{"id":9121,"date":"2015-04-07T17:46:24","date_gmt":"2015-04-07T16:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/?p=9121"},"modified":"2015-04-07T17:46:24","modified_gmt":"2015-04-07T16:46:24","slug":"stackoverflow-developer-survey-shows-decline-in-c-windows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/9121-stackoverflow-developer-survey-shows-decline-in-c-windows.html","title":{"rendered":"StackOverflow developer survey shows decline in C#, Windows"},"content":{"rendered":"

StackOverflow, a popular (and the best) site for programming queries, has published its annual developer survey<\/a>. Respondents included:<\/p>\n

\n

26,086 people from 157 countries participated in our 45-question survey. 6,800 identified as full-stack developers, 1,900 as mobile developers, 1,200 as front-end developers, 2 as farmers, and 12,000 as something else.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That is a decent sample size, though not necessarily representative of the entire developer community.<\/p>\n

What is notable? Here are a few things that stood out for me:<\/p>\n

Developers are young<\/strong>. The largest group is 25-29 and the average age 28.9 years old.<\/p>\n

92.1% of respondents are male<\/strong>. Ouch.<\/p>\n

Software is still a good bet for a career even if you have no qualifications<\/strong>. 41.8% declared themselves self-taught. That said, it is not clear to me what proportion of respondents do programming as their main job. Presumably not the two farmers?<\/p>\n

If you look at the \u201cMost popular technologies\u201d, there is a striking decline in C#<\/strong> over the last three years:<\/p>\n

2013: 44.7%<\/p>\n

2014: 37.6%<\/p>\n

2015: 31.6%<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a shame because C# is an excellent language. The reason? It\u2019s speculation, but probably means less Windows development, whether server or desktop.<\/p>\n

Swift is top of the \u201cmost loved\u201d list<\/strong>, meaning a language that developers intend to continue with. Salesforce tops the \u201cmost dreaded\u201d, meaning a platform that developers cannot wait to abandon, followed by Visual Basic.<\/p>\n

What OS do developers use on the desktop?<\/strong> Here, Windows remains the biggest, but is declining:<\/p>\n

2013: 60.4%<\/p>\n

2014: 57.9%<\/p>\n

2015: 54.5%<\/p>\n

Windows XP has declined dramatically, down from 10.8% in 2013 to 1.0% today. <\/p>\n

Where have developers gone, if they no longer use Windows? Mac is up over the period, but only by 2.8% share. 3.5% are using \u201cOther\u201d, interesting (Chromebook?).<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll stop there; I don\u2019t want to spoil the survey.<\/p>\n

Conclusions? This puts some data (albeit imperfect) on the theory that Microsoft is losing its grip on the developer community \u2013 though note that Microsoft\u2019s technology in general remains popular, just less so than before.<\/p>\n

Postscript<\/strong>: Several on Twitter have observed that most languages have declined over the period, not just C#. Here\u2019s the difference in share from 2013 to 2015 for some of them:<\/p>\n

JavaScript: \u20132.2%<\/p>\n

SQL: \u201311.6%<\/p>\n

Java: \u20135.1%<\/p>\n

C#: \u201313.1%<\/p>\n

PHP: \u20135.1%<\/p>\n

In other words, all of the top 5 have declined, though C# has declined the most.<\/p>\n

What does this mean? Since the numbers sum to more than 100%, it might imply more specialisation. Or it might just say something about how the StackOverflow community has evolved, since that is the source of the data. Still, it seems to me that you cannot spin this as good news for Microsoft, though it might be less bad than it first appears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

StackOverflow, a popular (and the best) site for programming queries, has published its annual developer survey. Respondents included: 26,086 people from 157 countries participated in our 45-question survey. 6,800 identified as full-stack developers, 1,900 as mobile developers, 1,200 as front-end developers, 2 as farmers, and 12,000 as something else. That is a decent sample size, … Continue reading StackOverflow developer survey shows decline in C#, Windows<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,80],"tags":[586,849],"class_list":["post-9121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-microsoft","category-software-development","tag-microsoft","tag-software-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}