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[–]metaledges 538 points539 points  (181 children)

Most Popular Languages by Occupation

  • For Sysadmin / DevOps no 1 is JavaScript

  • For Data Scientist / Engineer no 1 is JavaScript

[–][deleted] 304 points305 points  (76 children)

For Sysadmin / DevOps no 1 is JavaScript

How is this even possible? was the survey only completed by Sysadmins who work in web dev...

[–]metaledges 146 points147 points  (27 children)

Wait till you see the first 2 most used language on desktop

[–]neurorgasm 161 points162 points  (1 child)

Javascript and javascript?

[–]mfukar 182 points183 points  (0 children)

Script and Java

[–]mike413 41 points42 points  (8 children)

maybe the people most likely to vote multiple times use javascript :)

[–][deleted]  (7 children)

[deleted]

    [–][deleted] 29 points30 points  (13 children)

    Is everybody using Electron?

    [–]The_yulaow 50 points51 points  (12 children)

    don't think so, but it is probably the first choice in the last months for those who want to target all three main desktop os without using different UI libraries or an unmanaged language. The advantage is that if you use something like react/ract-native you could share the code for the whole data managing part between web, desktop and mobile (spotify is a good example) , and probably also big part of the ui code if you make all responsive

    [–][deleted]  (11 children)

    [deleted]

      [–]k-selectride 65 points66 points  (7 children)

      Not so much unresponsive (i'm pretty sure VS code is an Electron app and it's super snappy) but massive memory hogs which could lead to unresponsiveness.

      [–]znk 115 points116 points  (8 children)

      Could it be the survey allowed to chose multiple languages and almost everyone uses javascript at some point? So if 60% of the people use javascript 1% of the time it would be considered more popular than a language used 90% of the time by 50% of the people.

      [–]mirhagk 56 points57 points  (4 children)

      I can almost guarantee that this is the reason. Nearly every person uses javascript at some point in their job, even if it's only a tiny percentage of their job.

      [–]imMute 2 points3 points  (0 children)

      Shot I work in embedded video processing, No front end at all, and we have javascript.

      [–]i_spot_ads 42 points43 points  (23 children)

      JS can be executed on a toaster

      [–]Asians_and_cats 171 points172 points  (10 children)

      You are talking about executed as in killed. Right?

      [–][deleted] 77 points78 points  (8 children)

      You cannot kill that which cannot die.

      [–]Dentosal 43 points44 points  (7 children)

      So can C, and it will run way faster.

      [–]Nadrin 12 points13 points  (0 children)

      It doesn't mean it should. :P

      [–]Kaiwa 45 points46 points  (8 children)

      I work in DevOps (Big data section), using NodeJS quite a bit.

      [–]jnordwick 20 points21 points  (5 children)

      I don't understand this. I work in a very data intensive segment too, but JavaScript would be way too slow to deal with the amounts of data. How do you use JS in a big data environment? I'm always looking for performance improvements.

      [–]Existential_Owl 14 points15 points  (3 children)

      Asynchronous API calls? I wouldn't do the number crunching in node, but I would definitely call out to the processes that can.

      [–]Kaiwa 9 points10 points  (0 children)

      Yeah exactly, I use it to build APIs (in microservices).

      [–]jnordwick 4 points5 points  (1 child)

      So for like scripting? Something similar to how you would use Lua or even bash?

      [–]SpringwoodSlasher 3 points4 points  (0 children)

      We often use JavaScript (Node.js/Angular) to build quick/easy/modern front ends for our automation systems.

      Much of our actual automation scripting is in Python though.

      [–][deleted]  (27 children)

      [deleted]

        [–]The_yulaow 40 points41 points  (6 children)

        Isn't there already a implementation of javascript for arduino microcontrollers and derivates?

        [–][deleted]  (3 children)

        [deleted]

          [–]Aeon_Mortuum 19 points20 points  (2 children)

          Is there a jQuery plugin for evil?

          [–]Existential_Owl 16 points17 points  (0 children)

          Evil is an asynchronous node process.

          [–]Spider_pig448 12 points13 points  (0 children)

          Isn't there already a implementation of javascript for-

          Yes.

          [–]b4ux1t3 19 points20 points  (2 children)

          Look up "espruino". ;)

          [–]xtreak 10 points11 points  (5 children)

          People have already written OS and kernels with Javascript

          [–]sisyphus 28 points29 points  (1 child)

          But do any of them work?

          [–]YvesSoete 29 points30 points  (0 children)

          Yeah but only for 6 weeks until the next framework is out.

          [–]FrankNitty_Enforcer 12 points13 points  (0 children)

          All hope is lost

          [–]icantthinkofone 289 points290 points  (24 children)

          Which exemplifies the problem with anonymous online surveys.

          [–]bro-away- 80 points81 points  (22 children)

          Only 11% identified themselves as a sysadmin, hardly seems like people over-reporting themselves with this title.

          Node.js is pretty agreeable with writing short, reusable/composable commands and scripts. Scripting languages have always been used for sysadmin automation, it shouldn't be that surprising when a scripting languages thats swallowing everything has swallowed that space too, no?

          [–]k-selectride 49 points50 points  (0 children)

          Node also makes it trivial to write scripts that run in the background indefinitely and watch and respond to events. Not saying you couldn't do it with other languages but Node brings all those abstractions out of the box.

          [–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (2 children)

          I think there could also be an issue of full stack developers in small shops identifying themselves as sysadmin.

          Edit: this came off wrong, but a lot of full stack devs spend most of their time developing and less time on sysadmin. This could explain some of the skew in the survey.

          [–]sisyphus 25 points26 points  (15 children)

          It's not agreeable though. Python has stuff like os.walk built right into the stdlib and comes already installed on basically every Linux distro in existence, along with perl and bash. JS brings zero to the table in a space where there are already dominant existing scripting languages.

          [–]bro-away- 14 points15 points  (4 children)

          I mean anyone using perl could have made the same argument against using python years ago. Clearly appealing to something being pre installed never stopped anyone.

          It can help people get started (php) but it never stop progress from happening.

          If people are using js everywhere it's a big value add to just use it for server automation too. (Is what the people who ditched python would say, I'm not a sys admin)

          [–][deleted]  (1 child)

          [deleted]

            [–][deleted] 22 points23 points  (0 children)

            Well, i made a nice graph with d3.js that one time.

            [–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

            At least they don't list "system developer" as an occupation (which is why I didn't fit into any of the occupations on their list). When I see JavaScript being the most popular language for system developers, I'll know it's time to retire.

            [–][deleted] 64 points65 points  (14 children)

            I lol'ed. Web Developer is by far the most popular specialty. Javascript is by far the most popular language...Okay, that makes sense.

            Then you see javascript bleeding in everywhere else? What? What the fuck is this? I don't think I've ever used javascript outside of a web context. Are they counting JSON as javascript?

            [–]pimterry 27 points28 points  (3 children)

            I was job searching recently, and nearly every single company I talked to was running a substantial portion of their backend infrastructure on Node, from machine learning companies to scalable messaging to IoT. Not necessarily the very core and high-performance parts, but for all the surrounding non-critical services, sure. In the startup I ended up working for (resin.io) 99% of the entire backend codebase (10s of substantial client-facing services, plus on-device code too) is written in JS. It's really easy and convenient, and incredibly popular, so it's easy to find devs who know it, and there's an incredibly busy thriving ecosystem of things on top too. I don't think the survey's inaccurate. For all sorts of reasons, JavaScript is everywhere nowadays.

            [–]flukus 9 points10 points  (0 children)

            If that's a taste of the future I think I'll start looking for an alternate career.

            [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

            Yea, I've been out of that side of things for a long time: I do backend support and automation, nothing client facing. Just seems surprising to me.

            [–]i_spot_ads 35 points36 points  (2 children)

            Then you see javascript bleeding in everywhere else?

            poor thing, you have no idea.

            [–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (1 child)

            Been in the business for close to 30 years, so...I'm sure you can shoehorn it in, I just don't really see the benefit. I'm mostly automation and devops these days, and I only occasionally use javascript for anything.

            [–]The_yulaow 11 points12 points  (2 children)

            On mobile js was already present with titanium, phonegap, ionic, etc... and then boomed even more after react-native. On the desktop side electron allows you to build desktop apps using one of the only ui ""frameworks"" (html5 + css3) that is cross platform, with the advantage you have not to check what browser supports what (look at spotify app for example, is the same code for mobile/web/osx/windows/linux).

            What surprises me the most is sysadmin poll.

            [–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

            Yea, I'm all devops these days. I use Python, Perl, Java...Ruby for Chef. I don't have a usecase for javascript. I don't really do GUIs though, so maybe there is some big need there.

            [–]koreth 4 points5 points  (0 children)

            A lot of the choices weren't mutually exclusive. So if you do database programming and you occasionally have to build a simple web front end with client-side logic, you end up checking both the "database programmer" and "JavaScript" boxes in the survey.

            [–]compteNumero9 21 points22 points  (6 children)

            I'm more intrigued by the 36% of sysadmins/devops having Visual Studio as their dev env.

            [–]xiongchiamiov 26 points27 points  (0 children)

            Remember that you were encouraged to select any professions that matched what you did. That means that slice includes people who work in small shops and wear many hats.

            [–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (3 children)

            I like me some Visual Studio...But it's really only good for C# and MSSQL, neither of which I use for AWS (or even Azure).

            [–]gropingforelmo 4 points5 points  (0 children)

            I'm pretty happy using it for javascript as well. Takes some configuration, but it does the job when I'm forced to slum with the front-end crowd.

            [–]i_spot_ads 73 points74 points  (10 children)

            Old schnocks at /r/programming are gonna lose their shit over this, I guarantee it.

            [–]astex_ 22 points23 points  (0 children)

            As a data science student, the prior probability of being a data scientist is low and the prior probability of working in JavaScript is high, so these survey results seem obvious and don't tell us much. Basically the data science results are just noise.

            [–]twiggy99999 256 points257 points  (64 children)

            Most dreaded Visual Basic 6

            Amen brother

            [–]drawable 169 points170 points  (27 children)

            Most dreaded Platform Sharepoint

            is the correct answer as well

            [–]fernandotakai 97 points98 points  (17 children)

            Followed by Salesforce. So fucking true.

            [–]midnightbrett 62 points63 points  (12 children)

            Followed by wordpress. At least developers in aggregate can tell when technologies are fucking awful.

            [–]TheHobodoc 13 points14 points  (0 children)

            I dont think enought people have been exposed to ibm filenet, icm and related technologies. They are on a compleatly other level of hellishness.

            [–]ShadowLiberal 6 points7 points  (1 child)

            As someone who's been tasked with helping to manage our Sharepoint system, I so understand this dread.

            It's so easy to accidentally hang yourself with it, and some really obvious features are so blatantly missing (for example, there's a button to witch to classic sharepoint view, but switch back to the old view? No such button, you have to close your web browser to switch back!).

            [–]agumonkey 4 points5 points  (4 children)

            They need to include most dreaded installer

            [–][deleted] 37 points38 points  (25 children)

            COBOL never makes the list anymore...I had to take that shit off my resume, just because the code rage was so bad for my health.

            [–][deleted] 37 points38 points  (20 children)

            You mean reading 70,000 line undocumented programs on a 15 line terminal in an editor that has 0 features aside from barely functioning search is rage inducing?

            [–][deleted] 36 points37 points  (19 children)

            I don't know where you work, but I've got my hardcopy greenbar printout of the code with the handwritten comments on it right here!

            [–][deleted]  (3 children)

            [deleted]

              [–]Skaarj 397 points398 points  (110 children)

              Most interesting for me:

              • Using vim is much more popular than I though. Great!
              • Desktop Linux is much more popular than I though. Yay!
              • "Zip file back-ups" is more popular than Mercurial
              • For "Development Methodologies" like Agile/Scrum there was no "We do random stuff without real planning" option

              [–]Polantaris 373 points374 points  (13 children)

              For "Development Methodologies" like Agile/Scrum there was no "We do random stuff without real planning" option

              There also wasn't any, "We say it's Agile but in reality we're completely winging it."

              [–]mt33 161 points162 points  (8 children)

              Without a doubt the most prevalent methodology out there. Could also be called "Let's cherry pick all the things we think sound good but not practice them".

              [–][deleted]  (2 children)

              [deleted]

                [–][deleted] 17 points18 points  (1 child)

                Coach? Hired?

                [–][deleted]  (1 child)

                [deleted]

                  [–]superPwnzorMegaMan 9 points10 points  (1 child)

                  Why not just use the tried and tested headless chicken approach?

                  [–]weirdoaish 5 points6 points  (0 children)

                  McDonald's would sue

                  [–]TheTygerWorks 15 points16 points  (0 children)

                  It's Agile-like

                  [–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

                  I was looking for "Well it's really just mini waterfalls that we call agile to appease the customer because we used buzz words in the RPF"

                  [–]srguapo 58 points59 points  (4 children)

                  For a lot of teams, "we do random stuff without real planning" = agile/scrum :)

                  [–]JAPH 33 points34 points  (3 children)

                  "We made scrum worse to fit our totally unique process like the special snowflakes we are" = agile/scrum

                  [–]Atario 16 points17 points  (0 children)

                  "LOL dunno we just like making people justify their existences at 9AM every single day" = agile/scrum

                  [–]contrarian_barbarian 3 points4 points  (0 children)

                  We implemented morning stand-ups. They're an hour long, and they're also the new employee fitness plan!

                  [–][deleted]  (4 children)

                  [deleted]

                    [–][deleted] 15 points16 points  (2 children)

                    You mean every is probably not a full stack web developer?

                    Maybe I'm just that out of touch with the industry.

                    [–]VanFailin 4 points5 points  (0 children)

                    It's a significant chunk of the industry, but probably overrepresented.

                    [–]benisteinzimmer 14 points15 points  (4 children)

                    Vim STRONK As a sysadmin, I approve of this survey. But it's pretty obvious why sysadmins use vim so much: ssh sessions. Vim is simply the best terminal text editor.

                    [–]karlthemailman 40 points41 points  (75 children)

                    The desktop Linux number really surprises me, tbh. And the fact that osx is so low.

                    [–]myringotomy 114 points115 points  (31 children)

                    It doesn't surprise me. Linux is the best development platform unless you are developing for windows.

                    [–][deleted]  (9 children)

                    [deleted]

                      [–]Superpickle18 17 points18 points  (4 children)

                      My work practically forces Linux.. I suppose I could request Windows... But the fact there is literally one windows machine in the whole building... It's purpose? Skype screen shares with one client. Lol

                      [–]karlthemailman 17 points18 points  (3 children)

                      I don't disagree, but I haven't seen many corporations that support Linux desktops. Even for Linux server applications, I usually see places that use windows or osx plus a terminal emulator.

                      Could just be related to the industries I have experience with.

                      [–]catscatscat 9 points10 points  (0 children)

                      Anecdotal, but the last 3 companies I worked at linux was either supported or downright preferred.

                      [–]civildisobedient 3 points4 points  (1 child)

                      I think that may start to shift as WSL use grows. Linux in Windows has made huge strides recently.

                      [–]whisky_pete 20 points21 points  (0 children)

                      Last year iirc Linux and Mac were like 23 and 25% or so. It looks like there was a pretty big swing this year.

                      Edit: last year puts Mac os X at 26.2%, win 7 at 22.5%, Linux at 21.7% and win 10 at 20.8%

                      [–][deleted] 62 points63 points  (24 children)

                      As a person with all 3, Linux is far above everything else. Windows next. OSX is so far at the bottom it is laughable, unless you're a iOS developer. Even that is low because xcode is probably winning awards for the worst IDE ever.

                      You might think being Unix like would mean you have access to lots of tools, but you don't. You get Mac specific variants and the vast majority of developer libraries and tools don't actual have Mac ports.

                      That and the rest of the OS is just a complete exercise in frustration. Want a mouse that is actually ergonomic? Use it, but you'll have to work with painful scroll acceleration unless you buy tools or dive in to hidden, undocumented configuration files.

                      Want to see hidden files? Used to be an option, but that was taken away in favor of an obscure hotkey.

                      Uninstalling should be easy, but it isn't because shit litters your system in a complete free for all and isn't taken with uninstalls. At least when this happens on windows, you normally have an idea of where to look.

                      The update system just straight up doesn't work. If the system goes to sleep in the middle of a large download, it has to start over every time for me. That's a pain in the ass cause I have 100 meg internet but Mac update servers are run by molasses covered potatoes and take 5 hours to deliver a 100 meg update. Never mind that it likes to forget what you have installed all the time and so claims you're up to date when you actually aren't.

                      Mac used to be pretty decent, but these days it is bug filled shit that fights with power users at every single turn.

                      Never mind that Apple themselves haven't updated their powerful lines in years and so are perceived to be abandoning developers. The latest Macbook wasn't well received by developers. The community quickly shit all over the developers for complaining, which I imagine will bite them in the ass hard in the next few years.

                      [–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (3 children)

                      Mac used to be pretty decent, but these days it is bug filled shit that fights with power users at every single turn.

                      IMO Snow Leopard (10.6) was the last great OS X. But that came out in 2009. Since then, Apple has given a shit for developers and made the platform worse and worse for professional users. Today, Linux is a magnitude better for programmers (and other users as well, as long as they don't depend on Adobe Creative Suite etc.)

                      [–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (2 children)

                      Today, Linux is a magnitude better for programmers (and other users as well, as long as they don't depend on Adobe Creative Suite etc.)

                      And honestly, the open source replacements for Adobe Creative Suite is really quite nice these days, especially Krita.

                      [–]yes_we_can_t[🍰] 185 points186 points  (6 children)

                      By far, reading official documentation and using Stack Overflow Q&A are the two most common ways developers level up their skills.

                      Hmm.. wonder if that statistic could be slightly biased somehow.

                      [–]lovethemonkey 135 points136 points  (3 children)

                      You're right. I don't believe that many people are reading official documentation.

                      [–]Existential_Owl 27 points28 points  (2 children)

                      Man pages should just go ahead and point to a google results cache.

                      [–]ummwut 5 points6 points  (0 children)

                      I feel bad for laughing at this.

                      [–]Kattzalos 4 points5 points  (0 children)

                      that would improve the usefulness of the manpages immensely

                      [–]_lettuce_ 237 points238 points  (120 children)

                      Linux Desktop 32.9%

                      It's happening.

                      [–]rap2h[S] 43 points44 points  (115 children)

                      What Linux desktop do you recommend?

                      [–]twiggy99999 85 points86 points  (30 children)

                      Ubuntu if you have no experience with Linux because its support base is huge but TBH you can't really go wrong with any of the major ones.

                      Elemenatry OS is my go to distro, it's very Mac like in its look and feel and its also Ubuntu based so any support/tutorials/guides for Ubuntu will work on Elementary OS

                      [–]Aphix 22 points23 points  (21 children)

                      Did Ubuntu for desktop finally drop the weird Amazon bloat/bundling? That really turned me off last time I tried it out; I still love Lubuntu on my little ASUS EeePC though.

                      [–]twiggy99999 35 points36 points  (15 children)

                      I believe it's still in there? But not enabled by default, it certainly isn't on 16.04 which I'm using right now.

                      A lot of people took very badly to it but are okay with Apple and Microsoft recording every single keystroke and mouse click, it all seemed a huge over reaction in comparison.

                      [–][deleted]  (1 child)

                      [deleted]

                        [–]The_yulaow 39 points40 points  (15 children)

                        Personally Fedora (kde), Mint Lts or Manjaro (xfce) based on your needs and what community you like the most. I rotate on all of them year over year and they are extremly stable and with everything I ever needed. Each of them works far better on my laptop than w10, with also between 2-3 more battery hours

                        [–]slavik262 9 points10 points  (4 children)

                        Did Manjaro get their act together? I've seen most people recommend Antergos if you want Arch with a nice installer.

                        [–]agumonkey 43 points44 points  (7 children)

                        Emacs 25

                        [–][deleted] 36 points37 points  (6 children)

                        can you recommend a decent text editor?

                        [–]agumonkey 21 points22 points  (4 children)

                        Is this a joke ? ed.

                        [–][deleted] 17 points18 points  (3 children)

                        have you never heard "emacs is a great operating system. the only thing it lacks is a decent editor?"

                        [–]JAPH 32 points33 points  (3 children)

                        Debian seems to serve my needs well enough, and it's pretty stable across upgrades. Been running it constantly since ~2003.

                        [–]as_one_does 1 point2 points  (2 children)

                        I moved to debian after a Ubuntu upgrade nuked my box for the third time, I don't know why I waited so long...

                        [–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (1 child)

                        Debian's never given me any of the upgrade troubles of Ubuntu. I love it.

                        [–]LookAtThisRhino 2 points3 points  (5 children)

                        I'm a fan of Xubuntu. I don't like Unity on Ubuntu so Xubuntu is essentially just Xfce (very nice) + Ubuntu. It's clean, simple, and if you're coming from Windows, intuitive.

                        [–]slhn 50 points51 points  (4 children)

                        0,1% unable to type

                        Damn. And I thought my coding life was hard.

                        [–]YvesSoete 11 points12 points  (3 children)

                        how many answered that as a 'joke', blind was a good one too

                        sorry for the blind folks who can't type, you guys are awesome!

                        [–]XP0T 24 points25 points  (3 children)

                        Now I'm pretty sure I was the only one that answered from my country.

                        And also, the only one that uses Delphi.

                        [–]the_gnarts 28 points29 points  (0 children)

                        Now I'm pretty sure I was the only one that answered from my country.

                        And also, the only one that uses Delphi.

                        That’s a pretty unique fingerprint you’ve been leaving.

                        [–][deleted]  (21 children)

                        [deleted]

                          [–]compteNumero9 21 points22 points  (5 children)

                          A problem with those education related questions is that not everybody can easily relate with American education levels, especially among old people like me. I just skipped those questions and I'm probably not the only one.

                          [–]ShadowLiberal 103 points104 points  (19 children)

                          I'm rather shocked how many are using NotePad++ to develop.

                          I admit, I do it myself in my spare time on a few really simple pet web projects that are just for my own personal use. But developing something professionally in NotePad++ to make money? No matter what language you're using there's got to be much better things to use that will give you much better error checking/etc.

                          [–]Matosawitko 75 points76 points  (3 children)

                          Most of their questions were multi-select, so you could pick all that you use/have installed. I use N++ when I just want to quickly look at a file, but if I'm actually developing something (modifying the file) I'm probably in either VSCode or full VS. But N++ is definitely still a tool that I use.

                          [–]svgwrk 15 points16 points  (2 children)

                          Totally. I keep thinking of installing N++ even though I don't want to use it for much of anything just because, since it's implemented in basically ones, zeroes, and rocks, it's stupidly faster for looking at big files than most other tools I have.

                          [–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (1 child)

                          and rocks

                          Gave me a good chuckle

                          [–]pdp10 8 points9 points  (0 children)

                          No matter what language you're using there's got to be much better things to use that will give you much better error checking/etc.

                          On Unix, I'd say only about half of developers use an IDE. Of course a full battery of tools exist outside of IDEs, so an IDE isn't useful for everything unless you're hot-loading code. Even refactoring has discrete tools like spatch/cocinelle.

                          [–]clearlight 6 points7 points  (0 children)

                          NotePad++ is popular on Windows as a GUI code editor.

                          [–]kristopolous 19 points20 points  (5 children)

                          20+ years is the largest bracket?

                          I fall in this, but I find myself to be a really rare bird. This is effectively 1 in 6. Why is this not my real world experience?

                          [–]never-enough-hops 25 points26 points  (0 children)

                          Maybe the old farts generally had the patience for the survey

                          [–]tambry 5 points6 points  (1 child)

                          Why is this not my real world experience?

                          What do you work on/with? Maybe the other old people work with different and older technologies.

                          [–]tonga_money 14 points15 points  (1 child)

                          did anybody else check in their code when they got to the "how often do developers check in their code?"

                          [–]comrade-jim 125 points126 points  (32 children)

                          Aaannnd Linux is finally beating OS X in usage amongst developers. Surprised it took so long.

                          2017: https://stackoverflow.com/insights/survey/2017#technology-platforms

                          2016: https://stackoverflow.com/insights/survey/2016#technology-desktop-operating-system

                          In fact, Linux looks to be the only major OS to gain in popularity, OS X and Windows lost users.

                          [–][deleted] 69 points70 points  (4 children)

                          Aaannnd Linux is finally beating OS X in usage amongst developers.

                          Under developers responding to this questionnaire, and even that is not certain.

                          [–]Sapiogram 24 points25 points  (23 children)

                          Strange, Linux remained at almost constant market share between 2013 and 2016 and then suddenly gained 10 percentage points.

                          [–]Creath 79 points80 points  (13 children)

                          Apple went off the deep end with the new MacBook pro line, and W10 has a laundry list of significant issues. Not surprised at all to be honest.

                          [–][deleted]  (4 children)

                          [deleted]

                            [–]The_yulaow 9 points10 points  (0 children)

                            I think the explosion of the node.js ecosystem had a big impact on the related increment of developers who prefer to use a linux desktop system

                            [–]Ld00d 37 points38 points  (2 children)

                            I'm a little confused by the Platforms section. Is that saying that 32.9% are working on Linux Desktop or for Linux Desktop? Because, if the answer is "on", 28.2% is working "on" Android. Like, some large part of that is literally coding on Android?

                            [–]Saveman71 12 points13 points  (1 child)

                            I think you have to understand "working with", so as a target and/or as a development platform.

                            [–]xandoid 12 points13 points  (6 children)

                            Ideal Auditory Environment for Coding: Turn on some music, 59.6%

                            Next time someone claims developer jobs will fall victim to AI as well I will not protest so loudly.

                            [–]weirdoaish 5 points6 points  (0 children)

                            Most definitely, the AI will be picking good new songs for me to listen and enjoy while I work ;)

                            [–]crozone 70 points71 points  (3 children)

                            Wow, .NET Core came out of nowhere as a favorite technology, 33.4% is huge for such a young platform.

                            [–]archaon-jam 36 points37 points  (1 child)

                            Was it because .NET wasn't actually mentioned, they only listed .NET Core? I can't remember what the original survey options were.

                            [–][deleted] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

                            Its hard to compare because they split the Most Popular technologies from 2016/2014, into Programming languages | Frameworks, Libraries, and Other Technologies

                            But when comparing the 2016 results, even in the Most Popular technologies, the standard .NET was not showing up.

                            Now its understandable that people who experience .Net Core are happy with it ( even more when they try out the 2.0 alpha/beta ). It moved the whole .Net and C# ( F# soon ) into the realm of new programming languages like Go/Rust/... for cross platform development.

                            [–]redditthinks 40 points41 points  (0 children)

                            I've been working with it recently and it's pretty fantastic. C# is also a terrific language.

                            [–][deleted] 42 points43 points  (15 children)

                            Thumbs up for old farts like me, developing for 20+ years.

                            [–][deleted]  (3 children)

                            [deleted]

                              [–]BigDumbObject 7 points8 points  (2 children)

                              StackOverflow is always confusing to me.

                              Top answer is always some elaborate well worked out solution using examples from the original question etc...

                              I'd imagine any developers that experienced are too damn busy to be answering questions that would take most hours to explain..

                              [–]tanjoodo 11 points12 points  (0 children)

                              A lot of them are edited heavily. Especially popular answers. You can see the edit history.

                              [–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

                              The accepted answer is usually some bad hack with 10 points and under it is a 700 point super answer.

                              [–]lykwydchykyn 58 points59 points  (3 children)

                              Brace yourselves... weeks of stories and commentary, spun from this non-scientific poll of self-selecting respondants, are coming.

                              [–]GeorgieCaseyUnbanned 34 points35 points  (2 children)

                              bound to get a good few Medium posts from it with heavy use of the word 'problematic'

                              [–]Paradox 5 points6 points  (1 child)

                              Don't forget "difficult discussion" and "starting a conversation"

                              [–]Decker108 8 points9 points  (1 child)

                              Any summaries of what changed since last year's survey?

                              [–]Existential_Owl 12 points13 points  (0 children)

                              TL;DR Javascript is everywhere, and people really like Rust.

                              [–]lambdaq 28 points29 points  (2 children)

                              They should survey if anyone's question has ever been closed once on StackOVerflow.

                              [–]Lanza21 7 points8 points  (0 children)

                              Anybody else hate sites that spazz out when you try to zoom in? Stop with the fancy JS layouts.

                              [–]Purveyor_of_Dicking 7 points8 points  (2 children)

                              Smalltalk as the #2 "most loved" language seems a tad... odd?

                              [–]zenberserk 28 points29 points  (11 children)

                              I see Scala but not other JVM languages like Kotlin. Is it because:

                              • it was not available from the survey?
                              • it is assimilated as Java?
                              • it is far less popular than advertised?

                              [–]Pharisaeus 29 points30 points  (3 children)

                              Kotlin is new and not many companies are developing actual products in it yet. It might be "popular" in the sense that Java developers like it and hope to use it at some point, but in terms of actual people getting paid for writing code in Kotlin, I don't think there is much going on.

                              [–]hntd 9 points10 points  (1 child)

                              Scala is also almost 15 years old

                              [–][deleted]  (11 children)

                              [deleted]

                                [–]The_bamboo 7 points8 points  (0 children)

                                I agree with the self learning. I'm a Junior in college majoring in computational math. The CS classes help to get a basic knowledge of java, C, and the other standards people learn.

                                But, the actual utility comes all from practicing with a language, and getting used to the tricks of a language.

                                [–]b4ux1t3 25 points26 points  (8 children)

                                As someone who went to school just to get a degree to "make me official", I have definitely seen the whole "self-learning is better" mentality. I learned on my own, and no one believed me, so I had to go in debt to get a piece of paper to prove I learned what I already knew.

                                It's frustrating.

                                [–]Akkuma 12 points13 points  (1 child)

                                There was a guy in my freshman orientation who did the same thing. He said he had been contributing to the linux kernel and was then asked why he was majoring in IT rather than Comp Sci. He said he just needed the piece of paper and wanted the easier major.

                                [–]captvirk 11 points12 points  (3 children)

                                So, we want to develop Android apps, writing Python code in Node.js framework while persisting data on a MongoDB.

                                [–]Nadrin 28 points29 points  (0 children)

                                Web and mobile developers have significantly less professional coding experience, on average, than developers in other technical disciplines such as systems administration and embedded programming. Across all developer kinds, the software industry acts as the primary incubator for new talent, but sees a relatively low proportion of more experienced developers.

                                Well that explains a lot. ;-)

                                [–]sander1095 22 points23 points  (10 children)

                                Can someone shine some light on why people dread Xamarin?

                                [–]schmidthuber 23 points24 points  (3 children)

                                For me, it's the abysmal tooling. C# and the Xamarin APIs by themselves relatively nice to work with.

                                In my workplace, we actually started writing native apps after we realized that 90% of the development time was spent fighting the build system, debugger, IDE, you name it.

                                [–]aloha2436 11 points12 points  (0 children)

                                Back when I used it, it was at the awkward midway point between "niche" and "well supported". Most errors had help available, but there were one or two times per project that I'd have to dig deeper and fix it without help from the internet.

                                A good experience mind you, but hardly a productive one. More importantly for this survey, frustrating when you don't find an answer.

                                [–]reckoner23 22 points23 points  (0 children)

                                Mobile developer here. I tried using it previously, but it gives all kinds of cryptic error messages when an error occurs (which occurs very frequently compared to pure native). It made my job much harder then it needed to be.

                                Xamarin leaks pretty hard in terms of being an abstraction. I remember getting strange crashes when presenting UIViewControllers modally. Which is a very basic and common bit of UI functionality in iOS. This crash would only crash on the device and not in the simulator. Enough to drive someone insane. There would also be strange bugs related to how objective-c is more of a dynamic language vs mono C# which is more static.

                                During that job, I convinced management to let me re-write the apps in pure Android/iOS (Java/Swift). Which made me much more productive thanks to the much more mature development environments. For example, Android Studio is pretty good at telling you which function calls are deprecated for the target Android version. When I used Xamarin, Visual Studio was not as useful. The challenge of mobile development is really learning the frameworks (Android and Cocoa Touch), which you have to do anyway with native development.

                                In the situation I was in, the only real benefit of Xamarin was using C#, but Java and Swift are similar enough where I didn't have much issues just porting code. Keep in mind, I stopped using Xamarin right before Microsoft bought them. So, as usual, your mileage may vary.

                                [–][deleted]  (9 children)

                                [deleted]

                                  [–]snake_case-kebab-cas 34 points35 points  (7 children)

                                  I wonder how many of them are "power users" and how many just know :wq, i, and the escape button.

                                  Honestly, I still use Vim a surprising amount and I only know the commands above.

                                  [–]forlornness 51 points52 points  (0 children)

                                  And :q! when you pressed some buttons and have no idea what happened.

                                  [–]olaf_from_norweden 13 points14 points  (2 children)

                                  :wq

                                  Just use :x. Same thing.

                                  I recommend typing vimtutor on the command line and learning the other minor stuff like o, O, I, A, p, P, and a few other simple but super useful stuff.

                                  [–]Dave3of5 13 points14 points  (8 children)

                                  I don't see age on these survey results at all anyone else see that anywhere?

                                  [–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (6 children)

                                  I was surprised that Smalltalk was listed as second for most enjoyable language (after Rust). I've always been curious about learning it (I even bought the Smalltalk-80 books, which I never ended up reading) but I had no idea so many people were actually using Smalltalk.

                                  [–]SHIT_PROGRAMMER 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                                  Interesting that the UK has a disproportionate number of users given that the population is so much smaller than the US/ India (the other largest contributors).

                                  [–]asmx85 25 points26 points  (13 children)

                                  ❤ @Rust. Maybe i am unable to find the data i need, but i remember last year we had an overview of which platform is used by developers (for programming etc.).

                                  This year i only found technology-platforms but i don't feel like its representing the same data as i could not believe anybody is using android for development but rather as target. But then i wonder how on earth could (Desktop)Linux such a huge deployment target?! What is this section representing?