | 1.62% 902 |
| Biracial | 1.13% 630 |
| Indigenous (such as Native American, Pacific Islander, or Indigenous Australian) | 0.69% 381 |
2,960 respondents have a physical difference, with the majority of these respondents being blind or having difficulty seeing.
| I am blind / have difficulty seeing | 1.6% 1,238 |
| Or, in your own words: | 1.24% 962 |
| I am deaf / hard of hearing | 0.77% 595 |
| I am unable to / find it difficult to walk or stand without assistance | 0.42% 325 |
| I am unable to / find it difficult to type | 0.41% 315 |
Over 16,000 respondents replied to our question on mental health, with almost 10% of all respondents indicating they deal with anxiety.
| I have an anxiety disorder | 9.53% 7,334 |
| I have a mood or emotional disorder (e.g. depression, bipolar disorder) | 8.94% 6,873 |
| I have a concentration and/or memory disorder (e.g. ADHD) | 8.51% 6,549 |
| I have autism / an autism spectrum disorder (e.g. Asperger's) | 3.7% 2,843 |
| Or, in your own words: | 1.81% 1,392 |
Each year we explore the tools and technologies developers are currently using. And, as always, we ask them what technologies are most Loved, Dreaded, and Wanted across several categories.
This year we also introduced a new section, 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 postour meta post.
Technology
Python passed SQL to become our third most popular technology, and Node.JS moves to the sixth most popular technology.
JavaScript completes its ninth year in a row as the most commonly used programming language. For most developers, programming is web programming. Python traded places with SQL to become the third most popular language.
| JavaScript | 64.96% 53,587 |
| HTML/CSS | 56.07% 46,259 |
| Python | 48.24% 39,792 |
| SQL | 47.08% 38,835 |
| Java | 35.35% 29,162 |
| Node.js | 33.91% 27,975 |
| TypeScript | 30.19% 24,909 |
| C# | 27.86% 22,984 |
| Bash/Shell | 27.13% 22,385 |
| C++ | 24.31% 20,057 |
| PHP | 21.98% 18,130 |
| C | 21.01% 17,329 |
| PowerShell | 10.75% 8,871 |
| Go | 9.55% 7,879 |
| Kotlin | 8.32% 6,866 |
| Rust | 7.03% 5,799 |
| Ruby | 6.75% 5,569 |
| Dart | 6.02% 4,965 |
| Assembly | 5.61% 4,632 |
| Swift | 5.1% 4,204 |
| R | 5.07% 4,185 |
| VBA | 4.66% 3,847 |
| Matlab | 4.66% 3,846 |
| Groovy | 3.01% 2,479 |
| Objective-C | 2.8% 2,310 |
| Scala | 2.6% 2,148 |
| Perl | 2.46% 2,028 |
| Haskell | 2.12% 1,749 |
| Delphi | 2.1% 1,731 |
| Clojure | 1.88% 1,552 |
| Elixir | 1.74% 1,438 |
| LISP | 1.33% 1,096 |
| Julia | 1.29% 1,068 |
| F# | 0.97% 804 |
| Erlang | 0.79% 651 |
| APL | 0.65% 536 |
| Crystal | 0.56% 466 |
| COBOL | 0.53% 437 |
| JavaScript | 68.62% 39,749 |
| HTML/CSS | 55.9% 32,380 |
| SQL | 50.73% 29,385 |
| Python | 41.53% 24,055 |
| TypeScript | 36.42% 21,096 |
| Node.js | 36.19% 20,965 |
| Java | 34.51% 19,989 |
| C# | 29.81% 17,268 |
| Bash/Shell | 27.63% 16,008 |
| PHP | 22.54% 13,056 |
| C++ | 19.94% 11,553 |
| C | 16.64% 9,640 |
| PowerShell | 10.96% 6,351 |
| Go | 10.51% 6,088 |
| Kotlin | 9.09% 5,268 |
| Ruby | 7.89% 4,572 |
| Rust | 6.4% 3,706 |
| Dart | 5.97% 3,459 |
| Other (please specify): | 5.65% 3,270 |
| Swift | 5.64% 3,268 |
| VBA | 4.09% 2,370 |
| Assembly | 4.07% 2,355 |
| Groovy | 3.64% 2,106 |
| R | 3.48% 2,016 |
| Objective-C | 3.33% 1,927 |
| Matlab | 3.17% 1,834 |
| Scala | 3.06% 1,775 |
| Perl | 2.42% 1,404 |
| Delphi | 2.36% 1,367 |
| Clojure | 2.25% 1,303 |
| Elixir | 2.09% 1,208 |
| Haskell | 1.7% 986 |
| LISP | 1.12% 649 |
| F# | 1.06% 612 |
| Erlang | 0.87% 502 |
| Julia | 0.86% 498 |
| Crystal | 0.58% 334 |
| COBOL | 0.49% 286 |
| APL | 0.47% 270 |
The most common databases are consistent between all respondents and professional developers. The only difference we observed is that professional developers are slightly more likely to use Microsoft SQL Server over MongoDB.
| MySQL | 50.18% 35,289 |
| PostgreSQL | 40.42% 28,424 |
| SQLite | 32.18% 22,634 |
| MongoDB | 27.7% 19,479 |
| Microsoft SQL Server | 26.87% 18,896 |
| Redis | 20.69% 14,552 |
| MariaDB | 17.19% 12,088 |
| Firebase | 16.17% 11,373 |
| Elasticsearch | 13.27% 9,331 |
| Oracle | 12.61% 8,868 |
| DynamoDB | 7.3% 5,137 |
| Cassandra | 2.66% 1,873 |
| IBM DB2 | 2.04% 1,438 |
| Couchbase | 1.57% 1,106 |
| MySQL | 48.19% 25,165 |
| PostgreSQL | 44.08% 23,019 |
| SQLite | 30.86% 16,113 |
| Microsoft SQL Server | 29.43% 15,366 |
| MongoDB | 28.03% 14,635 |
| Redis | 24.51% 12,800 |
| MariaDB | 17.14% 8,948 |
| Firebase | 15.89% 8,298 |
| Elasticsearch | 15.72% 8,208 |
| Oracle | 12.89% 6,731 |
| DynamoDB | 8.7% 4,544 |
| Cassandra | 2.91% 1,522 |
| IBM DB2 | 2.14% 1,115 |
| Couchbase | 1.72% 897 |
AWS maintains its lead as the most widely used cloud platform, but Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure made substantial gains from last year. It is worth noting that this is the first year that we broke out cloud platforms from our general platforms question.
| AWS | 54.22% 29,138 |
| Google Cloud Platform | 31.05% 16,687 |
| Microsoft Azure | 30.77% 16,540 |
| Heroku | 24% 12,897 |
| DigitalOcean | 17.67% 9,495 |
| IBM Cloud or Watson | 2.55% 1,373 |
| Oracle Cloud Infrastructure | 1.89% 1,014 |
| AWS | 59.11% 24,336 |
| Microsoft Azure | 32.49% 13,376 |
| Google Cloud Platform | 29.66% 12,212 |
| Heroku | 21.3% 8,768 |
| DigitalOcean | 18.26% 7,519 |
| IBM Cloud or Watson | 2.09% 861 |
| Oracle Cloud Infrastructure | 1.49% 613 |
This year, React.js surpassed jQuery as the most commonly used web framework.
| React.js | 40.14% 25,296 |
| jQuery | 34.42% 21,693 |
| Express | 23.82% 15,010 |
| Angular | 22.96% 14,471 |
| Vue.js | 18.97% 11,954 |
| ASP.NET Core | 18.1% 11,404 |
| Flask | 16.14% 10,174 |
| ASP.NET | 15.74% 9,918 |
| Django | 14.99% 9,446 |
| Spring | 14.56% 9,177 |
| Angular.js | 11.49% 7,242 |
| Laravel | 10.12% 6,377 |
| Ruby on Rails | 7.04% 4,438 |
| Gatsby | 3.97% 2,501 |
| FastAPI | 3.88% 2,447 |
| Symfony | 3.85% 2,427 |
| Svelte | 2.75% 1,735 |
| Drupal | 2.39% 1,508 |
| React.js | 41.4% 19,864 |
| jQuery | 34.52% 16,562 |
| Angular | 26.23% 12,584 |
| Express | 23.6% 11,321 |
| ASP.NET Core | 20.3% 9,740 |
| Vue.js | 20.09% 9,638 |
| ASP.NET | 17.36% 8,329 |
| Spring | 16.48% 7,906 |
| Flask | 13.79% 6,615 |
| Django | 13.02% 6,245 |
| Angular.js | 12.71% 6,100 |
| Laravel | 10.89% 5,226 |
| Ruby on Rails | 7.89% 3,786 |
| Gatsby | 4.27% 2,048 |
| Symfony | 4.25% 2,039 |
| FastAPI | 3.87% 1,857 |
| Svelte | 2.59% 1,243 |
| Drupal | 2.46% 1,182 |
The .NET framework gets the most love in other technologies, though several data science libraries for Python make strong showings.
| .NET Framework | 34.2% 16,620 |
| NumPy | 33.84% 16,445 |
| .NET Core / .NET 5 | 31.5% 15,310 |
| Pandas | 28.12% 13,664 |
| TensorFlow | 16.53% 8,034 |
| React Native | 14.51% 7,051 |
| Flutter | 13.55% 6,586 |
| Keras | 10.14% 4,930 |
| Qt | 9.9% 4,812 |
| Torch/PyTorch | 9.89% 4,808 |
| Cordova | 7.18% 3,491 |
| Apache Spark | 5.83% 2,833 |
| Hadoop | 4.43% 2,155 |
| .NET Framework | 37.1% 12,682 |
| .NET Core / .NET 5 | 35.26% 12,052 |
| NumPy | 26.81% 9,165 |
| Pandas | 23.56% 8,054 |
| React Native | 16.48% 5,632 |
| TensorFlow | 14.1% 4,818 |
| Flutter | 13.35% 4,565 |
| Cordova | 8.67% 2,963 |
| Keras | 8.44% 2,886 |
| Qt | 8.38% 2,864 |
| Torch/PyTorch | 8.34% 2,851 |
| Apache Spark | 6.38% 2,182 |
| Hadoop | 4.62% 1,580 |
Over 90% of respondents use Git, suggesting that it is a fundamental tool to being a developer.
| Git | 93.43% 68,171 |
| Docker | 48.85% 35,644 |
| Yarn | 17.73% 12,937 |
| Kubernetes | 16.6% 12,115 |
| Unity 3D | 9.88% 7,206 |
| Ansible | 7.68% 5,607 |
| Terraform | 7.46% 5,442 |
| Xamarin | 3.9% 2,844 |
| Unreal Engine | 3.21% 2,339 |
| Puppet | 1.8% 1,313 |
| Deno | 1.41% 1,027 |
| Chef | 1.35% 982 |
| Flow | 1.27% 929 |
| Pulumi | 0.5% 368 |
| Git | 94.41% 50,563 |
| Docker | 55.06% 29,487 |
| Yarn | 20.19% 10,811 |
| Kubernetes | 19.53% 10,461 |
| Terraform | 8.67% 4,646 |
| Ansible | 8.29% 4,442 |
| Unity 3D | 7.03% 3,763 |
| Xamarin | 4.17% 2,234 |
| Unreal Engine | 2.29% 1,227 |
| Puppet | 1.76% 942 |
| Chef | 1.39% 745 |
| Flow | 1.34% 719 |
| Deno | 1.3% 696 |
| Pulumi | 0.54% 291 |
Visual Studio Code has a significant lead as the IDE of choice across all developers.
| Visual Studio Code | 71.06% 58,026 |
| Visual Studio | 33.03% 26,970 |
| Notepad++ | 29.71% 24,262 |
| IntelliJ | 28.74% 23,467 |
| Vim | 24.19% 19,752 |
| Android Studio | 22.22% 18,141 |
| Sublime Text | 20.47% 16,714 |
| PyCharm | 19.29% 15,755 |
| Eclipse | 15.87% 12,955 |
| Atom | 12.94% 10,564 |
| IPython/Jupyter | 12.63% 10,310 |
| Xcode | 11.07% 9,040 |
| Webstorm | 8.04% 6,564 |
| PHPStorm | 7.47% 6,096 |
| NetBeans | 7.15% 5,839 |
| Emacs | 5.3% 4,327 |
| Neovim | 4.99% 4,071 |
| Rider | 3.99% 3,255 |
| RStudio | 3.92% 3,200 |
| RubyMine | 1.49% 1,219 |
| TextMate | 0.83% 678 |
| Visual Studio Code | 71.07% 40,881 |
| Visual Studio | 32.92% 18,933 |
| IntelliJ | 29.69% 17,078 |
| Notepad++ | 29.09% 16,731 |
| Vim | 24.82% 14,275 |
| Android Studio | 21.76% 12,519 |
| Sublime Text | 19.66% 11,309 |
| PyCharm | 16.27% 9,361 |
| Eclipse | 14.93% 8,586 |
| Xcode | 12.66% 7,284 |
| Atom | 10.31% 5,932 |
| IPython/Jupyter | 9.95% 5,721 |
| Webstorm | 9.15% 5,263 |
| PHPStorm | 8.55% 4,918 |
| NetBeans | 6.75% 3,882 |
| Emacs | 5.25% 3,017 |
| Neovim | 4.49% 2,583 |
| Rider | 4.42% 2,541 |
| RStudio | 2.59% 1,488 |
| RubyMine | 1.76% 1,014 |
| TextMate | 0.83% 478 |
Windows continues to be the most popular operating system, though slightly less so among professional developers. This year was also the first time we added WSL as an option.
| Windows | 45.33% 37,758 |
| Linux-based | 25.32% 21,088 |
| MacOS | 25.19% 20,984 |
| Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) | 3.29% 2,743 |
| BSD | 0.18% 146 |
| Windows | 41.2% 23,928 |
| MacOS | 30.04% 17,443 |
| Linux-based | 25.17% 14,615 |
| Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) | 3% 1,745 |
| BSD | 0.14% 83 |
Technology
Rust reigns supreme as most loved. Python and Typescript are the languages developers want to work with most if they aren’t already doing so.
For the sixth-year, Rust is the most loved language, while Python is the most wanted language for its fifth-year.
% of developers who are not developing with the language or technology but have expressed interest in developing with it
| Python | 19.04% 8,212 |
| TypeScript | 15.29% 8,867 |
| JavaScript | 14.59% 4,279 |
| Go | 14.54% 10,911 |
| Rust | 14.09% 10,864 |
| Node.js | 11.9% 6,536 |
| C++ | 8.8% 5,531 |
| Kotlin | 8.57% 6,519 |
| Java | 6.79% 3,648 |
| C# | 6.45% 3,865 |
| SQL | 6.3% 2,775 |
| Dart | 4.99% 3,892 |
| Swift | 4.74% 3,731 |
| HTML/CSS | 4.67% 1,712 |
| C | 4.52% 2,965 |
| Haskell | 3.14% 2,551 |
| Elixir | 2.9% 2,361 |
| R | 2.82% 2,218 |
| Assembly | 2.63% 2,062 |
| Ruby | 2.6% 2,011 |
| Scala | 2.57% 2,075 |
| PHP | 2.55% 1,652 |
| Bash/Shell | 2.48% 1,504 |
| Julia | 2.1% 1,717 |
| F# | 2.04% 1,678 |
| PowerShell | 1.47% 1,090 |
| Clojure | 1.45% 1,179 |
| Erlang | 1.28% 1,049 |
| LISP | 1.13% 926 |
| Objective-C | 1% 806 |
| Matlab | 0.96% 763 |
| Crystal | 0.65% 533 |
| Perl | 0.58% 470 |
| Groovy | 0.5% 406 |
| APL | 0.45% 374 |
| VBA | 0.39% 310 |
| COBOL | 0.32% 260 |
| Delphi | 0.22% 178 |
Redis is in its fifth year as the most loved database. PostgreSQL barely passes MongoDB with less than a percent as the most wanted database. And IBM DB2 is on its second year in a row as the most dreaded database.
% of developers who are not developing with the language or technology but have expressed interest in developing with it
| PostgreSQL | 17.99% 7,931 |
| MongoDB | 17.86% 9,475 |
| Redis | 12.58% 7,294 |
| Elasticsearch | 10.52% 6,646 |
| MySQL | 9.76% 3,635 |
| Firebase | 8.09% 4,945 |
| SQLite | 7.74% 3,861 |
| Cassandra | 5.14% 3,632 |
| DynamoDB | 5.03% 3,392 |
| Microsoft SQL Server | 3.11% 1,666 |
| MariaDB | 2.93% 1,772 |
| Oracle | 2.8% 1,781 |
| Couchbase | 1.88% 1,345 |
| IBM DB2 | 0.57% 407 |
AWS is leading as not only the most loved cloud platform but also the most wanted.
% of developers who are not developing with the language or technology but have expressed interest in developing with it
| AWS | 40.35% 12,660 |
| Google Cloud Platform | 22.56% 9,886 |
| Microsoft Azure | 21.12% 9,289 |
| DigitalOcean | 8.46% 4,315 |
| Heroku | 7.31% 3,482 |
| IBM Cloud or Watson | 3.24% 1,914 |
| Oracle Cloud Infrastructure | 2.6% 1,550 |
Newcomer Svelte takes the top spot as the most loved framework. React is the most wanted, desired by one in four developers.
% of developers who are not developing with the language or technology but have expressed interest in developing with it
| React.js | 25.12% 10,275 |
| Vue.js | 16.69% 9,054 |
| Django | 9.21% 5,230 |
| Angular | 8.47% 4,380 |
| Svelte | 6.57% 4,233 |
| Flask | 5.89% 3,299 |
| Express | 5.84% 2,989 |
| Angular.js | 5.8% 3,417 |
| ASP.NET Core | 5.2% 2,851 |
| FastAPI | 4.13% 2,635 |
| Spring | 3.89% 2,219 |
| jQuery | 3.67% 1,635 |
| Ruby on Rails | 3.28% 2,028 |
| Gatsby | 2.74% 1,747 |
| Laravel | 2.67% 1,595 |
| ASP.NET | 2.39% 1,346 |
| Symfony | 1.14% 727 |
| Drupal | 0.57% 370 |
While Tensorflow is the most wanted library, Pytorch is a more loved library. As .NET Core users here at Stack Overflow, we’re pleased to see it in the top spot.
% of developers who are not developing with the language or technology but have expressed interest in developing with it
| TensorFlow | 21.37% 10,736 |
| React Native | 17.75% 9,096 |
| Flutter | 16.43% 8,496 |
| Torch/PyTorch | 12.06% 6,448 |
| NumPy | 9.93% 4,153 |
| .NET Core / .NET 5 | 8.98% 3,860 |
| Pandas | 8.34% 3,720 |
| Keras | 5.06% 2,702 |
| Apache Spark | 4.98% 2,764 |
| Hadoop | 4.87% 2,735 |
| .NET Framework | 4.56% 1,899 |
| Qt | 4.16% 2,223 |
| Cordova | 1.29% 709 |
Earlier, we saw that Git was used by 93% of all respondents. Now we saw that 85% of those respondents want to continue working with Git. Git, Docker, and Kubernetes are both the most loved and most wanted tools.
% of developers who are not developing with the language or technology but have expressed interest in developing with it
| Docker | 29.7% 11,926 |
| Git | 29.69% 2,263 |
| Kubernetes | 21.97% 13,992 |
| Unity 3D | 7.6% 5,215 |
| Unreal Engine | 6.75% 4,955 |
| Terraform | 5.94% 4,177 |
| Deno | 5.68% 4,246 |
| Ansible | 4.21% 2,954 |
| Yarn | 2.94% 1,847 |
| Xamarin | 2.8% 2,041 |
| Puppet | 1.42% 1,055 |
| Chef | 1.27% 953 |
| Pulumi | 0.95% 719 |
| Flow | 0.84% 632 |
While Neovim is the most loved editor it is the 10th most wanted editor.
% of developers who are not developing with the language or technology but have expressed interest in developing with it
| Visual Studio Code | 11.11% 2,646 |
| Android Studio | 4.67% 2,975 |
| Xcode | 4.04% 2,939 |
| IntelliJ | 3.42% 1,994 |
| Vim | 3.09% 1,921 |
| Visual Studio | 2.89% 1,583 |
| PyCharm | 2.82% 1,862 |
| IPython/Jupyter | 1.81% 1,292 |
| Webstorm | 1.53% 1,153 |
| Sublime Text | 1.27% 825 |
| Neovim | 1.25% 972 |
| Rider | 1.18% 926 |
| Atom | 1.14% 811 |
| Eclipse | 1.05% 725 |
| Emacs | 1.03% 798 |
| PHPStorm | 0.85% 642 |
| RStudio | 0.72% 570 |
| Notepad++ | 0.68% 391 |
| NetBeans | 0.54% 414 |
| RubyMine | 0.42% 338 |
| TextMate | 0.16% 129 |
Technology
There is a lot to unpack here, but here are some of the most notable trends we uncovered. There are over 10k Javascript developers that want to start or continue developing in Go or Rust. The majority of developers that want to use Dart are currently using JavaScript. We also see the only developers that want to work in PHP are SQL developers.
Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.
Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.
12,590 MySQL developers want to work with PostgreSQL, while 6,429 PostgreSQL developers want to work with MySQL.
Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.
Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.
While AWS is the most loved platform, we see a large influx of AWS developers wanting to develop in Google Cloud next year. 8,586 AWS developers want to work with Google Cloud, while only 7,668 Google Cloud developers want to work in AWS. Developers currently using Heroku or Digital Ocean prefer to start working with or continue working with AWS, then Google Cloud, and lastly Azure. Very few developers currently using Azure want to move to Heroku.
Minimum 1,000 respondents per connection.
Minimum 1,000 respondents per connection.
Django, Flask, and Spring developers are content to continue working in their respective frameworks. Very few developers want to work with ASP.NET.
Minimum 4,000 respondents per connection.
Minimum 4,000 respondents per connection.
The developers who want to work in Hadoop are currently using Pandas or Numpy. There and 3,328 Tensorflow developers that want to continue to use PyTorch, but only 2,328 Pytorch developers that want to move to Tensorflow.
Minimum 1,000 respondents per connection.
Minimum 1,000 respondents per connection.
Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.
Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.
We see IPython/Jupyter users want to work in VS Code. This is likely due to VS Codes adding a Notebook API to their IDE.
Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.
Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.
Technology
Respondents most often use Google when they get stuck or visit Stack Overflow.
| Google it | 89.69% 74,491 |
| Visit Stack Overflow | 79.96% 66,410 |
| Do other work and come back later | 48.01% 39,871 |
| Watch help / tutorial videos | 43.56% 36,181 |
| Call a coworker or friend | 39.5% 32,805 |
| Go for a walk or other physical activity | 37.04% 30,760 |
| Play games | 14.63% 12,152 |
| Panic | 11.99% 9,962 |
| Meditate | 9.37% 7,785 |
| Visit another developer community (please name): | 7.92% 6,577 |
| Google it | 89.88% 52,050 |
| Visit Stack Overflow | 79.48% 46,024 |
| Do other work and come back later | 48.45% 28,055 |
| Call a coworker or friend | 46.2% 26,752 |
| Go for a walk or other physical activity | 39.8% 23,051 |
| Watch help / tutorial videos | 39.39% 22,811 |
| Play games | 12.22% 7,074 |
| Panic | 10.33% 5,981 |
| Meditate | 9.62% 5,571 |
| Visit another developer community (please name): | 7.26% 4,204 |
Technology
Perl moves from being the highest-paid language last year to the fifth highest-paid this year. Clojure developers have the highest median salary, 14k more than second place which belongs to F#.
| Clojure | $95,000 1,074 |
| F# | $81,037 502 |
| Elixir | $80,077 1,013 |
| Erlang | $80,077 401 |
| Perl | $80,000 1,227 |
| Ruby | $80,000 3,872 |
| Scala | $77,832 1,411 |
| Rust | $77,530 2,938 |
| Go | $75,669 5,053 |
| LISP | $75,669 516 |
| APL | $75,631 160 |
| Groovy | $75,002 1,747 |
| Crystal | $72,400 243 |
| Bash/Shell | $71,340 13,723 |
| PowerShell | $68,824 5,483 |
| Haskell | $67,021 708 |
| Julia | $65,228 475 |
| Objective-C | $64,859 1,437 |
| Python | $59,454 19,915 |
| R | $59,454 2,050 |
| TypeScript | $59,172 16,670 |
| Swift | $58,910 2,472 |
| C# | $58,368 13,704 |
| SQL | $56,228 23,791 |
| Assembly | $55,211 1,651 |
| Kotlin | $55,071 3,935 |
| Node.js | $54,672 16,443 |
| C++ | $54,049 8,465 |
| JavaScript | $54,049 31,506 |
| VBA | $53,825 2,202 |
| C | $53,184 6,925 |
| HTML/CSS | $52,980 25,738 |
| COBOL | $52,340 230 |
| Java | $51,888 14,916 |
| Delphi | $46,704 1,031 |
| Matlab | $43,948 1,507 |
| PHP | $38,916 10,014 |
| Dart | $32,986 2,423 |
| DynamoDB | $80,936 3,803 |
| Elasticsearch | $67,021 6,923 |
| Cassandra | $64,930 1,180 |
| Redis | $64,548 10,453 |
| IBM DB2 | $64,044 945 |
| Couchbase | $63,018 704 |
| PostgreSQL | $59,454 18,784 |
| Microsoft SQL Server | $58,167 12,692 |
| SQLite | $51,704 12,496 |
| Oracle | $48,644 5,235 |
| MariaDB | $45,678 7,200 |
| MongoDB | $45,401 11,150 |
| MySQL | $43,404 19,324 |
| Firebase | $37,834 5,976 |
| AWS | $66,810 20,108 |
| Microsoft Azure | $64,630 11,251 |
| Google Cloud Platform | $55,600 9,815 |
| IBM Cloud or Watson | $52,942 637 |
| Oracle Cloud Infrastructure | $51,888 462 |
| DigitalOcean | $51,704 6,028 |
| Heroku | $45,000 6,588 |
| Ruby on Rails | $77,556 3,220 |
| Svelte | $62,520 1,011 |
| ASP.NET Core | $60,744 7,876 |
| Gatsby | $60,129 1,645 |
| React.js | $58,128 15,540 |
| ASP.NET | $56,220 6,584 |
| Flask | $54,876 5,349 |
| FastAPI | $54,049 1,492 |
| Spring | $51,888 5,984 |
| Drupal | $51,429 961 |
| Vue.js | $50,000 7,598 |
| Angular.js | $49,450 4,649 |
| Angular | $48,852 9,613 |
| Express | $47,850 8,640 |
| jQuery | $45,797 12,808 |
| Symfony | $45,396 1,596 |
| Django | $45,379 4,778 |
| Laravel | $29,196 3,881 |
| Apache Spark | $67,464 1,736 |
| .NET Core / .NET 5 | $62,520 9,735 |
| Hadoop | $60,624 1,260 |
| .NET Framework | $59,185 10,188 |
| NumPy | $54,049 7,517 |
| Pandas | $54,049 6,841 |
| Torch/PyTorch | $52,869 2,147 |
| Qt | $51,888 2,240 |
| TensorFlow | $50,000 3,660 |
| Keras | $45,396 2,165 |
| React Native | $44,160 4,162 |
| Cordova | $39,192 2,207 |
| Flutter | $32,429 3,224 |
| Pulumi | $109,824 248 |
| Terraform | $90,482 4,293 |
| Chef | $90,000 659 |
| Puppet | $76,000 883 |
| Kubernetes | $75,000 8,804 |
| Ansible | $72,000 3,983 |
| Deno | $64,859 516 |
| Docker | $63,469 24,507 |
| Yarn | $57,696 8,574 |
| Git | $56,798 40,904 |
| Flow | $51,887 567 |
| Xamarin | $51,704 1,727 |
| Unreal Engine | $49,228 880 |
| Unity 3D | $45,396 2,749 |
| TextMate | $80,000 394 |
| Emacs | $77,832 2,503 |
| RubyMine | $70,264 815 |
| Rider | $68,724 2,087 |
| Vim | $67,452 11,886 |
| Neovim | $67,052 2,076 |
| IntelliJ | $56,427 12,977 |
| Xcode | $55,680 5,605 |
| Visual Studio | $55,224 14,785 |
| RStudio | $54,289 1,539 |
| Visual Studio Code | $54,000 32,733 |
| IPython/Jupyter | $52,942 4,742 |
| PyCharm | $51,228 7,323 |
| Notepad++ | $50,262 13,276 |
| Webstorm | $49,725 3,987 |
| Sublime Text | $45,401 8,684 |
| Atom | $45,396 4,571 |
| Eclipse | $41,508 6,171 |
| PHPStorm | $39,768 3,757 |
| Android Studio | $38,508 9,012 |
| NetBeans | $25,128 2,661 |
Work
We see a greater percentage of respondents working part time or in school, while those indicating full time employment decreased. This may reflect the effects of the pandemic, which saw workers from all industries stepping back and reevaluating their relationship to full and in-person employment.
81% of professional developers are employed full-time, a decrease from 83% in 2020. The percentage of professional developers saying they were independent contractors, freelancers, or self-employed increased from 9.5% in 2020 to 11.2% in 2021 - indicating potential job insecurity or a shift to more flexible work arrangements.
| Employed full-time | 64.31% 53,584 |
| Student, full-time | 14.14% 11,781 |
| Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed | 9.65% 8,041 |
| Not employed, but looking for work | 3.55% 2,961 |
| Employed part-time | 2.95% 2,461 |
| Student, part-time | 2.46% 2,051 |
| Not employed, and not looking for work | 1.47% 1,228 |
| I prefer not to say | 1.07% 890 |
| Retired | 0.39% 326 |
| Employed full-time | 80.68% 46,884 |
| Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed | 11.21% 6,515 |
| Employed part-time | 2.82% 1,637 |
| Student, full-time | 2.12% 1,230 |
| Not employed, but looking for work | 1.71% 994 |
| Student, part-time | 0.82% 479 |
| Not employed, and not looking for work | 0.28% 161 |
| I prefer not to say | 0.27% 155 |
| Retired | 0.09% 55 |
The percent of employed full-time respondents from India decreased by 15 percentage points compared to last year. In contrast, the number of students increased by 9 percentage points.
| Employed full-time | 73.46% 11,214 |
| Student, full-time | 11.06% 1,689 |
| Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed | 6.39% 976 |
| Not employed, but looking for work | 2.78% 425 |
| Employed part-time | 1.72% 263 |
| Not employed, and not looking for work | 1.6% 244 |
| I prefer not to say | 1.21% 185 |
| Student, part-time | 0.92% 140 |
| Retired | 0.85% 130 |
| Employed full-time | 58.39% 6,126 |
| Student, full-time | 21.25% 2,229 |
| Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed | 6.53% 685 |
| Not employed, but looking for work | 5.19% 544 |
| Student, part-time | 4.03% 423 |
| Not employed, and not looking for work | 1.67% 175 |
| Employed part-time | 1.53% 161 |
| I prefer not to say | 1.37% 144 |
| Retired | 0.04% 4 |
| Employed full-time | 63.46% 3,565 |
| Student, full-time | 16.16% 908 |
| Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed | 7.92% 445 |
| Employed part-time | 5.55% 312 |
| Student, part-time | 3.29% 185 |
| Not employed, but looking for work | 1.6% 90 |
| Not employed, and not looking for work | 0.94% 53 |
| I prefer not to say | 0.84% 47 |
| Retired | 0.23% 13 |
| Employed full-time | 71.37% 3,191 |
| Student, full-time | 12.41% 555 |
| Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed | 9.17% 410 |
| Employed part-time | 1.81% 81 |
| Not employed, but looking for work | 1.79% 80 |
| Not employed, and not looking for work | 1.16% 52 |
| Retired | 0.87% 39 |
| I prefer not to say | 0.74% 33 |
| Student, part-time | 0.67% 30 |
| Employed full-time | 64.77% 1,949 |
| Student, full-time | 15.75% 474 |
| Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed | 9.07% 273 |
| Not employed, but looking for work | 2.96% 89 |
| Not employed, and not looking for work | 2.19% 66 |
| Employed part-time | 1.86% 56 |
| Student, part-time | 1.4% 42 |
| I prefer not to say | 1.26% 38 |
| Retired | 0.73% 22 |
Work
This year we saw an increase in respondents that are freelancing compared to last year.
| Just me - I am a freelancer, sole proprietor, etc. | 6.5% 3,573 |
| 2 to 9 employees | 11.06% 6,081 |
| 10 to 19 employees | 9.26% 5,092 |
| 20 to 99 employees | 21.3% 11,709 |
| 100 to 499 employees | 17.52% 9,631 |
| 500 to 999 employees | 6.16% 3,388 |
| 1,000 to 4,999 employees | 9.95% 5,472 |
| 5,000 to 9,999 employees | 3.52% 1,937 |
| 10,000 or more employees | 12.66% 6,961 |
| I don’t know | 2.07% 1,138 |
Work
Across the board, engineering managers, SREs, DevOps specialists, and data engineers tend to receive the highest salaries. When focusing on the US, we see some differences at the bottom of the salary spectrum. In the US, mobile developers and educators tend to have a higher salary relative to other occupations when compared to the global developer population.
Median yearly salary in USD
| Engineering manager | $95,976 2,803 |
| Senior Executive (C-Suite, VP, etc.) | $94,996 1,322 |
| Engineer, site reliability | $84,000 1,849 |
| DevOps specialist | $70,264 5,481 |
| Engineer, data | $68,034 3,076 |
| Scientist | $64,859 1,349 |
| Data scientist or machine learning specialist | $63,216 2,978 |
| Data or business analyst | $60,505 2,536 |
| Product manager | $60,000 1,999 |
| Marketing or sales professional | $58,772.5 302 |
| Developer, desktop or enterprise applications | $58,639 7,959 |
| Developer, embedded applications or devices | $58,373 3,207 |
| Developer, back-end | $56,723 21,617 |
| Developer, full-stack | $56,038 24,439 |
| Developer, QA or test | $55,973 2,629 |
| System administrator | $55,271 4,230 |
| Database administrator | $55,224 4,042 |
| Developer, game or graphics | $54,480 1,304 |
| Educator | $53,832 1,511 |
| Designer | $51,647 2,912 |
| Developer, front-end | $49,725 13,129 |
| Academic researcher | $49,457.5 1,872 |
| Developer, mobile | $41,597 6,694 |
| Student | $19,452 1,592 |
Median yearly salary in USD
| Senior Executive (C-Suite, VP, etc.) | $177,500 320 |
| Engineering manager | $165,000 759 |
| Engineer, site reliability | $150,000 557 |
| DevOps specialist | $135,000 1,259 |
| Developer, back-end | $133,000 4,279 |
| Product manager | $130,000 364 |
| Engineer, data | $129,250 774 |
| Developer, game or graphics | $128,000 249 |
| Marketing or sales professional | $127,500 82 |
| Data scientist or machine learning specialist | $125,000 673 |
| Developer, desktop or enterprise applications | $120,000 1,708 |
| Developer, embedded applications or devices | $120,000 677 |
| Developer, full-stack | $120,000 5,259 |
| Developer, mobile | $120,000 960 |
| Scientist | $120,000 351 |
| Database administrator | $115,000 950 |
| Developer, front-end | $115,000 2,488 |
| Educator | $115,000 263 |
| System administrator | $115,000 952 |
| Developer, QA or test | $110,000 643 |
| Designer | $108,000 733 |
| Data or business analyst | $102,000 658 |
| Academic researcher | $100,000 365 |
| Student | $70,000 218 |
Even though Engineering managers, SREs, DevOps specialist roles pay the most, we see they also have, on average, over ten years of professional experience. Data scientists or machine learning specialists are the 8th most paid but, on average, have the fewest years of experience. Designers are the lowest paid even though they have over ten years of experience on average.
PHP developers are disproportionately underpaid compared to other languages with the same experience.
Community is at the center of all that we do.
Community
Less than 1% of respondents have never visited Stack Overflow or the Stack Exchange Network.
| Stack Overflow | 98.47% 81,901 |
| Stack Exchange | 69.77% 58,031 |
| Stack Overflow for Teams (private knowledge sharing & collaboration platform for companies) | 4.85% 4,033 |
| I have never visited Stack Overflow or the Stack Exchange network | 0.9% 750 |
| Stack Overflow | 99.32% 57,617 |
| Stack Exchange | 71.21% 41,311 |
| Stack Overflow for Teams (private knowledge sharing & collaboration platform for companies) | 5.36% 3,107 |
| I have never visited Stack Overflow or the Stack Exchange network | 0.26% 148 |
We know that developers visit Stack Overflow a lot, and earlier this year, we confirmed that they copy code just as much. From this year’s survey, we also know that 80% of respondents visit Stack Overflow weekly, and 55% of them visit daily.
| Multiple times per day | 23.76% 19,580 |
| Daily or almost daily | 30.65% 25,262 |
| A few times per week | 27.28% 22,481 |
| A few times per month or weekly | 15.42% 12,710 |
| Less than once per month or monthly | 2.89% 2,380 |
| Multiple times per day | 18.7% 2,834 |
| Daily or almost daily | 26.25% 3,978 |
| A few times per week | 30.91% 4,684 |
| A few times per month or weekly | 20.05% 3,039 |
| Less than once per month or monthly | 4.1% 621 |
8 out of 10 respondents have a Stack Overflow account.
| Yes | 82.17% 67,813 |
| No | 12.74% 10,510 |
| Not sure/can't remember | 5.09% 4,202 |
Of those with a Stack Overflow account, 46% are participating on the site less than once per month or monthly.
| Multiple times per day | 1.86% 1,254 |
| Daily or almost daily | 3.87% 2,613 |
| A few times per week | 8.42% 5,687 |
| A few times per month or weekly | 19.21% 12,978 |
| Less than once per month or monthly | 45.56% 30,778 |
| I have never participated in Q&A on Stack Overflow | 21.08% 14,243 |
| Multiple times per day | 2.06% 248 |
| Daily or almost daily | 3.65% 440 |
| A few times per week | 7.89% 950 |
| A few times per month or weekly | 18.14% 2,184 |
| Less than once per month or monthly | 50.68% 6,102 |
| I have never participated in Q&A on Stack Overflow | 17.58% 2,117 |
Only 44% 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.
| Yes, somewhat | 28.65% 23,584 |
| No, not really | 25.14% 20,697 |
| Neutral | 20.75% 17,084 |
| Yes, definitely | 15.66% 12,888 |
| No, not at all | 8.06% 6,633 |
| Not sure | 1.74% 1,433 |
Percent who consider themselves definitely or somewhat part of the Stack Overflow community out of all respondents.
| Man | 45.27% 33,804 |
| Woman | 35.4% 1,496 |
| Non-binary, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming | 27.66% 317 |
Percent who consider themselves definitely or somewhat part of the Stack Overflow community.
| Under 18 years old | 35.16% 1,846 |
| 18-24 years old | 41.23% 8,521 |
| 25-34 years old | 45.95% 14,841 |
| 35-44 years old | 47.38% 7,137 |
| 45-54 years old | 46.92% 2,541 |
| 55-64 years old | 47.73% 851 |
| 65 years or older | 42.16% 164 |
| Prefer not to say | 38.75% 210 |
Community
Most respondents do not belong to any other development communities online.
| No | 64.43% 53,364 |
| Yes | 35.57% 29,464 |
Almost 25 thousand respondents belong to other online developer communities. 85% of the them are open to the public for anyone to join. The majority of these other communities belong on Reddit, Github or Discord.
| Public - Anyone can join | 84.76% 20,796 |
| Private - Invitation required to join | 15.24% 3,738 |
| 20.98% 4,726 | |
| Github | 19.75% 4,449 |
| Discord | 15.02% 3,383 |
| Slack | 8.92% 2,010 |
| DEV | 6.65% 1,499 |
| 2.57% 580 | |
| Hacker News | 2.56% 577 |
| Medium | 1.79% 404 |
| Freecodecamp | 1.46% 328 |
| Microsoft | 1.35% 304 |
| GitLab | 1.22% 275 |
| CodeProject | 1.19% 269 |
How we planned and analyzed our survey
Methodology
This report is based on a survey of 83,439 software developers from 181 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 172 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 25 2021 to June 15 2021.
The median time spent on the survey for qualified responses was 10.21 minutes.
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 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 unaccessible 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 salary. First, we asked what currency each respondent typically used. Then we asked that respondent 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 46,844 respondents who gave us salary data.
We converted salaries from user currencies to USD using the exchange rate on 2021-06-16, 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 on 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.
Methodology
The majority of respondents felt like this year’s survey was an appropriate length.
| Appropriate in length | 78.95% 64,514 |
| Too long | 16.02% 13,087 |
| Too short | 5.03% 4,110 |
Less than one percent of respondents felt like this year’s survey was difficult.
| Easy | 76.98% 63,087 |
| Neither easy nor difficult | 22.08% 18,091 |
| Difficult | 0.94% 770 |
Methodology
Similar to previous years the overwhelming majority of respondents are a developer by profession
| I am a developer by profession | 69.7% 58,153 |
| I am a student who is learning to code | 14.42% 12,029 |
| I am not primarily a developer, but I write code sometimes as part of my work | 7.88% 6,578 |
| I code primarily as a hobby | 5.91% 4,929 |
| I used to be a developer by profession, but no longer am | 1.48% 1,237 |
The following countries are the top 10 countries that we received responses from.
| United States of America | 18.32% 15,288 |
| India | 12.6% 10,511 |
| Germany | 6.74% 5,625 |
| United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland | 5.36% 4,475 |
| Canada | 3.61% 3,012 |
| France | 3.25% 2,708 |
| Brazil | 2.7% 2,254 |
| Poland | 2.16% 1,805 |
| Netherlands | 2.12% 1,772 |
| Italy | 2% 1,666 |