Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2022 Review

It's that time of year again, StackOverflow have released the results for their 2022 survey. With over 70,0000 responses, this is the best opportunity to gain an insight into the current state of computer science and technology. Here are some notable results we found.

Language Popularity

The survey revealed which languages revive the most use across all respondents.

JavaScript is Still King

Although JavaScript's popularity has been decreasing gently over time, it still remains the most popular language, used by 65.4% of programmers. Since JavaScript is the languages of choice for frontend development, and runtimes like Node.js and Deno allow for JavaScript to be written for backend servers, it's been far in the lead above other languages, and a great choice for full-stack developers.

TypeScript Continues to Explode

TypeScript continues to have explosive growth in use, rising to third place. This is likely to be a factor in JavaScript's gentle decline. At this rate, TypeScript is on track to overtake Python in 2024 and reach JavaScript's current position in another 6 years.

Java's Popularity is Fading

After its peak in 2018, Java continues to noticeably drop in popularity, getting overtaken by TypeScript this year. The increase in use of languages like JavaScript, Python and Go appear to be eating at its popularity.

Go, Rust and Kotlin Continue Steady Growth

The new languages continue to gain adoption. Go has shown a steady and increase year on year as the cloud computing industry has grown, and continues to eat into languages like Python and Java.

Rust has seen a sharp pickup in use this year, most likely due to how loved it is among developers and the recent trend in smart contract development and web3 startups.

Python's Growth has Slowed

In the last few year's Python's growth has been phenomenal, but this is the first year we've seen where it's usage hasn't grown.

Ruby and Swift Have Peaked

Ruby and Swift both peaked in popularity in 2018 and have been on the decline ever since.

Loved Languages

Languages may be popular to use for development, but not exactly loved. The survey highlights the most admired languages.

Rust Tops the Charts

Rust remains the most loved language by far, with 86.7% of users reporting they loved using it. This is the 7th year in a row that Rust has been voted the most loved. It's clever ideas, blazing speed and uniqueness have resonated well with developers.

Others

TypeScript, Python and Go also ranked as highly loved languages.

Elixir, Closure, Julia and Delphi are favorites, but amongst a very small group of users.

Dreaded Languages

Here are some of the languages that are dreaded by developers.

MATLAB Most Hated

This year, MATLAB has taken the number 1 spot for the most hated language. Usually this award is reserved for Visual Basic.

Others

VBA, Objective-C, Groovy and Perl were among the most hated.

COBOL, Fortran ranked very poorly too, but only have a very small number of total users.

Most Wanted

The survey highlights the languages that are at the top of developers "to learn" list.

Rust Has Caught Python

Rust's likability has caught everybody's attention and it has finally caught up to Python to become the joint most desirable language to learn.

Go and TypeScript Close Behind

Go and TypeScript are very close behind the front two, although they have both been hovering around the 15% mark for many years now.

Java and C++ Fading

With so many new and exciting technologies to learn, Java and C++ are slipping more and more from people's lists, even though they remain a staple technology used in industry.

Most Loved Frameworks

As more and more frameworks appear each year, this survey offered a chance to find out which are the most loved by developers.

A Phoenix has Emerged

The new framework Phoenix has slotted in above Svelte to take the title for the most loved framework.

FastAPI Showing Promise

It was the 3rd most loved framework in 2021 and its likability has continued remained strong this year. It continues to be the most loved Python-based web framework, easily beating Django and Flask. It's even on par with React.js.

Women Still Vastly Underrepresented

As expected, the survey reveals the proportion of men in technology is overwhelming. The respondents for the last 3 years of StackOverflow surveys have been roughly 92% male. Although in recent years there has been a growing push to encourage women to get involved in technology, such as Women Who Code and Girls Who Code, these results clearly show we are making very little progress towards equal representation of women in tech. There is some hope shown in the younger respondents who are just learning to code, with a slightly lower 87.9% male respondents, but this problem is a long way from solved. Unfortunately, remain on track for many more years where female perspectives are likely to be missing or drowned out when directing the future of technology.