Developer Survey: JavaScript and Python reign supreme, but Rust is on the rise

In terms of developer preferences, JavaScript and Python have remained resilient as Rust usage grows, according to a recent global developer survey.

May 4 report entitled “State of the Developer Nation, 22^nd Edition”, By analyst firm SlashData, includes data from a survey of more than 20,000 developers in 166 countries, taken from December 2021 to February 2022. In this report, JavaScript remained the most popular language for the tenth consecutive survey, with almost 17, 5 million developers using the popular web scripting language. (SlashData publishes these reports about two to three times a year for several years.) The JavaScript community itself has been growing steadily for several years. Python, which surpassed Java in popularity two years ago, was the second most popular language after JavaScript, with 15.7 million users. In the last six months alone, Python has added 3.3 million net new developers.

Meanwhile, Rust’s adoption has almost quadrupled in the last 24 months, from 600,000 developers in Q1 2020 to 2.2 million in Q1 2022. “Memory security and safety [of Rust] gives people the opportunity to create with great confidence, “said Rust Foundation Executive Director Rebecca Rumbul, commenting on the report. “The community of supporters and collaborators is inclusive and supportive. Rust is also a great choice for developers who want to improve their professional prospects, as the demand for Rust developers continues to grow. ” Rust, the report says, is mostly used in IoT projects, but also in augmented and virtual reality (AR / VR) development.

The report includes the following additional findings:

• Java continues to have strong and stable growth. Nearly 5 million developers have joined the Java community since early 2021.
• PHP has grown at least in the last six months, with an increase of 600,000 net new developers between Q3 2021 and Q1 2022. But PHP is the second most commonly used language in web applications after JavaScript.
• Go and Ruby are important languages ​​in backend development, but Go has grown more than twice as fast in the last year. The Go community now has 3.3 million developers.
• The Kotlin community grew from 2.4 million developers in Q1 2021 to 5 million in Q1 2022. This is largely due to the fact that Google has made Kotlin the preferred language for Android development.
• 46% of developers use low or no code tools for some of their work. Experienced developers, especially those with more than 10 years of experience, are least likely to use these tools. Nineteen percent of developers in North America use low or no coding tools for more than half of their coding work, almost twice the global average of 10%.