
2020 Developer Survey Results - caution
https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/05/27/2020-stack-overflow-developer-survey-results/
======
yamrzou
Interestingly, job priorities for men and women are not the same[1] : Men
place higher importance on "Languages, frameworks, and other technologies I'd
be working with", while for women, "Office environment or company culture" and
"Flex time or a flexible schedule" come first.

[1] [https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#work-most-
imp...](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#work-most-important-
job-factors)

~~~
HideousKojima
Another data point against the wage gap being a result of sexism

~~~
elliekelly
Women are more likely than men to adjust their work schedules in order to
provide childcare[1] because we have entrenched gender expectations about who
"should" shoulder what responsibilities in a heterosexual relationship.

[1][https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/01/women-
more-...](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/01/women-more-than-
men-adjust-their-careers-for-family-life/)

~~~
kelvin0
Having a human growing inside you for 9 months creates a pretty special and
undeniable bond.

No men have yet given birth (yet?).

~~~
elliekelly
And how does growing a human make someone more qualified to shuttle kids back
and forth to after school activities?

~~~
koheripbal
I know your question is not serious, but there are actually a large number of
genetic behavioral differences between men and women that make them more
easily accustomed to child care.

It's no surprise that the childcare/teaching industries are almost entirely
made up of women.

~~~
elliekelly
My question was genuine, if absurd. And I would ask the same of you: Which
“genetic behavioral differences,” specifically, make someone more qualified to
shuttle kids back and forth to after school activities?

There’s also some research that over-representation of women as K-12 teachers
is responsible for the growing education gap where men are falling behind
women. It isn’t just women who are held back by gender stereotypes.

~~~
kelvin0
I think your questions assume a lot of things:

\- Women do most of the shuttling of kids? I've yet to see any evidence of
this.

\- There are differences between the genders, but 'genetic behavioral
differences' is a very broad and deep assumption regarding nature vs nurture
and opens a whole other spectrum of basic questions.

\- Over representation of a gender in some particular field. Being equal does
not mean we all have the same aptitudes and interests.

------
dvdhnt
Honestly, it's hard for me to take anything meaningful away from this survey.

For example, it groups technology as "web frameworks" that just are not
equitable [e.g. rail != express != jquery != react] and compares things like
react native to node.js [makes no sense].

Personally, this survey feels more like a marketing handout than anything else
and I would take it all with a giant grain of salt if at all.

~~~
quantummkv
There is actually one thing this survey represents very accurately. Hype.
Especially in the programming languages/frameworks section.

------
axegon_
Rust still on top. Real shame there are so few Rust jobs out there. I agree,
the language is still changing way too much but that is to be expected from a
relatively new language. A lot of polishing has been done and imo, it's a
production ready language at this point. Tooling is awesome, cargo is awesome,
packaging is great. The compiler is still very slow, despite a lot of
improvements on that front but that is to be expected given Rust's nature.
Real shame it's so underused in the real world :/

~~~
skohan
There are also not that many actual professional rust developers out there. I
think there are a lot of developers who love _the idea_ of rust, and are
curious about rust, but I suspect the number of developers who have actually
completed a rust project of meaningful complexity and deployed it to
production is vanishingly small.

~~~
dochtman
The metric used by Stack Overflow is "% of developers who are developing with
the language or technology and have expressed interest in continuing to
develop with it", so it seems likely to me are likely to have some
understanding of what writing Rust code is like.

You seem to equate "actual professional" with "meaningful complexity" or
"deployed to production", which seems limited. I'm pretty sure I've written
meaningfully complex code outside my day job -- and I would guess many open
source developers write such code outside the context of their job.

~~~
koheripbal
If the question included the word "professionally", I think it would be a lot
more meaningful.

------
mtmail
The full results
[https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
dang: Could you point to this article, instead of the summary?

A few things I noticed: Other than management and sysadmin, the area with the
highest average seniority was embedded programming. That fits nicely with my
view that embedded is an area with less age age discrimination.

Haskell pays better than C++, by a fair amount internationally, but only
fractionally better in the US. I'm not sure what to make of that, but I
thought it was interesting.

------
shay_ker
Absolutely amazed that MongoDB is the most wanted database at 19.4%, and is
less dreaded than MySQL. What is their marketing team doing that's so
effective?

~~~
bE9a3S5So8igd3
Can kind of say the same about Rust. Benefits aside, it's hard to imagine a
more hostile language. Is it the language or the idea of the language people
are thrilled about?

~~~
estebank
Could you expand on what you have found hostile about the language? Is it its
syntax, semantics, development experience, ecosystem or maturity?

~~~
caditinpiscinam
Something that I've found confusing in Rust: the fact that the return type of
a function call seems to depend on how the returned value is used. This thread
[0] has the following example, where the statements:

    
    
      let v: Vec<u8> = b"3q2+7w==".iter().cloned().collect();
    

and

    
    
      let v: HashSet<u8> = b"3q2+7w==".iter().cloned().collect();
    

are both valid, even though both statements have the same expression on the
right hand side. In a language like Java you could assign a value to different
types based on a sub-type / super-type relationship (Object foo =
Arrays.asList(...)), but that's not the case here, nor is it the case that
Vec<u8> and HashSet<u8> have the same layout in memory. Instead, according to
the thread, the result from collect can be interpreted as any type that
implements the FromIterator trait.

I don't know what the name for this sort of behavior is, and I haven't seen it
in other languages. Perhaps it's just a property of Rust's trait system?
Regardless, it feels intuitive to me - like the compiler is taking type
information and using it to make implicit casts throughout the program.

Not a huge impediment - just something I found confusing that isn't related to
the borrow checker.

[0] [https://users.rust-lang.org/t/why-cant-the-compiler-the-
type...](https://users.rust-lang.org/t/why-cant-the-compiler-the-type-of-an-
iterator-collect-call/13707)

~~~
oconnor663
> like the compiler is taking type information and using it to make implicit
> casts throughout the program.

It's not a cast. Rather, it's an inferred/omitted type parameter. In this
case, the collect() method is actually collect::<ContainerType>(). So it's not
that collect returns something to be cast, but rather that there is a
different collect() implementation for each target type. When the compiler is
able to infer the target type unambiguously -- for example here, because you
assign it to a typed variable -- then you don't have to specify it.

~~~
caditinpiscinam
Ah, I see - the "inferred/omitted type parameter" is the part I was missing.
Really no different than Arrays.asList in my previous comment. Thanks!

------
pritambarhate
It's interesting what Flutter has done for Dart! Before Flutter, I used to
think Dart was dead. Typescript had won. If Flutter for Desktop becomes a
viable option to create desktop apps, I think Electron will have a formidable
competitor.

~~~
skoskie
For the non-dart-speaking folks, what's flutter? Just a framework?

~~~
hajile
It's basically React-like components, but implements everything to target Skia
rather than native or web. It's big interesting feature (to me) is that they
added a native compiler so they can run on iOS (which forbids JITs).

As a language though, Dart is MUCH better than Typescript. If you're going to
go all-in on types, at least go with a decent type system rather than one
who's core objectives explicitly do NOT include soundness.

[https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/type-
compatibil...](https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/type-
compatibility.html#a-note-on-soundness)

------
yamrzou
> 52% of respondents think “Hello, old friend” when they search for a coding
> solution online and find that the first result link is purple because
> they’ve already visited the link.

It's amazing how no solution has yet been found for this very real problem.

------
champagnepapi
"Formal Education Importance Almost 85% of the respondents that are
professional developers feel that formal education is at least somewhat
important, which is contrary to the popular idiom that you don't need formal
education to become a developer. However, almost 16% believe that it is not at
all important or necessary."

Well as someone who doesn't have a formal comp. sci. education, this is a bit
alarming for me. Personally didn't think the number was that high.

~~~
Izkata
As someone that was self-taught and then got a formal education (BS in CS),
here's my explanation after having worked with new hires who only did
bootcamps:

Formal education is not necessary to be capable of doing the job, especially
if you have some good people to learn from and are willing to learn on your
own.

However, it is very very good at filling in the things you don't realize you
don't know. It provides a huge number of hooks in your mind you can
investigate further as necessary on the job, as well as random little factoids
you didn't know were important.

For example, those bootcampers I worked with? Never encountered deep
copy/shallow copy, and had trouble figuring out a bug caused by using shallow
when it should have been deep. None of them had issues the moment it was
explained to them, but they'd just never experienced it before, so had nothing
to work from.

Maybe they'd have figured it out and understood it eventually, or maybe they'd
make guesses from StackOverflow and find something that works well enough
without understanding why it works (so next time it comes up they're starting
from scratch) (and yes, I have seen this).

It's just lots of small things like this that make up that split (and a
sibling comment mentions more of them). The survey was not well-structured to
get this nuance.

------
evanriley
What happened to Clojure? If I remember, it was in the top 10 for most loved
language, and now I don't even see it mentioned anywhere.

~~~
capableweb
Seems completely excluded, not even mentioned together with the rest of the
JVM languages in the "How Technologies Are Connected". My guess would be that
Clojure developers generally don't use Stack Overflow as much as others, so
usage over there is low enough to not be a mark on their radar. Rest assure,
nothing has drastically changed from last year, the same people who loved
Clojure then, loves Clojure now :)

------
amrrs
Honestly, the detailed page
[https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020)
reads like a Stack Overflow Advertisement / Pushing than a normal survey
highlights

> When asked what steps to take when stuck on a coding problem, 90% of
> respondents indicated they visit Stack Overflow.

> 0.3% of respondents had never visited Stack Overflow before taking the
> survey.

> More than 40% of respondents reported that they are members of other online
> developer communities beyond Stack Overflow.

> More than 15% of people find Stack Overflow at least somewhat more welcome
> than last year. We still have work to do, but it’s a start.

A big difference from last year's page, if you check. Probably the effect of
new CEO and bunch of new CTAs popping up everywhere about their paid tools!

------
rmdashrfstar
My tech stack: Rust, Redis, MongoDB, is most loved on Stack Overflow, and most
hated on HN! That must be a good sign. :)

Rust is a complete breakthrough in modern popular languages as a safe, fast,
and expressive alternative.

MongoDB, or really any aggregate-oriented database, is perfect when you’re
modeling your domain as aggregates and you align your data access patterns
with the design of these aggregates. Do your homework to set the right
settings, take regular backups, then focus on what matters (hint: it’s not
really persistence).

Redis is a no-brainer, it’s just plain great for managing user sessions.

There’s a place for everything, keep your mind open :)
[https://martinfowler.com/bliki/PolyglotPersistence.html](https://martinfowler.com/bliki/PolyglotPersistence.html)

------
Xcelerate
I’m a bit surprised Julia is ranked below Python for how much developers love
the language. I’ve programmed extensively in both, and with Julia it’s an
absolute joy, while I always feel like I’m fighting with Python to get it to
do what I want (efficiently, at the very least).

~~~
KenoFischer
Honestly, I'm pretty happy there were enough responses for them to actually
call it out separately in the results. I'm not sure that was the case last
year. Also, I think Julia's audience tends to not hang out on StackOverflow as
much, since they're often scientists primarily and software developers second.
Sure they use StackOverflow, but how many have an account and would answer a
survey.

~~~
s1t5
> Also, I think Julia's audience tends to not hang out on StackOverflow as
> much, since they're often scientists primarily and software developers
> second.

My impression is the opposite. Julia forces you to think more about CS
concepts early on (which is nice) while with Python or R you can get further
by just figuring out the syntax for what you want to do and not worrying about
how your code is executed.

~~~
KenoFischer
Sure, that seems plausible, but I still don't think that translates into the
kind of user that would take the StackOverflow survey, which I suspect to
mostly be users that are quite active on StackOverflow. More generally, I'm
seeing StackOverflow metrics underperform on Julia compared to other languages
(as opposed to things like Discourse usage for example).

------
tryptophan
Does anyone have any insights about why ASP NET Core is ranked so highly in
the surveys? It doesn't get much discussion at all on HN.

Is it just popular with 9-5 big-co dev jobs and their large numbers influence
the survey?

~~~
isbvhodnvemrwvn
I'm guessing here, but SO has always been very .NET-friendly place (it runs on
Windows and .NET, and it was very active in the .NET-related topics when it
started) which might skew results a bit. But again, guessing.

------
tchaffee
Some of those stats could use better context. At least for what I am curious
about. Just for example, the years of experience of developers who visit SO.

It would be interesting if we knew that in the larger world, equal number of
programmers were in each experience bracket. So then we could see which
experience group visits SO the most often. But we already know there are far
more programmers with 5 to 9 years experience than there are programmers with
35 to 39 years experience. So are those stats showing anything other than the
natural bell curve of experience distribution of all programmers in the world?

If we had the experience distribution over all programmers whether or not they
visit SO that we could compare with, it would be interesting to see any
differences. My guess is that there isn't. I bet highly experienced
programmers visit SO just as often as those with 5 to 9 years experience.

Maybe to a recruiter or for someone paying for job adverts, those numbers are
interesting on their own.

------
Vinnl
> When we break down differences in years since learning to code by gender, we
> notice some retention problems. We see a big drop off at the 10-14 year mark
> when compared to men, though we've seen some improvement from last year's
> survey. This is consistent with other research that women leave tech jobs at
> higher rates than men.

I'm sure that women leave tech jobs at higher rates than men, but hasn't there
been a stronger focus on educating women for tech jobs in recent years as
well? In other words, if more women have been learning to code in the past
decade, then I'd assume that that _also_ leads to a larger percentage of women
in tech having learned to code more recently.

------
yagodragon
What's the matter with Perl? I don't remember seeing it anywhere near the top-
paying programming languages the last couple of years. What happened this
year?

~~~
ipnon
I don't think anything has happened to Perl. Instead, the popularity of all
its alternatives has exploded.

edit: I can count the number of Perl scripts I have used at my job (0). I
cannot count the number of Node and Python scripts I have used at my job
(there are too many). The niche has been filled.

------
dahfizz
Surprised to see JavaScript so low on the average salary by programming
language[1]. Browsing HN you'd think that everything outside the browser is
dead and long gone.

[1][https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#technology-
wh...](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#technology-what-
languages-are-associated-with-the-highest-salaries-worldwide-united-states)

~~~
quantummkv
It's a classic case of supply/demand dynamics. There are a lot more JavaScript
developers than demand so the prices are low.

~~~
freehunter
As an anecdote, I am not a professional programmer but I was writing some code
to solve a problem at work and when it got to the front end stuff I was told
not to worry about it because they would just get a cheap contractor to build
the front end. The backend needed to be written by an expert who knows the
problem and understands the solution but the front end can be spec’d out and
outsourced to cheaper contractors.

I don’t usually live in the world of enterprise programming so I’m not sure
how normal that is, but it definitely surprised me.

------
dzonga
one thing, I wish StackOverflow would show is framework | language use across
geographic distribution. And one thing, I liked was the data on variation in
gender between developers in different countries. though it was just a few
countries.

------
gitgud
Wow I'm in the most popular demographic again!

" _White or of European descent: 68.3%_ "

...seriously though, how relevant is that racial statistic? Should we break it
down by eye color? Hair color?... I think categorising people based on race
does more harm than good...

~~~
freehunter
Racism and sexism is a constant complaint against the tech industry. But
unless someone is actually compiling data on it, no one knows how bad the
problem actually is (or if it’s actually even a real problem).

Problems don’t get solved unless they’re being tracked.

~~~
pdimitar
So what problem is being tracked by showing this statistic, exactly?

~~~
freehunter
Come on man, it was the first sentence of my comment.

~~~
pdimitar
Your first sentence was a generalisation. I still don't see how reasserting
that somebody is white helps... anything related to the problems of racism and
sexism, really. Help me here?

~~~
freehunter
I'm having a hard time assuming good faith based on your comments so I'm going
to bow out of this conversation. I'd suggest you take some time to stop and
think about why someone might want to track demographic statistics in a field
that is constantly under fire for being dominated by young white men.

~~~
pdimitar
I'm also having a hard time assuming a good faith from you even though in my
eyes I asked a fair question and you choose to leave instead.

You come across like you have an agenda. What is it?

I'm also not seeing what "under fire" means. The IT area has dozens of
millions of people employed. If it was truly under fire then I'd assume it
would shrink in numbers, at least in terms of representation of white men? But
I'm not seeing it happening. If you have links proving otherwise I'd be
interested to read them.

~~~
Izkata
I don't understand why this has been downvoted so much. The question was based
on a statistic on users of an English-language website, not even remotely
related to discrimination, so why is it being used as an accurate description
of discrimination? For that matter, why is one race being more active than
another evidence of discrimination _at all_?

